Shrink Yourself: Change your Plate Size

March 27th, 2009 | by Lynn | Tags: Cooking, emotional, Emotional Health, Home, Mindless Eating, plate size, satisfy your hunger, Shopping

Here is the latest Newsletter tip from “Shrink Yourself”.

Financial, Relationship, Family Stress can cause overeating. Shrink Yourself can help you today.

Tip of the Week: Plate Size Can Affect Your Weight

Have you noticed that the plates in restaurants are getting bigger and bigger? Well, the size of your plate can actually affect your weight. See how you can stop letting that happen.

I know for a fact that plates are getting bigger because my apartment was built in the 1950’s and my modern plates (or shall we call them platters) don’t fit in the kitchen cabinets. It would be simple to logically deduce that it takes more food to make one of those beautiful dishes look full.

Brian Wansink, the director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, and the author of Mindless Eating says that this increase in plate size has contributed to how much more food we’re eating. For many emotional eaters,a big part of their struggle with food comes from feeling cheated or denied food in some way as a child. This feeling of missing out makes us look for the biggest cookie on the plate.

For others, there is an unavoidable feeling of obligation to finish everything on your plate, and if your plate is really big that means consuming more.

In other words, when it comes to food, for many of us, size matters. Experiment with eating out of smaller plates and bowls and see what happens. Your mind just might be tricked into believing that a full small plate is more satisfying than a sparsely filled big plate - even if it is the same amount of food.