It takes 20 minutes before your brain can tell you that you are full and that you need to stop eating. This is a big problem now because many families do not take their time at meals and end up overeating, a factor that is contributing to the obesity epidemic. Listed below are some tips on how you can get your family to slow down and not over eat, I know they worked for my family, so hopefully they can work for yours!
Slow it down:
- Talk as a family during meal time, it slows down the eating time.
- Designate a specific period of time for dinner (say 5:30pm till 6:00pm) and let your children know that you will sit together and talk and eat for this entire time. This will make them realize that dinner is not a race, and helps them eat slower.
- Teach your children that it is healthy for the body to eat slower so that your brain has time to know when you are really full. Kids are smart and learn fast.
Tips for smaller portions:
- Place smaller serving utensils on the platters. Instead of a large serving spoon, how about a spoon that is larger than a tablespoon.
- Ask kids to put only one serving on their plate to start, if they are still hungry afterwards, they can add more to their plate.
- Cut up meat (you can usually ask the butcher to do this for no extra charge) into 4 ounce servings.
- Place larger serving spoons for the vegetables and fruits.
Hi Andrea,
ReplyDeleteThese are all great tips! I can remember as a child my mother telling me to "only take what I could eat". If I was still hungry when I had finished my plate I could have more but the idea was not to overeat or waste anything. I think another point worth mentioning is turning off the TV during suppertime. I believe in doing so we become more conscious of how much we're eating... and it's nice to talk to family during dinnertime!
Lindsay