The best exercise you can ever do is to push yourself away from the table.
That old saying may once have been true, but these days many people do not eat at the table—or at least, not all the time. Breakfast might be quick mouthfuls taken while you’re rushing around doing other things or while you’re sitting in the train on the way to work, a snack might be consumed on the go or while working on the computer, eating in the car might be the norm and watching TV from the couch might signal munchie time. You can eat standing, sitting or even lying down.
The problem with the lack of ritual is that every moment of the day becomes possible food time. In previous eras, there were set times for meals, and maybe morning/afternoon tea. People simply didn’t eat outside those times.
Habit is a powerful friend or a formidable foe. Even if we are not loathe to change our ways when it comes to the food we eat, we stil have to overcome the strength and tyranny of habit. Still, it can be done. Perhaps slowly, perhaps all at once. Some people find success in clearing the decks and starting new with a regime that they put a huge amount of energy into at the start to create new habits. Some like to change more gradually. First get breakfast right, then move on to the mid-morning snack (if eating mid-morning at all), then perhaps weeks later, look at lunch.
The all-at-once way can be harder … and easier. Harder because it’s a big change which you have to manage successfully and put a huge amount of effort into initially. Easier because you don’t have the slow torture of trying to change inch by inch only to find your willpower has become won’tpower while you were concentrating on something else. So you might have more success with the big change. Make the decision, put your heart into it, and give it everything you’ve got. Make some rules for yourself and stick to them.
One of the reasons that giving up the all-day breakfast for proper mealtimes works is that your brain automatically trains itself not to think about food so much. If you’re not going to eat again until lunch time, what’s the use of even contemplating it until then? Food becomes linked to certain times of the day and you can forget about it outside those periods. If you’ve been a grazer, food has been available through many moments during your day. By removing that, you might find that you have a great deal more time and energy for other tasks.
You can become more mindful of what you are consuming when you have set times and a set place to eat. Clear away the distractions and concentrate only on your meal. Enjoy the ritual of meal times. Food is vital to your continued existence, so give it the importance and the thought that it deserves. Doing this creates natural iimitations on what you eat and allows you to truly see what and how much you are eating.
So don’t just count calories. Make other things count as well. Choose set times and places for consuming proper meals and see how you can use the advantages of limits in your quest for good health.