Food has always been the centre of all our social interactions. As children, our favourite part of school was sharing the lunchbox with friends during lunch recess, or at home, it was to ‘wait for your Dad for dinner’. Shared lunch boxes and family dinners bring back so many loving memories. Sharing food comes most naturally to us and is a way of bonding with friends, family, neighbours and loved ones.
Alright, you get our point – sharing food helps us bond and gives us pleasure! That’s our way of ‘finding happiness!’ But do you know that sharing food brings health benefits that go beyond social bonding?
How Sharing Earns You More Than Those Goodie Points?
Doesn’t it almost always happen that while on a weight loss regime, we start craving for a blueberry cheesecake or just a slice of pizza, especially on the weekends (because we all want to reward ourselves for being good all week long)? We convince ourselves that it will be just half of it or only a bite or two. And what happens? We end up eating the whole thing.
Even at restaurants, most of us eat a lot more than our usual daily meals. We tend to overeat, serve ourselves large portions, go for second helpings even when we are full and ignore body signals that tell us our stomach is full. Now remember, a burp during a dinner date or a fart while driving your date home has breakup written all over it.
Sharing food with others is especially important when you crave for something after your main meals. For instance, the post-lunch hunger pangs aka the 4 PM hunger. You order a pizza or a sandwich and try to finish it on your own when all you needed was just a slice of the pizza or half a sandwich. At times like these find a hungry foodie at work and share your pizza. Gives you a chance to bond and keeps those calories away from your hips 😉
- Research suggests that in the last decade, the portion sizes served in most American restaurants have more than doubled. This, essentially, means we are eating much more than we need. When at a restaurant, order one item and share it with your friends. If you are eating out alone, eat half and get the rest of it packed for later.
Here, we’d like to tell you about one of our clients – a girl who liked to eat. Food was her passion. People close to her always visualized her eating something or the other- chocolates, pizza, chaats, and more. No surprise that she was overweight and people would usually remark upon her eating habits. And this is a common problem with most of our clients. Their main meals are balanced but they end up eating too much of these salty, sugary snacks in between meals.
Now remember, bon happetee helps foodies eat what they love. We gave her one little advice and voila six months later she had lost over 10 kgs and now everyone looks at her still eating those chocolates, chaats, pizzas and more and wonder how she stays so fit. We advised her to start sharing – after all who will say no to a piece of sev-puri or a slice of pizza. She is the first to order a dessert after lunch, eats a bite or two and passes the plate along and it always comes back empty. For her 5 PM craving, she will just go ahead make herself a grilled cheese have a piece and guess what – A grilled cheese lying around is bound to be devoured.
But remember to have your own piece first before you start sharing, we are foodies after all 😉
If you are a binge eater and tend to overeat in your main meals, just apply the same rules. Offer food to everyone else on your table. When eating in a group, make ordering food a joint activity. More often than not with a delicious extensive menu, we tend to in order as we want to taste more than few things and then end up overeating. So, next time when you are confused between 2 dishes try convincing your friend to order one of them 😉
If you want to understand this technically then here it is
Splitting your meals into mini-meals consumed every 2 – 2.5 hours during the day:
- Gives your body the fuel it needs for optimal energy, without any surpluses that can be stored as fat.
- Stabilizes fatty acids in the blood.
- Stabilizes blood sugar levels.
- Keeps you focused by preventing post-meal sluggishness (that often happens after a large meal).
Here is Bonus Benefit – Sharing food with your partner can also spice up your sex life. Cook a nice home made breakfast and take it to bed. Believe us, it will lead to more than breakfast in bed 😉 … Bite into the same piece of fruit or chocolate and see where it goes. If you have more creative ideas do share them with us here
So now, what about the loners? Or the food lovers like Joey from FRIENDS, who doesn’t share food? What do you do if you do not have anyone around when you are eating? Simply share it with yourself. When eating out, take away half of the portion, and when eating at home, follow these:
- Split your 3 large meals into 6 smaller ones.
- Eat in smaller plates, that way you will serve yourself a smaller helping.
- Wait 5 minutes before getting a second helping. If you are still hungry after 5 minutes, go for it!
- Don’t cook in bulk, cook only as much as is required.If you are a budding chef and go by the cookbook and end up cooking more than necessary, put the extra portions into a container and store it for the next day. Impress your office friends with your new culinary skills.
- If you don’t like to waste food, start with smaller portions. If you are full, respect your stomach and throw away the extra food on your plate. Trust us, dumping it into your stomach won’t do any good for the millions of kids starving across the globe. If you feel for poor and starving kids, there are many other ways of helping out – research them.Listen to your stomach scream, “I’m not a dustbin!”
- Listen to your body signals for knowing when you are full. Here is how to avoid overeating – ‘You decide what to eat, but let your body tell you HOW MUCH!’
Eating smaller portions of nutrient-rich food can become a lasting healthy lifestyle habit and help you finally win the weight loss battle. Over and above everything else, it helps you keep your love of food and makes every day a cheat day.
And to make all of this easier we have an app that helps you manage your portion sizes, pair the right foods and gives real-time feedback for your meals. From weight loss to lifestyle changes to mindful eating to just enjoying food without guilt. This app has it all. DOWNLOAD HERE