We all love to go to a buffet and indulge with the "all you can eat" to our hearts content. I know I love buffets.But visiting a buffet can ruin a diet.
I learned how to control my intake when visiting a buffet while training myself to control my urge to eat. I used to eat three full plates when visiting a buffet. Today, I do 1 1/2 plates.
The trick is to bring reading material...
- Bring some reading material, a newspaper or a magazine. If you like to follow Twitter and Facebook on your smartphone, then do that too.
- Start your first plate with your favorite meat items. That's what you really want out of a buffet anyways, the prime rib, the ham, the fish, the sausage. Fill up your first plate with all meat.
- After finishing your first plate, start reading. Spend at least 20 minutes focused on your reading material, the more minutes the better.
- After that much time has expired, you'll notice the urge to eat has waned. This is because you broke the momentum to gorge, and put yourself into a more relaxed state of mind.
- Go ahead and get a second plate, but you're more than likely not feel inclined to gorge. Only fill up half the plate, and tell yourself that you'll go back for a third plate later on.
- Finish the second plate, and then read some more, for just about 10 minutes at least.
- Afterwards, you should feel pretty stuffed. When that much time has passed by, the food from the first and second plates will have expanded somewhat in your belly, and you'll not feel like getting that third plate anymore.
What causes us to gorge at the buffet is momentum. That is, you get into this frame of mind that there's so much food, that you have to eat quickly and go back to get the other stuff. So, if you break the momentum by reading in between plates, your mind relaxes, and you no longer feel anxious to get back to the buffet.
And in that time between plates, you're allowing body to shift its energy into digesting that food, making you feel a little more tired.
Other people will tell you to master the buffet by eating salads first. I've tried that, and while that does work in theory, in reality it does not. That's because when you go to a buffet, you see the prime rib, the pasta, the sausage, and your mind goes haywire.
What'll happen is that you'll fill up half of your stomach with salad, and then go immediately to the meats, pastas, sausages, etc., and fill up there as well. So my advice is to start with that instead, and get that immediate satisfaction over with.
It's better to let yourself enjoy the first plate, and then use some reading material afterwards to create a 20+ minute pause to settle your mind down.
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