Lunch Interrupted!

Have you ever started to eat your lunch, only to be interrupted by an important call, your kid needing help, or an email that just can’t wait? Only 5 times a day, right?! Here’s what I’ve discovered from those moments…When I walk away and return later, I am no longer hungry. It seems that I am serving myself at least twice as much food as I need to feel satisfied. Yikes! Sounds like a recipe for weight gain.

There’s a lot of research out there that says our portions sizes are growing, along with our waistlines. What we now consider an individual restaurant portion of pasta might have previously been enough for a couple, or maybe even a family of four! The question for those of us managing our weight is, how do I know when I’ve had enough?

Enter Lunch Interrupted! Let’s try an experiment. Serve yourself the usual portion of a food that you typically eat for breakfast or lunch. Now divide your lunch in half, scooting half of it to one side of your plate, or even putting 1/2 of it into a separate bowl. Once you get through the first half of your usual portion, interrupt yourself. Get out of the room and go do something else for 20 – 30 minutes. Take a walk, answer some emails, even flip through Twitter or Instagram, if you’d like. Be sure you set a timer so you can complete your experiment.

After about half an hour, return to your food. Are you still hungry? Probably not! Sure, had you been sitting there all along, you might have nibbled past your body’s cue that you’ve had enough food. Most likely you would have eaten everything on your plate. That’s human nature, not a personality flaw.

So what’s the learning from this? For me, it was to start serving my morning plain greek yogurt, with fruit and nuts, in a jelly jar. That’s all I need. The full sized cereal bowl was unnecessary. For lunch, it means I only have one slice of whole grain bread with 1/2 of an avocado, rather than the two open faced sandwiches I used to have. Do I get hungry between lunch and dinner? Yep. Nothing that an apple won’t cure.

So give it a try and enjoy your Lunch Interrupted!

Special shout out to my awesome client, TL, for suggesting the title of today’s blog post!

Thanks for reading and I wish you the best of health!