My body is not a garbage disposal

I like that saying. I have one too. “Hunger is not a medical emergency, you can wait”.

I say it to myself whenever I open the fridge hungry and just want to put the first thing I see in my mouth. Im so bad at tolerating hunger. Even the mildest pangs they go after 5 mins or after a drink of water.

In order for me to lose weight, I have to cut alcohol pretty much completely. It's not just alcohol cals...I just lose food discipline after one drink. I'm getting close to halfway (almost lost 10 of 20 lbs that I need to lose).

So my mantra is less healthy than average:
"If I don't eat *that* the sooner I can have a cocktail."

Whatever works right?

I try not to assign moral judgments to food. I do have a long dieting career that I don't wear like a badge of honor. I joined MFP to create my own positive food management plan. I no longer follow diets or menu plans written by other people. I eat the foods I enjoy in reasonable amounts.

I've been here 3 years now and I'm still standing intact. It's the best decision I've ever made holding myself accountable in every way. In the beginning, I used this as a reminder: Another binge is not a cure for a food addiction.

I order what I want in restaurants and if it's calorie dense, I box up half of it before I start eating so that it looks great in the takeout box and I'm *excited* to take it to work as my lunch the next day. I've found that if I plate about 800 calories and stop eating once the food is gone, I am pleasantly full but not uncomfortable. Which is generally what I'm trying to accomplish - PLUS, I get awesome restaurant food A SECOND TIME without the second expense or having to put on pants to go fetch it.

And yes... I AM that hippie weirdo with a re-usable container in her bag for restaurant left overs. If I don't put the food in my bag, I'll forget it, and I'm not putting a crushable styrofoam container of pasta in my backpack next to my laptop. >_<

I gotta disagree with viewing perfectly good food as 'garbage'. Such a flippant attitude when so many people don't have or can't afford enough to eat.

Obviously I'm not talking about leaving a few bits of meat or half a potato on the plate when you're full or not eating something because it doesn't taste nice, but if you're leaving food on your plate, you ARE wasting all that food by virtue of the fact that you have made/taken/ordered more than you intend to eat.

paperpudding wrote: »

I don't agree with the last couple of posts.

If I order cake ( or a main meal) and it is more than I want, or I don't really like it, I don't feel obliged to finish it.
Or to take it home.

It is no more wasted by me leaving it than eating more than I want it to or taking it home if I dont want it.
Nor does it help anyone who doesn't have or can't afford food.

Far better to accept not eating everything in front of me if I don't want it and doing something actually useful for others - eg donating money to a charity feeding the homeless

Not wasting food might make me feel better but doesn't really benifit anyone.

Exactly this, and this was my realization that was similar to OP's.

If I eat something I am no longer enjoying (because I've eaten enough) or don't need (already had plenty) or feel that because I accidentally made too much or the restaurant portion was too large I must find a way to eat that food the next day, that's not helping anyone. I somewhat got adjusted to the restaurant thing just because I go to the theater or concerts a lot, and you can't really carry around leftovers for another 3 hours before putting them away (and wouldn't particularly want to have leftovers with you anyway), so I had to be okay with saying "no, I can't take leftovers." Some restaurants have okay portions, but so many have larger ones, and that's not my fault and doesn't mean I must eat everything.

I'm good with portion control with homemade food now, but eating it all just because I accidentally made too much (especially with pasta) and it wouldn't save well or there wasn't enough for a full second meal is something I used to do that was obviously irrational (since I wasn't even wanting to eat the rest) when I thought about it. It was treating myself like a garbage disposal -- not because the food was "garbage," but because the alternative was putting it in the garbage or down the sink disposal.

I also won't eat something just because it's there (another thing I used to do). Now I'm much more picky.

People choosing to throw away some food they cooked or bought doesn't affect scarcity. Most food waste happens at a different stage in the food chain anyway, it's not like you could donate the food (unless it's a package unopened), and me not eating a whole restaurant meal does not drive up the cost of food for others.

This is of interest: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/american-food-waste/491513/

"What causes [the extensive food waste in the US]? A major reason is that food is cheaper in the United States than nearly anywhere else in the world, aided (controversially) by subsidies to corn, wheat, milk, and soybeans. But the great American squandering of produce appears to be a cultural dynamic as well, enabled in large part by a national obsession with the aesthetic quality of food. Fruits and vegetables, in addition to generally being healthful, have a tendency to bruise, brown, wilt, oxidize, ding, or discolor and that is apparently something American shoppers will not abide. For an American family of four, the average value of discarded produce is nearly $1,600 annually. (Globally, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that one-third of all food grown is lost or wasted, an amount valued at nearly $3 trillion. )

Writing about food waste for The Atlantic back in 2014, Elizabeth Segran gestured at both the shoppers who refuse to buy imperfect-looking fruit as well as the grocers who refuse to stock the shelves with any wonky-looking wares. “Grocery stores routinely trash produce for being the wrong shape or containing minor blemishes,” Doug Rauch, the former president of the Trader Joe’s Company, told her.

But that assumes such produce even reaches the stores. Quoting workers and experts at a variety of vantage points in the food system, The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg also reports that, “Vast quantities of fresh produce grown in the U.S. are left in the field to rot, fed to livestock or hauled directly from the field to landfill, because of unrealistic and unyielding cosmetic standards.”

“In my mind, the desire for perfect produce came about in the 1940s as housewives adapted to widespread refrigeration and new CPG [consumer packaged goods] products,” Eve Turow Paul, the author of A Taste of Generation Yum, writes in an email. “Suddenly, you could get a pineapple in Chicago in January. Wonderbread hit shelves a decade before. Perfection and manicured foods came to represent safety and new technology.”

So focusing on not eating all of your Chinese food as something that's going to lead to bad effects is focusing on the wrong part of the problem, especially when the customer in many cases cannot control the size of the portion, and foods not sold will likely end up disposed of by the restaurant anyway.

I read the original post as more of a metaphor. If I had chinese leftovers in the fridge, I used to obsess over them and eat them when I wasn't hungry, and in addition to my regular meals, not in place of. I honestly think this is just as wasteful as throwing it away. When humans eat way more food than they need, or restaurants choose to serve 4 serving size portions instead of 1, it's all wasteful. Putting water on tables before asking the guests if they want it is wasteful. A parent shouldn't feel guilty about not finishing 2 lunches, one that was theirs and one that they made for their toddler throwing a fit who doesn't want to eat all of the sudden.