"Never finish your plate"

jennmoore3

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FairyMiss

grew up with that finish everything on your plate, and at home still tend to, not always though. Usually i do when fixing my plate my self which is most of the time because i know exactly what i want to put on there. If some one else fixes my plate , my mom being nice when something is wrong (liek when my knee was bad , or my back) well then i don't always. Or at family dinners or resturants when i have no control over what is on my plate, i have no problem with leaving food, after all as far as resterauts go hehe thats my lunch for tomorrow ,(at those prices sometime you want to get more than one meal out of it)

R_is_for_Rachel

was also told to eat everything off my plate as a child (think of the starving children in Africa!)
so i've always felt i had to clear my plate
until a couple years ago when i read the Paul McKenna book and since then will leave food when i feel full, in fact last night i left half my stir fry!
i think if i hadn't read Paul McKenna, i would be a lot larger that what i am now
i also feel better, as i don't leave the table feeling sick!

ejmcam

I dont usuallt leave food on my plate, unless i'm at a restaurant and dont want to eat it all because of the calories! I control my portions before I put them on my plate, so I know what i can eat! No sense wasting!

nerdyandilikeit

I honestly physically can't leave food on my plate :happy:

me too. its mental for me. i find that if i use smaller plates, its easier to trick my brain into thinking i'm getting more so i feel satisfied with the healthy portions.

prov31ms

I too am a member of the clean plate club! These days, I only cook enough food for everyone in the family to have 1 serving, and I measure out my food. That way I can clean my plate without over-eating & there are no seconds to go back for! =0)

12by311

If I go out to eat, I always leave food. I'll usually get a to go box.

At home or if I fix my own plate, my portions are small usually so I don't have to leave food on my plate.

appleofmyeye

I think it's just important to be mindful of your portion sizes and of when you are full. Sometimes that will mean you're part of the happy-plate club, and sometimes it'll mean you're packing up some leftovers. At home, we measure or at least carefully eyeball all of our portions to make sure we aren't serving ourselves more than what's reasonable, and we also use our salad plates (~8") as dinner plates, so it looks like we're eating a nice big meal (and really, we are!). I'm usually able to finish my food, but I've found that sometimes, if we've cooked something really rich and heavy, I'm satisfied with just half--then, it just means that I can log half the calories for dinner that night and the other half for a delicious lunch the next day! I have a hard time wasting food, but if I can save enough for another meal, I'm less likely to overeat.

Sidenote: when I was in kindergarten, our teacher had a rule that we were supposed to clean our plates at lunchtime in the cafeteria. If we had clean plates every day for a week, we got to sit with her at what she called the "pig table." At the time, this was some serious motivation, because we all wanted to be little piggies! (Oh, how things change!) I always wanted to sit at the pig table, but every single week with one meal or another the stupid cafeteria would serve this gross, creamy, mayonnaise-y coleslaw that I just could not bring myself to eat. My teacher made a deal with me that if I ate one bite of the slaw that week, and had clean plates every day except for the slaw, that I could sit at the pig table. Well, I made it, and it was kind of cool, but the slaw just about made me gag. It was kinda of traumatic--I still can't eat that stuff! Just wanted to share that.