How to be Strong Enough to Stop Mid-bite

There’s nothing I like better than a chocolate chip cookie. The kind where the warm chocolate splashes between the golden morsels and the whole room is filled with the fragrance of vanilla and brown sugar. If I let myself, I could easily eat 10 in one sitting, especially if they are just out of the oven. I love them so much. One way I deal with this is to not have cookies in the house.

On a daily basis, we are faced with eating food and that decision whether that next bite will make us too full. Mostly, we don’t think about it until after when we regret the awful bloated feeling of overeating. So how can you stop when you’ve had just enough, mid-bite even? 

Not too long ago we were at a dinner party that was a fundraiser for our son’s school. I struggle at events like that because so often there is a lot of food and I can’t eat it all. It was a 3-course meal, and the portions were already set. The bottom line for me is that I really liked the food and I didn’t want to leave lots on the plate. I didn’t want the food to be wasted. So I ate and pushed myself to take still another bite. I remember thinking as I took one more bite, “My stomach feels so tight. I’m not enjoying this anymore.” I looked at my plate, and there was still more than a quarter left. Usually, in a restaurant, I’ll ask for a doggie bag. But you can’t do that at these kinds of events. I also could have pushed it on my husband. However, he’s trying to keep his weight down, and that wouldn’t have helped him at all.

In the end, I stopped eating and left the rest on the plate and tried not to think about how wasteful that was. However, I already passed the point of fullness.  It didn’t hit me till the middle of the night when I woke up with stomach pain. I know it was because I overate too late at night. That’s the main cause. I won’t deny that the kind of food probably had a role to play in my pain as well. I blew it though. I wasn’t strong enough to stop mid-bite. I stopped after the point of fullness. At least I stopped.

My friend Janine is a dietician, and she said the above in a Facebook post. I think those words are significant. If we listen to our bodies, we’d be a lot better off. How often do we go beyond what is good for us simply because we are not thinking?

This past weekend I made a conscious effort to be aware of what I ate during meal times. No big mind game or self-talk, I merely paid attention to what I was eating. My son was home for the weekend, and so I made a chicken roast for lunch. It was a big meal. The twist though was that because he brought a classmate home for the weekend we’d go out for a traditional Hungarian meal in the late evening. Normally, we don’t have two big meals in one day. I panicked a bit, I just HATE that feeling of being too full. 

But that’s the beauty of restaurants, at least the one we went to, you can ask for a doggy bag.   I got full when I’d only finished half the plate of food. As I ate my last bite, I noticed that I felt full and I stopped. I had no problems in the middle of the night. I slept like a baby. 

Being self-aware is crucial to not over-eating. Paying attention to when your body tells you it’s had enough enables you to stop mid-bite. Here below, I have a cheat sheet of actionable steps that help you stop mid-bite.  Tell me in the comments below if you have anything to add to this list. What works for you?

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