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20 September 2013

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Rebekka Hartmann

It's amazing how many ways people can have issues with food. I will always, always want dessert. But I would never, ever want to eat while cleaning up after a meal - once I'm done, I would be as likely to nibble at crusts and crumbs as I would be to eat out of the trash can. (I hate doing dishes for this reason - coming into contact with uneaten food, even if I was eating it a minute ago.) But sorry, no relevant input to the actual discussion.

Hannah Powers

It takes a lot of awareness, really. If you are the 'I'll just have a little bit while I'm chopping, mixing, stirring' sort of person, you probably have been eating this way for many years. I had no idea how much of my daily intake was coming from this kind of thing before I started eating NoS and found myself VERY HUNGRY. Here are things I tried when I was breaking myself of this particular problem:

First, tasting. I had always been a taster, and rarely rarely cook anything that actually came from a recipe. So, I really had to work on that one. Number one, have a kid be the 'taster'. Seriously. Especially if it's really for them anyway. They can take turns. They loved it when they thought I was calling them to do a chore and it turned out to be "taste this soup!" I also learned when some of my extended family went on a low-sodium diet that it really *is* ok to prepare food with no seasoning at all and to let people season their own serving at the table.

Next, sink full of soapy water. The knife, the spoon, whatever... if it had food on it, in it went. No desire to taste stuff off it once it was sudsy. Same thing for hands.. developing the habit of always washing food off them while I was cooking, no finger-licking.

One I tried for a while (didn't need to do it long) was to put a plate next to where I was working. Anytime I caught myself about to pop a pinch of grated cheese or a nibble of whatever into my mouth, it had to go on the plate instead. The point was, by the time I was done cooking I had a visual of how much I would have eaten before the meal even started.

A similar one I used for situations like dinner parties, where I was just too nervous to hand the tasting off to a kid: The food to taste did NOT come right out of the pot- I moved a small bit into a tiny measuring cup and used a baby spoon. Any left in the measuring cup was to be rinsed out to get the cup ready for a second check if necessary.

Food on a cutting board always looks abandoned and eatable, so I started cutting smaller pieces at a time and clearing the board immediately into a serving dish( a covered one is even better).

Quantity control: If what I was making for the kids was something I knew I was not planning to eat, I started making so little of it, that if I had eaten any, one of the kids would have obviously gone short. If you only bake a third of a recipe of cookies, the kids are going to notice if there aren't enough to go around!

Even for more meal-like fare, if I was not planning to eat it, I would not make enough for me. I would go light on the quantity and assume that the kids could fill in the corners some other way, if they were still hungry after that meal item was all eaten by them.

Now, this was a major behavior modification, because I have always made enough for "seconds and leftovers and angels unawares". Later on I made larger quantities again, but put all the excess away in the fridge or freezer and planned for it to serve us for an entire meal some other time, so that, again, if I ate it, we would be short on food! That was pretty motivating for keeping my hands off it.

Finally, just measuring how well you're doing with the behavior change is so valuable. NoS is pretty cut and dried: a red X through the calendar date if you take a taste! A better one is just to keep a count of any meal preps you got through without nibbling, and observe your progress over time.

bearing

Hannah: "One I tried for a while (didn't need to do it long) was to put a plate next to where I was working. Anytime I caught myself about to pop a pinch of grated cheese or a nibble of whatever into my mouth, it had to go on the plate instead. The point was, by the time I was done cooking I had a visual of how much I would have eaten before the meal even started."

Oh, that's brilliant! I don't remember you ever telling me about that one.

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