Kids are often picky eaters and many of us will have spent our whole childhoods being pushed to eat. We were constantly being told to eat some vegetable that we did not like, or told we had to finish everything that was on our plate before we could have dessert.
But hey ... you're grown up now! You can give yourself permission to eat differently.
You don't need to eat everything that is on your plate.
And you certainly don't need to finish up everything that is left on the table or on other people's plates.
Of course, we don't like to waste food. It costs money and a lot of work went into preparing it. Sometimes, an animal died so that we could have this meal. It seems kind of ungrateful to throw it in the trash.
But if you look at how a slim person eats, you will realize they don't actually waste much food at all. They eat what they want, then they put the rest in the refrigerator. Often, they will finish it up later for a snack when they get hungry again.
Remember that your metabolism will work faster if you eat less and eat often. So eating three fourths of your dinner now and the rest in a couple of hours is actually better for your weight loss than eating it all now.
You can even do this when you eat out, by asking the staff to let you have something to pack the leftovers in.
Of course, if you find that you almost always have extra food left at the end of a meal, then you are probably preparing too much. Often this happens in families when a parent wants to make sure that there is always plenty for everybody.
But a loaded table just encourages us to eat more. So either give the family a break and prepare a little less, or keep the serving dishes in the kitchen so the extra food is not right there on the table virtually asking to be eaten. If you have to go to the kitchen to get more, you probably will not take so much.
