This year’s theme for National Nutrition Month is “Savor the Flavor of Eating Right”. It encourages mindful eating which is something I enjoy talking to my patients about and helping them discover what that means for them. Mindful eating is a large topic and cannot be covered in this WOW tip, but I would like to focus on one aspect of mindful eating and that is this need to clean our plates.
For most of us this “rule” was ingrained into us as a child. You might have been scolded for “wasting food” and that leaving food on your plate was not fair to starving children in the world. This rule is one of the toughest habits to overcome when trying to eat right and lose weight now that we are older.
There are two reasons to eat:
1. To fuel your body.
- To appreciate flavors.
When fueling your car, you would not keep pumping after the tank is full, spilling the fuel on the ground. That would be wasting gas! So why would you do that with your body? A new way to look at that old “rule” of cleaning your plate is that every time you eat food your body doesn’t need, you are wasting it! So now you have a choice. You can get rid of leftover food by throwing it away or by eating it. Either way, it’s wasted.
How I encourage my patients to stop cleaning their plates is to have them leave a bite or two on their plate and then throw it away or leave it for another meal. This trains your mind and your stomach to gradually need less and become mindful of how much you are eating and need.
~ Melissa Merrick