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A Lot Of People At The Dinner Table: You Might Eat 96% More

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Planning on eating with seven friends? You might eat 96% more! No joke. We tend to eat more and for a longer period of time when we’re with other people compared to when we eat alone.

Why?  Perhaps it’s because we mindlessly nibble while someone else talks. Or maybe it stems from the good manners learned in fifth grade about eating what’s put in front of you. Or perhaps we’re just having fun and enjoying great food. We do tend to stay at the table longer when we’re with others and the longer we stay at the table, the more we eat.

Losing Track

Friends and family can absolutely influence how much we eat. Sometimes we can get so involved in conversation that any monitoring of what pops into our mouths completely disappears.  Think about it — have you ever looked down at your plate and wondered where all the cookies went or how you managed to work your way through the mile high dish of pasta or the four pieces of pizza?  How many tastes did you take of everyone else’s meal and dessert?  Those tastes aren’t like invisible ink — the calories in them count, too.

Who Sets the Pace?

We tend to mimic our table companions. They eat fast, we eat fast.  They eat a lot, we eat a lot.  Ever wonder why some families or couples are either all overweight or all slim?  As Brian Wansink, PhD says in his book, Mindless Eating, “birds of a feather eat together.”

How Much More Do We Eat When We Eat With Others?

Wansink reports on a study that shows how strong the tendency is to increase how much we eat when we eat with others.

Compared to eating alone we average:

  • 35% more when eating with one other person
  • 75% more with four people at the table
  • 96% more with a group of seven or more

A Different Eating Pattern When We’re With Others

The pattern of eating more when we’re in larger groups is common in adults. One reason is something called “social facilitation,”  or the actions created by the stimuli that stem from the sight and sound of other people doing the same that that you’re doing. When you eat in groups social facilitation can help override the your brain’s normal signals of satiety.

Things To Think About

  • Who are eating with – and why?  If you just want to have a good time and don’t care about how much you eat, go ahead and eat with a big group.  The likelihood is that you won’t pay much attention to what or how much you eat.
  • If you want to be careful about what and how much you eat, think about eating lunch with your salad friends rather than the pepperoni pizza group.
  • You tend to adjust your eating pace to that of your companions.  Try sitting next to the slow eaters rather than the gobblers if you’re trying to control how much goes into your mouth.

Thinking About Chowing Down At A Barbecue This Weekend?

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Memorial Day Weekend – the “unofficial” start of summer weekends. Hometown parades with floats and kids in baseball uniforms.  Veterans handing out flags.  The lazy, hazy days of summer with lots of soda and popcorn and beer.  Also lots of barbecue and desserts – and lots of seemingly never ending caloric temptation — and bathing suits to get into!

Celebration and Remembrance

Just a bit of a reminder.  It’s wonderful to celebrate the unofficial beginning of summer.  But, there’s a reason for all of the parades and flags. In the states, Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who died in our nation’s service.  First observed on May 30th, 1868 when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery, in 1971 Congress extended it into a three-day holiday weekend.

Parades, Picnics, And Barbecues

Memorial Day is a day of national ceremonies and small town parades, but also of barbecues and picnics. For many of us Memorial Day also signals the start of a whole different set of thoughts:  how to avoid the glut of cheeseburgers and hot dogs; the mayonnaise laden potato and macaroni salad; the plates full of brownies and cookies; the dripping ice cream cones (sprinkles are mandatory); the freshly baked blueberry and peach pies; and the beer, wine, soda, and lemonade to wash everything down.

Gotta Have A Plan To Handle The Food . . .

Or you might never take off the bathing suit cover-up.  So, as you remember the people who gave service to their country, please honor yourself by choosing to eat what’s best for you.  Holidays and celebrations present food challenges.  A one-day splurge is a blip that doesn’t account for much.  A one-day splurge that opens the floodgate to mindless eating all summer long is something else.

General Tips For Mindful Eating All Summer Long

  • Before you grab some tasty morsel, ask yourself if you’re really hungry.  Odds are, with a tempting display of food in front of you, you may not be hungry but you just want to eat what’s in front of you for reasons not dictated by your stomach.
  • A good question to ask yourself is:  do I really need to stand in front of the picnic table, kitchen table, or barbecue?  The further away from the food you are the less likely you are to eat it.
  • If you know that the barbecued ribs, the blueberry pie, or your cousin’s potato salad is your downfall, either build it into your food for the day or steer clear.  For most of us swearing that you’ll only take a taste is a promise doomed to fail.
  • If you’re asked to bring something to a party, picnic, or barbecue, bring food you can eat with abandon – fruit, salad with dressing on the side, berries and angel food cake for dessert (no fat in angel food cake).  That way you know you’ll always have some “go to” food.
  • Don’t show up absolutely starving.  How can you resist when your blood sugar is in the basement and your stomach is singing a chorus?
  • Really eyeball the food choices so you know what’s available.  Then make a calculated decision about what you are going to eat.
  • Take the food you have decided to eat, sit down, enjoy it without guilt, and be done with it.  No going back for seconds.
  • If you’re full, stop eating and clear your plate right away.  If it hangs around in front of you, inevitably you’ll keep picking at it.
  • Give yourself permission to eat – and enjoy — the special dessert or a burger or ribs.  If you don’t, you’ll probably be miserable and there’s some chance that you’ll get home and gobble down everything in sight – because you made yourself miserable by not eating the good stuff in the first place!  Eat what you want and enjoy it (no seconds and no first portions that are the equivalent of firsts, seconds and thirds built into one).
  • If hanging around the food gets to be too much, go for a walk, a swim, or engage someone in an animated conversation.    It’s pretty hard to shove food into you mouth when you’re talking away.

How Big Are Your Dinner Plates — And Why It Matters

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Have you eaten in some restaurants where the plates are so big that the server can’t find room to comfortably fit everything on the table?

Maybe your plates are so big that you have trouble getting them into the dishwasher.

Does it make a difference other than for convenience?  You bet it does.

The Size Of Your Dinner Plate Can Affect Your Weight

We eat off of big plates. Since 1960 the overall surface area of an average dinner plate has increased 36 percent. The average dinner plate we commonly use today measures 11 or 12 inches across. A few decades ago plates measured 7 to 9 inches.

In Europe, the average plate measures 9 inches while some American restaurants use plates that are around 13 inches in diameter.

Portion Sizes Have Increased Along With Plate Size

1960 sized portions would look a little lost on today’s large plates.  Plop a small portion of spaghetti and meat sauce in the middle of a large plate and the temptation is to add more – usually pasta – to fill up the plate.  That’s how you feed both your eyes and your stomach.

The additional problem – aside from eating more food at the meal — is that with more food piled on your plate, the idea gets embedded in your brain that a larger portion is better and that it takes a larger amount to fill your plate. Your brain then figures that If you need that much food to fill your plate then it takes that large amount of food to make you feel good.

Some Easy Things To Do

When you switch to a smaller plate you eat a smaller serving.

Control your portion sizes by decreasing the size of your plate. Try switching from a dinner plate to a salad plate or look for vintage plates that are smaller in diameter. Research has shown that by switching to a 10 inch plate from a 12 inch plate you eat 22 percent less.

Incredibly, smaller dishes can also help you feel full even though you’re eating less. Studies show that people are more satisfied with less food when they are served on 8 inch salad plates instead of on 12 inch dinner plates.  But don’t go too small because eating too small a portion might send you back for seconds.

Keep This In Mind

We eat an average of 92% of what we serve ourselves. Since we pile more food onto larger plates, the larger plates means we eat more food. A two inch difference in plate diameter  — decreasing the size of our plates to ten inches from 12 inches — would mean a serving that has 22 percent fewer calories.  It’s a smaller serving but not small enough to leave you still hungry and heading back for seconds. For an average size adult who eats a typical dinner of 800 calories, the smaller portions that would result from using a smaller plate would lead to a weight loss of around 18 pounds a year.

Should I Eat This?

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What do I want to eat?  What should I eat? Two questions we all ask ourselves.  Including me.  A lot. Standing in front of the fridge with the door open.  Staring at the shelves in the pantry or in front of the deli case – or when staring at a menu.  With no clear idea, the danger zone looms — setting up the perfect scenario for being easily swayed by all kinds of food that, perhaps, isn’t really the best for you.

What’s The Answer?

Sorry to disappoint you, but there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer.  I can’t tell you what to eat. That’s your personal decision. But here’s some helpful guidelines:

  • deprivation doesn’t work.  Certainly not for long lasting and healthy weight loss and maintenance.
  • restriction and deprivation almost always end up in a pendulum swing – restriction on one end and indulgence on the other.
  • how many times have you deprived yourself of a food that you love only to gorge on it when you hit an emotional low and toss resolve out the window?
  • constant dieting doesn’t work either.  It messes with your metabolism, and dieting — by its very nature — means deprivation.

How Do You Figure Out What To Eat?

There’s no two ways around it:  energy taken in (calories) should equal energy output (physical movement and metabolism).  If you eat more calories than you use up, you gain weight.  To maintain your weight, your energy (calorie) intake and caloric expenditure (activity and metabolism) have to be in balance.  An imbalance means you either gain weight or lose weight.

There are ways to help figure out how to eat delicious food and not pack on the pounds.  Each of us has food and food memories that we feel we can’t  — and don’t want to — live without.  Sometimes it’s hard to separate the food we eat because we physically need it from the food we eat for emotional, cultural, religious, or traditional reasons.  Sometimes the two can’t and shouldn’t be separated.

Foodie Checks and Balances

When you know what is good for your body and what isn’t, and how much food your body needs for the amount of activity you do, there are a bunch of questions you can use to evaluate your food choices – before you make them.  It sounds like a big deal, but it’s really not – you probably ask yourself some of these already.  It’s a simple system of “foodie checks and balances.” The answers can give you valuable information to use to make good food choices – wherever and whenever.

  • What is my tried and true meal that can be my fallback or my “go to” meal for breakfast, lunch, or dinner? What type of food did I grow up with?  Did that type of eating make me feel energetic and clear-headed?  There’s something to be said about eating the way our ancestors did (even if its only one or two generations ago).
  • How do I feel when I eat this food? If you feel like garbage after eating red meat or drinking a glass of milk, stay away from those foods.  Just because someone else eats them doesn’t mean you have to. A journal comes in handy so you can write down what you eat and how you feel and then figure out what foods make you feel good or bad.
  • Is it delicious?  Why waste your calories on something that doesn’t taste good or that has little or no nutritional value.  There are two sides to this coin.  Just because something is good for you doesn’t mean that it has to taste bad.  There are many ways to prepare foods so try a different preparation.  The other side of the coin is that maybe you’ll never like a certain food.  Who cares if it’s a nutritional superstar.  There are plenty of them.  Why eat what you can’t stand?  There are lots of delicious and healthy foods to go around so choose something else.  Don’t waste your nutritional budget on something that you don’t like.
  • Is it healthy?  Is it good for me — not Is it good for my family, my spouse, or my friend?  Don’t waste your calories on something that doesn’t do anything for you. Some foods may be delicious (to you) but be downright unhealthy.  Give up on the empty and unhealthy calories.  What’s the point of eating stuff that does nothing for you, or that may be bad for you?
  • If I eat this, how am I going to feel half an hour or an hour from now? Ever eat a big bowl of pasta at lunch, start to nod off and reach for a monster cup of coffee?  Ever stop at a gas station on a long road trip to grab a candy bar – only to find yourself nodding off a while later?  Dangerous.  I once had pasta for dinner before a movie and promptly fell asleep during the trailer only to wake up when the movie credits were rolling.  Pasta makes me sleepy, so does candy.  What about you?
  • Food affects your mental clarity. Learn to identify the relationship between certain foods and how your body physically and emotionally reacts to them.  Some make you sleepy, some make you crabby, some make you alert, and some give you energy.  Which foods do what for you?
  • Is this the right portion size for me? Portion control is essential for weight management.  Learn to eyeball portion sizes and commit to a personal “no seconds” policy.
  • Do I really want to eat this or am I doing it just because . . . (you supply the answer – some typical ones are: everyone else is eating it, or my kids love it, or Grandma made it, or it’s the specialty of the restaurant, or “I had a tough day, I deserve it”).

Some Questions To Ask Yourself

Create a habit of asking yourself these questions when you’re faced with food choices:

  • How will I feel when I eat this food?
  • Am I really hungry?
  • Is it delicious?
  • Is it good for me?
  • Is it healthy?
  • If I eat this, how am I going to feel half an hour to an hour from now?
  • Is this the right portion size for me?
  • Do I really want to eat this or am I doing it just because . . .?

What are some of the questions you can ask yourself before eating?

Do You Know How Many Calories Are In Your Wine Glass?

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Do you love a glass of wine (or two) with dinner – or maybe some champagne at Sunday brunch or at your friend’s wedding?  What about that wonderful, sweet, thick dessert wine to polish off a fantastic meal?

You may have your preferences – most of us do – but whether it’s red, white, dry, sweet, or sparkling, it is really easy to overlook the calories in those long-stemmed glasses.

What Is The Standard Serving Size Of Wine?

A standard portion of table wine (red or white) is 4 ounces.  But, how many ounces are really in the glass of wine that you usually drink?  Probably five to eight!

So, on average, if 4 ounces of red or white table wine has about 100 calories, you are drinking anywhere from 100 to 200 calories of wine – in one glass. Think about how many glasses of wine and in what size wine glass you drink with a meal.

If you have dessert wine after dinner it’s about double the calories per ounce — although the standard serving is less:  usually 2 to 3 ounces.  So add on about another 100 to 150 calories for each glass of that smooth dessert wine.

Calories In Wine

So it’s easier to compare, here are the number of calories in one ounce of various wines:

  • Champagne: 19 calories
  • Red table wine (burgundy, cabernet): 25 calories
  • Dry white wine (Chablis, hock, reisling): 24 calories
  • Sweet white wine (moselle, sauterne, zinfandel: 28 calories
  • Rose: 20 calories
  • Port (about 20% alcohol): 46 calories
  • Sweet dessert wine: 47 calories