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Change the Way
You Eat
by Susan Bernstein
excerpted from the
Arthritis Foundation book Change
Your Life!
Get the Scoop on
Serving Sizes
Do you know what you're eating? Here are some easy visual cues for
understanding healthy portion size.
You may find it
difficult to adjust your sense of a normal portion of food to reality. You may
say, "I won't be satisfied with one cup of dry cereal." The key is to
eat more slowly, to eat one bite at a time. Don't shovel your food into your
mouth as if you were in an eating contest. Your body needs a little time to
absorb your food so you don't feel so hungry.
It takes 20 to 30
minutes to feel a sense of fullness when you are eating. This sense of
being satisfied or full tells you when to stop eating. That's why it's important
to eat slowly. If you try to consume as much food as possible in 20 minutes, by
the time your body catches up and feels satisfied, you are over-stuffed. You
feel as if you couldn't eat another bite. Does that sound familiar?
Slow down when you
eat. Eat one bite at a time, chew your food thoroughly and savor the taste of
your food. That may be a hard habit to adopt, but you can make this one of your
change-your-life goals.
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