On eating while small of stature.

Jenny commented on my last post:

Not to complain too bitterly about being short, but my normal, weight-maintenance meals are already small. If I eat to lose, we are talking child-sized portions which is a drag without significant motivation.

Isn't it a drag, though? I took a minute to write out a 1500-calorie menu that sort of mimics the pattern that is most comfortable for me (fairly light but egg-based breakfast, medium-sized lunch, fairly hearty dinner). This is what I came up with:

A 300-ish calorie Breakfast

• 2 soft-boiled eggs
• 1 slice pumpernickel toast with a pat of butter and optional smear of marmalade (alternatively, scramble the eggs in the butter and leave it off the toast)
• 6 ounce mini can of V-8

A 500-ish calorie Lunch

• A couple of cups of chopped mixed salad greens and raw vegetables
• 5-ounce can of oil-packed tuna
• Half a cup of cooked chickpeas
• Balsamic vinegar to taste (just rely on the tuna for oil)
• 1/4 cup fresh grated parmesan

 

A 700-ish calorie Dinner

 

• 1 roasted, spiced chicken thigh, with skin
• 1/2 cup raita (half yogurt, half chopped vegetables)
• 3/4 cup grated carrot salad with spices and lemon
• Steamed green vegetables -- say, 10 spears asparagus
• 1 cup grain pilaf
• *Allowing for about 1.5 tablespoon of added oil total from the chicken, salad, and pilaf.

+ + +

 

All that is fairly hearty-looking because of lots of vegetables and because it was homemade to my tastes. Nevertheless, it is quite possible to have a depressingly small-looking plate. If you want to stick to 500 calories or so for lunch at your typical sandwich place, you get the sandwich, generally, and nothing else. You might be able to manage a half-sandwich and a cup of soup, depending on the soup. Coleslaw will set you back farther than you think. Fries are most likely right out.

For instance, let me grab some lunch data from a casual chain restaurant that has it online, Chili's. Lunch off the menu that would suit someone my size would be:

• On average, about half a burger or half a burrito. No sides.
• Shrimp fajitas will work and probably taste great, and I would get to eat all the sizzling innards -- but only one tortilla. (Ordering the shrimp option is a good trick for right-sizing meals, incidentally. They never give you much, and the cost will help you appreciate it.)
• Nachos are one of my favorite things, but I have to split them with two friends. And I am done with lunch already!
• A "Fresh Mex" bowl sounds like the sort of thing that I should be able to eat, and looks tasty, but I only get half.
• Kids' meals? Okay, this strategy can work. If I happen to be in the mood to eat a circular burger, the teeny pair of sliders come in under the bar, at least if I stick with fruit on the side. Actually most of the kids' meals would work that way, except the pizzas. This is how I could also get a piece of plain grilled chicken that gives me room for fries and fruit.
• Main-dish salads? I only get part of them. Less than half the buffalo chicken salad, about three-quarters of the Caribbean salad with grilled chicken, a third of the "quesadilla explosion salad." Oh, by the way, that is without any dressing. Fortunately salsa makes an excellent dressing substitute.
• Bowl of soup? Those work. A lone bowl of chicken enchilada soup is just about right.
• Tacos? There are three in an order, and for most varieties, two of them makes your meal.
• Lunch combos! They are supposed to be smaller lunch portions. With salad and the included fries, will any work? The short answer is "No." You could give away your fries... no, wait, still too big. How about if you only eat half the lunch combo? Now we are getting somewhere, as most of these are eligible if you only eat half of it (half a salad, half a portion of fries, half a chicken burrito or whatever).
• What about the "lighter choices?" If I am hellbent on cleaning my plate, I could choose some of these (though not all). They don't look bad, actually. There's a steak, for example, or various grilled chicken meals with pico de gallo and salad or broccoli, even a little rice.

In sum, a not-quite-five-foot-tall woman like me -- fairly physically active -- gets to eat approximately half of the average restaurant meal, without fries, unless she doesn't mind sticking with a simple bowl of soup.

And that is without saving any room for a dessert -- or rather, for a couple of bites of someone else's dessert.

This gets old really fast -- unless you can really internalize the notion that restaurants portion for big, hungry males, and small women are second-class citizens.

...Oh, wait, it still gets old really fast.

Yes, yes, I could think of it as free leftovers that I get to take home in a box. I used to be in the habit of taking an insulated lunch bag with me when I went out for the day, and could probably be induced to do it again. Still -- the only way to avoid feeling like you are stuck with a child's portion (or convincing yourself to overdo it) is to deeply internalize what "right-sized" food looks like. This is possible, I have found, but it takes a lot of practice -- meaning, for me, a lot of deliberately ordered, deliberately half-eaten meals, to disconnect my notion that cleaning my plate is the norm.

 

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Comments

[Erin]

I'm 5-9. Every time I look at a BMI or calorie chart I'm just befuddled at how someone without my height can do it?!? I think you are well justified to complain all you like.

[bearing]

If I was 5'9'' with the same BMI as I have now, I could eat 350 more calories per day to stay the same.

19 percent more. MAN.

[Jenny]

I am fairly motivated by the buy one meal, get one free aspect of eating at restaurants because I am also trying to justify to myself the economics of being at the restaurant to begin with.

I do fall into the restaurant plate-cleaning habit when I have an exclusively nursing baby, which is glorious while it lasts and bites me in the rear when it's over.

Something else I do when I eat out and want to eat more of the restaurant food than is wise is that I will reduce another meal to a basic snack. If I go out for lunch, I might have cheese and crackers for supper or skip it all together.

Also I think I might need some eggs on pumpernickel toast soon.

[Sarah]

I find that I can and in fact really need to eat quite a lot more while lactating (which I have been doing for six continuous years at this point). Do others not find this?

[Jenny]

I can eat like a hoss and lose weight until baby reaches critical mass on the solid food. Whenever that change is triggered, my metabolism drops like a rock.

[bearing]

Haha, do you know, I completely forgot to account for lactating. Which probably does mean I can eat more, even though baby is eating solids now and is 2 years old. But I think it is probably balanced out by my tendency to underestimate my portion sizes.

[Erin]

Well, I might be tall, but I did not lose or maintain weight while I was lactating! I continuously gained while breastfeeding and since stopping have been slowly losing. It was probably because I started pregnancy about 30lbs overweight and lost weight the entire time I was pregnant. When food suddenly tasted good again I overcompensated.

[Sarah]

My mother in law was overweight before pregnancy, lost weight during pregnancy (without any bad complications like hyperemesis or anything), and gained significant weight while nursing, twice. She's around 5'8" and has been overweight since middle childhood. Makes me wonder if there is a metabolic pattern going on.

[Jenny]

I often gain a LOT with my pregnancies--starting with 85 pounds when I had twins. I'm 5'4". I don't have trouble losing the weight afterwards (except the last 10 pounds...) though I do have to make an effort. Nursing doesn't make the weight "melt off" the way some claim (though when I was nursing twins, I did lose that weight faster... although I was also 29 instead of 38!!)

Anyway, yeah. Nursing isn't magical for me--my "normal" is maintaining weight, whatever that weight is: overweight or right on target. I'm thankful that I don't gain too easily ('cept when I'm pregnant, obviously!), but choosing to be hungry all the time in order to lose the weight is... tiresome.

[Erin]

Interesting data point about your mother-in-law Sarah, I was never diagnosed with hyperemesis either. My first trimester I had horrible nausea, but even after that improved I never really got a strong appetite back until post partum. It does make one wonder about the pattern. We are currently TTC, it will be interesting to see if a second pregnancy follows the same trend.

[Christy P.]

In my years of observation at LLL meetings, many women report that they lost weight relatively quickly at first postpartum but that their bodies seemed to hang on to the last 5-10 pounds until baby was eating a fair bit of solid food. It's like their bodies are keeping an extra store for the nursling. That was my experience the first time, but the 2nd (tandem nursing infant and a 3 yo) I couldn't eat enough. When I returned to work postpartum a colleague (pediatrician!) suggested that I should get a mammogram because I had lost weight so fast. She didn't believe that nursing could suck up so many calories. YMMV of course, and I think it is great to share stories of diverse experience to honor the notion of biological distributions.