Day 19 of 30: Mindful Serving

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #71CCD5;”] A[/dropcap]s a food lover, one of my biggest problems has always been portion sizes.

Stopping when I’ve had enough.

Especially when it’s really delicious.

For a long time I did work around Mindful Eating as we spoke about on Day 13.

While that did make a difference.

It wasn’t foolproof.

Then I came up with the idea to apply mindfulness to my serving sizes.

Excited to share this concept with you today!

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN TODAY:

• What Mindful Serving Is
• How Mindful Serving Can Help You
• 5 Different Methods for Serving Mindfully
• Applying Personal Rules to Mindful Serving

What Is Mindful Serving?

Mindful Serving is the concept of applying mindfulness to the amount of food you put on your plate.

It allows you to be intentional about your portion sizes.

The idea is you pay attention in the beginning.

So you can relax during the meal and just eat everything on your plate. Unless you really don’t want to!

How Mindful Serving Can Help You

Mindful serving is an easy way to control your portion sizes.

And avoid overeating.

It works because you apply a small amount of discipline up front. Then you just use the natural pause that comes from finishing all the food on your plate as the signal to stop.

If you’re like me and grew up in a house where you had to finish everything on your plate, Mindful Serving can actually be much easier and more effective than Mindful Eating.

Although I recommend (and use) both strategies.

Mindful Serving is also great because you aren’t generating any waste.

5 Different Methods for Serving Mindfully

1. Weighing / Measuring Everything
I think weighing and logging everything you eat for the rest of your life can be counter-productive for most people.

And takes the joy out of eating.

However it is a great way to get a clear picture of exactly how much you are eating.

If the thought freaks you out, no need to try this.

But if you are able to approach it from a place of curiosity, then I think it’s helpful to weigh everything for a few days every now and then.

Use it as a check-in.

Rather than tallying up calories, I like to just keep track of the amount of protein, fat and veggies I’m eating.

Here’s what I aim for at Lunch:
100g (3.5oz) PROTEIN
+ 200g (7oz) VEGGIES
+ 2-3 Tablespoons FAT / SAUCE

And Dinner:
100g-150g (3.5-5oz) PROTEIN
+ 400g (14oz) VEGGIES
+ 3-4 Tablespoons FAT / SAUCE

This is just a general target and not something I’m too rigid about.

Some days I’ll have more veggies at lunch or I won’t make my veggie quota for dinner.

If you eat grains or legumes, include them in your veggie quantity.

Or if you’re vegetarian, double the protein quantity and count legumes as your protein. And reduce the veggie quantity accordingly.

2. Weighing / Measuring Some Things
A more simple approach is to just weigh and measure your protein and fat and leave just eat as many veggies as you want.

The only downside to this is you probably won’t eat as many veggies.

3. Plate Percentages
This is what I use on a daily basis. I look for 1/4 of my plate (or slightly more) to be protein and sauce / fat. And then the remaining 3/4 to be delicious vegetables!

This is a bit tricky to estimate if you’re having a soup or more blended meal like cabbage lasagna. On those days I don’t stress about it. And just trust my judgement.

4. Using Your Hand to Estimate (see image below)
An idea I got from the book ‘Finally Slim, Finally Full’ by Lisa R. Young. Use your hand to help estimate quantities.

Especially helpful in restaurants or at other people’s houses where you don’t want to bust out your kitchen scales.

From ‘Finally Slim, Finally Full’ by Lisa R. Young

5. Eyeballing It
The easiest approach and a great second step to aim for after you have trained yourself by weighing for a few days.

It can be deceptive though.

Tomorrow when we talk about MindLESS Eating, I’ll give you some tools to make sure your eyeballs don’t play tricks on you 😉

Applying Personal Rules to Mindful Serving

Remember our Personal Rules from Day 14?

I find having a few rules around serving helps me stay mindful.

Here are some that work for me.

Just a starting place to get you thinking about your own 🙂

1. I serve up before I start eating
Unless I’m at a restaurant where this is impossible. I always serve everything I want to eat onto my plate before I start. This way I can clearly see everything I’m planning on enjoying for the meal. A much better way to be mindful of quantities than continually refilling my plate.

2. I don’t take seconds (apart from salad or veggies)
Of course there are times when I’m still hungry. Or I decide it’s worth it to have extras. But this is the exception rather than the rule.

3. I only eat at the table
Not standing in the kitchen. Or walking along the street! Although to be fair this is an aspirational ‘rule’ at this stage. Still working on my kitchen snacking – although it is improving.

4. I don’t take food from my children’s plates
Even if they are ‘wasting’ perfectly good food. I either give their scraps to the chooks or keep them for another meal in my random bites jar.

SUMMARY:

Here’s what we’ve covered:

• Mindful Serving is paying attention to how much food you put on your plate.
• Mindful Serving helps control portion sizes so you avoid over eating.
• The 5 Different Methods for Serving Mindfully
• Some examples of Personal Rules that can help with Mindful Serving.

ACTIVITY

Think about your current portions. If you’re happy with how things are, no homework for you!

But if you would like to do some work around this schedule a few days where you weigh everything you eat.

If you like it can be fun to plug it into an app like Cronometer. But only if you want to 🙂

Then once you’ve completed a few days, think about switching to one of the more relaxed approaches for longer term Mindful Serving.

Keep it simple (and fun) in the kitchen!

With love,
Jules x

ps. How do you feel about portion sizes? Share your thoughts in the comments below.