Three Basic Choices to Weight Control

This is kind of a response to Julia's recent posting and a question that was posted.

If you have a set caloric range.

You have three basic choices:

- Quantity

- Content

- Frequency

Can they be mixed up? Sure, but you can't eat a bigger quantity of rich content more often.

I choose, Like Julia to keep my quantity small with a more varied food selection and food preparation to meet a caloric range.

By keeping the quantity small, there are not many foods that are off the list.

It allows me to eat breaded fried foods on occasion or cook with oils and even butter and use full on mayo.

*** Not telling anyone to eat this way or asking anyone to believe this...... people twist things up very easily here.

frisco

I actually eat like that- my quantities are really small as I have great restriction yet and I would truly rather eat that way.  I generally don't eat carbs (bread, pasta and rice) but will certainly eat small amount s on occasion.  I will eat any fruits and vegetables. Unfortunatley, if there are chocolate chip cookies in range it is not a pretty sight.  I try to keep away from them - at times, I lose.

I don't do variety. I'm very happy eating a pretty narrow range of foods.

As far as frequency and quantity, I play it by ear, since I do stick to a calorie limit. On days where I can't eat frequently, I will have somewhat larger meals. On slower days and I can eat more often, I eat smaller meals with snacks in between.

I think maintaining flexibility is important, as long as the larger goal is maintained.

I think eating clean and homemade also enter into the equation. 

Anne

Without a doubt....

frisco

I am going with high quality and limited quantity.  I find I do better eating 3x a day with maybe 1 snack in the late afternoon especially if I am not going to be eating dinner until late. I try to eat what my body needs and not what my head sometimes wants. I always feel better when I live this. 

I am going with high quality and limited quantity.  I find I do better eating 3x a day with maybe 1 snack in the late afternoon especially if I am not going to be eating dinner until late. I try to eat what my body needs and not what my head sometimes wants. I always feel better when I live this. 

This has been my findings also...... eat every 2 hours.... get hunger every two hours.

Extended feeding times works much better for me also.

frisco

It's a triangle. If one side gets longer, another side has to get smaller or it's not a triangle any more.

So if calories go up, quantity had to go down.

In addition to play with the sides of the triangle, I also have a mental scale I call the "worth it" scale. It's based on Barney Stimpson's Date It scale from the TV show How I Met Your Mother. Barney's Theory is that women have a crazy factor and a hotness factor and that the crazier they are, the hotter they have to be in order for dating them to be worth it. Food is the same. Only with food it's nutritional value and taste (i.e., how "hot" the food is) vs. how many calories it has (how "crazy" it is). The more calories a food has, the higher it has to score in the nutritional value/taste score in order to be worth it.

Which is why I rarely eat white bread or white rice any more. It's too bland and has little nutritional value to make up for the calories. But I do eat chocolate mousse. Because it's high calories are totally worth it (to me) because it tastes like heaven.

I'm with MacMadame....

Not necessarily with the specific food choices (although it sounds good)...if I want to try a few bites of that strawberry cake that I think is delicious then I will account for that in my caloric intake and make adjustments as necessary to stay within a certain range.  Also, there are certain selections that I do NOT even dare take a bite of as that will be the beginning of the end...so, I make 'cleaner' versions of these things (such as pizza).  :)