How Joe Yonan of the Washington Post got rid of pounds, cravings, and reflexive eating

For the month of January (in the spirit of new year’s resolutions) five Washington Post staff members each took on a different diet to change their eating habits, chronicling their results in 5 Diets, a single resolution to eat better in the new year: Which Will Work.

Washington Post Food takes on Buddha's Diet and gets rid of pounds and cravings

Joe Yonan, the Food and Dining Editor selected our very own Buddha’s Diet, what he called a “deceptively little book with a catchy title” for his journey.  He found (as we suspected he would) that Buddha’s Diet not only brought him weight loss, but wisdom as well. Though the 30-day experiment is over, Joe’s writes “I’m not changing a thing.” Joe has new habits and new discoveries as a result.

Joe’s Eating Discoveries:

  • It’s now second nature to finish dinner and stop eating for the day (and feel fine about it).
  • After a month on Buddha’s Diet, the reflexive cravings that happened after dinner are gone
  • Slowing down to eat comes more naturally. It takes 20 minutes (say studies) for the brain to register fullness. The slow down means Joe reduces the risk of overeating.
  • Mornings are less hectic. Instead of rushing to eat, he now as a few moments of stillness, tea drinking and reading.
  • Despite outside stressors (an IRS audit for one, to say nothing of current events) he managed to maintain his weight loss from previous weeks and even drop a bit more
  • And perhaps more importantly, he’s going to stay on it. When was the last time you heard someone say that about a diet?

For us, the best part of hearing about Joe’s success is not losing weight, but the other things he’s lost – the cravings, the rush to eat, the mindless stress eating. Joe writes “I was looking for a radical shift in perspective, a way to truly break some habits that weren’t doing me (or my waistline) any favors.” It sounds like he’s found it.

 

 

Obesity and your plate: How the size of your dinner plate is making you fat

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It’s not news that America has been getting fatter over time.

There are all kinds of reasons for the rise in obesity, but one of them is portion size and the calorie count of the average meal.

Since the 1960s, dinner plate sizes have gotten larger in diameter, and since 1960, we’ve seen a huge rise in the percentage of obese Americans. If you inherited your grandmother’s china, you might have noticed the plates are much smaller than today’s. In 1960, the average dinner plate was 8 1/2 inches. Today, it’s closer to a foot wide in diameter. Why does that matter? Well, because we eat more when there is more to eat. A study out of Cornell revealed that people serve themselves in proportion to the plate size they have been given. In other words: if you’ve got a big plate, you’ll put more food on it.

dinner plate sizes and obesity

We may not know definitively that grandma’s china caused her to eat less, but it’s not hard to see there may be a link between obesity and plate size.

So how can you use this to your advantage if you’d like to lose weight? Easy. Serve yourself dinner on a smaller plate.

Quite simply, choosing a large plate means you will instinctively fill it with more than you need.  With a smaller plate, you’ll naturally fill it with less. If you’re still hungry when you’ve cleared your smaller plate, by all means eat more. But more than likely you’ll find that the small plate gives you a moment to pause (it takes 20 minutes for the fullness signal to reach the brain) to decide if you are still hungry. The large plate doesn’t allow as much time for this to happen, because the visual cue of the food left on the plate makes us think we need to finish it. That’s for lots of reasons – we may have strong feelings about wasting food, we may not pause to slow down or (and this is something we are all prone to) we may eat simply because “it was in front of me.”

The One Pancake Button

More is not always better

More is not always better

Recently I took my kids to Tennessee, to visit Dollywood. Maybe a strange vacation choice for someone living in California, but I’m sort of a Dolly Parton fan – my most favorite movie is 9 to 5. Side note: if you haven’t been to Dollywood and you’ve got kids, you should. Imagine a more manageable Disneyland, nestled in lush greenery.

As I always do on vacation, I eat too much and I eat badly. That’s just vacation: some allowances need to be made, perhaps even more so in the land of biscuits. The volume of food at the hotel breakfast buffet was dazzling, and confusing. Trays of pastries and bagels and muffins featured slices of cheesecake. The fruit table included a large bowl of maraschino cherries. If something could be made sweeter, it was. If something could be fried, buttered and slathered, it was. And it was delicious.

What struck me though wasn’t the differences in food from California to Tennessee, but an interaction we had at Denny’s, on one of the mornings we couldn’t rouse ourselves for the free cheesecake at the hotel. My sister wanted a single pancake along with her oatmeal and fried egg. This item was on the menu, one pancake for $2.49. When she ordered it though, the waiter said helpfully: “Oh you don’t want that, you want the two pancakes. It’s cheaper. Two pancakes is just $2.00.” My sister nodded. After all, this made more sense: more for less. “I’ll take two then.” He wrote this down, laughing a little, “I’ve worked here three years and I’ve never hit the one pancake button on the register. Guess these guys aren’t mathematicians.”

On the surface this may seem the logical choice. Especially if you’re very hungry or want to split it with someone. But she wasn’t. She knew she wanted just one. This is how we are so often lured into buying more food than we want or need. The buy-one get-one free offers, the super-sized this, the mega pack that. It’s cheaper. It’s a better value. But is it? If you didn’t want it, how much value is gained when you eat that pancake you didn’t want? We talked about this as she ate her pancake. “I’ll just eat this one,” she said. As we talked though, she absentmindedly began picking at the second pancake. Realizing this, she stopped. “I don’t know why I’m eating this. I’m full. It’s just here.” There’s the problem. Though she
technically saved .49 cents and gained a pancake, she could have (for .49 cents) left that pancake back in the kitchen and felt better about breakfast.

A number of things happened during and after this making of this pancake choice: First, it seemed foolish to get less for more money, despite knowing we wanted less and might regret the extra pancake. Second, once the pancake was on the table absentminded eating came into play (it’s there, and suddenly we were eating it without thinking about whether we wanted it.) Third, the ingrained aversion many of us have to wasting food caused her to eat more than she wanted. We failed at every step. We ordered an item we didn’t want, we absentmindedly ate it, and then (faced with the remainder of the pancake) finished it off, thereby becoming the garbage can – something we talk about in Waist vs. Waste in Buddha’s Diet. Maybe if we were about to go on a long hike and wouldn’t eat until dinner, it might make some sense to eat that pancake. But we weren’t. And chances are, when you are presented choices like these, you aren’t either. You don’t have to order two when you want one. You don’t have to order an entrée when you only have room for an appetizer. You don’t have to eat the bread on the table set down before you even know what you want to eat.

When you’re out at a restaurant, think about what you want to eat, really give it some thought. Maybe ask how big the plate is if you’re not sure. Remember that if it’s in front of you, you’ll probably eat it. Remember that portion sizes these days are often borderline absurd. And when something seems like a good deal on a menu, remind yourself that what may be a good deal money-wise, may not be such a good deal for your health and your weight. Sometimes it’s okay to be the one asking for the one pancake button.

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