Oct
24
5 Things I learned At Lunch
Filed Under Eating Healthy, Healthy Habits, Lunch
Lunch today was at Sue’s Mongolian BBQ (A buffet where they cook your food on the spot). Here are a few things I noticed:
Eat slow - I’ve talked about this one before but today I really noticed it. Usually, when I go to Sue’s, I eat with chopsticks. Not being very good with them, I eat slowly and take small bites. It takes me about ten minutes to finish a bowl of food and by then I’m full. Today, I used a fork. I ate fast and I was still starved five minutes after I started, which was about when I finished my first bowl. So I ate another bowl. Lesson learned, eat slow, take smaller bites and enjoy your food.
Veggies make great filler - Mongolian BBQ places work likes this: You pick up an empty bowl and then you fill it with all sorts of raw ingredients. Hand it to the cook who prepares it on a large open grill and you’ve got food. The person in line in front of me filled most of their bowl with meat. I filled most of my bowl with veggies and a few noodles. We both got the same sauces. Our food tasted and same but his had at least three times as many calories as mine. Which brings me to my next lesson learned.
Sauces and spices are key - the guy in front of me failed at realizing a basic truth of cooking. It’s the spices and the sauce that give most dishes their flavor. His food tasted just like mine but he had a lot more calories for the volume of food he ate. Remember, eating veggies doesn’t have to mean eating bland tasteless food. If you think about most spices and sauces you like, you’ll note that they come from, that’s right, vegetables! So find a healthy food and season it to your liking. (No, that doesn’t mean drowning it in ranch sauce!)
Water = Filling goodness - My food came out a little (which actually means A LOT) spicy. So I was drinking a lot of water. That slowed me down even more plus it helped fill me up. Water is great because it’s healthy and it has calorie free volume. As such, it’s a must have part of every meal.
Post lunch walk is the best dessert - I usually take a walk after lunch. Today I drove around running some errands. Result? I was sleepy and bloated. My post lunch walk reenergizes me and helps me avoid the post lunch nap. It doesn’t have to be a 1 hour workout session, it just needs to be a 15 to 20 minute walk. And feeling too tired to take a walk is not an excuse, it’s the reason to get up off your ass and start walking.
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5 Responses to “5 Things I learned At Lunch”
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This is a great list! I can’t argue with any item on it.
I’m totally with you on spices. When I first started losing weight I would just nuke some frozen veggies and that was it. Now I sauté them in a little olive oil with a wide variety of spices and it dresses up the entire meal.
I agree: it’s a great list! I’m so keen on spices and sauces as well (well, not the heavy-gravy-bechamel-super-caloric sauces, that is). I can’t even remember now why I ever thought vegetables tasted bland. They’re actually delicious, and you can do *so* many things with them…
The walk is a good thing as well. I can’t always take one after lunch, but I take one after a series of 2-3 hours of classes, for instance, in order to reenergize myself, otherwise I can’t hold good and steady for the rest of the day. (In fact… I don’t like sitting on my butt that much anymore. It’s weird.)
I agree the post lunch walk is great, it really gets you energized and helps move your food along.
Eating slow is my moto, I rarely finish a meal. I’d rather leave it on the plate than on my gut.
My comment is in regard to how you filled your bowl. You may be surprised to find out that the person who had more/mainly meat may not have had that many more calories. Those Mongolian BBQ meats are generally paper thin and very lean.
I’m a veggie lover too, and always did as you did…and found myself hungry all the time..veggies have lots of micronutrients…but they lack protein and fat…both of which keep us fueled long after we finish eating…a bowl with veggies predominant, sauce in second spot and meat in third, is a bowl that while lower in calories is predominantly carbs which burn fast and leave one needing more fuel soon.
I discovered that increasing the meat and fat content of my meat/fat sparse diet (I had an 80% veg based diet) made a huge difference in my hunger levels and my weight loss…
I feel like one “crying in the wilderness” …we’ve been taught that fat is to be avoided. But the result I’ve had doing so is increased weight, elevated cholesterol, and constant carb cravings and hunger because of the elevated insulin levels that go along with a carbohydrate based diet.
If that is not your experience, great. You are on the right path. But so many I “meet” online are struggling constantly with hunger and they are without exception also limiting fat and meat in their diet.
I wish I’d understood sooner the physiology of eating…what happens when we eat and how our food is metabolized. I may not have had such a struggle loosing weight and keeping it off.
And just for the record, I am not talking about Atkins, or South Beach…but a balanced diet where one derives no more than 50% of his calories from carbs, a minimum of 30% from fat and the remainder, at least 20% from protein.
Hello Dinah,
Thank you very much for the great comment. I did want to clarify something. I’m not advocating a low fat diet. Like you, I believe in a balanced meal where we get some of our calories from fat, some from carbs and some from protein. In fact, I agree with your percentages.
My comment about the other person’s plate wasn’t due to a higher fat content, it was simply due to a higher calorie content. Yes, some of these BBQ places do have thinner slices of meat, but “thin” and “lean” are not the same thing. Thin means the size of the meat cut is small but the fat and thus the calorie content could be high. Lean means nothing about the size of the meat cut but does mean it’s lower in fat.
While I do agree that some fat is a great part of a healthy diet, I think most people consume too much of it (and too much refined carbs by the way). A lot of that extra fat comes from too much meat consumption.
Anyway, I think we agree in general. A balanced diet is best.
Gal