I was listening to NPR the other day, and the commentator was talking about the unfortunate fact that the obesity rate in France has increased over the last 10 years. I was fascinated as I listened as the commentator explained that historically, even though the French are famous for rich foods and scrumptious pastries.
Their secret? I don’t know for sure, but the commentator explained that part of the reasons for the lack of obesity in France revolves around the fact that rituals surrounding food are well-established and revered.
For example, two-year-old children are served grilled lamp chops with cauliflower au gratin — complete with cloth napkins. French dinners can go on and on, food is prepared with care and snacking and sugary drinks are minimal compared to America.
Sadly, that appears to be changing in France – especially in lower income pockets of the country.
All that got me thinking about the rituals surround food as I grew up, and how those rituals possibly influenced my ride into obesity.
As a small child, the rituals of food in my family were typical. I was fed healthy food, I didn’t snack much and didn’t go out to eat excessively.
As I grew older, I branched out into cafeteria food, busy evenings filled with after-school activities, social functions and hanging out at restaurants after church youth group meetings. The rituals surrounding food began to break down for me, and my weight began to creep up.
I didn’t appreciate good, carefully prepared food. I longed for the fried food, the candy, the sweet desserts instead of fresh vegetables from the garden or chicken right off the grill. I didn’t think I liked sitting down and eating, but had a “blast” eating with friends and stuffing my face without even thinking about the food I was eating.
Rituals can help you in your weight loss journey — provided the rituals are healthy, life-giving and give you the opportunity to embrace new habits.
Here are some rituals I learned when I was losing weight, and ones that I’ve kept up for the past 13 years:
I try not to eat when I’m standing up. (In my obese life – I could eat laying down, in the car, standing in the living room or any other location.)
I generally don’t eat from boxes, bags or packages. (I learned that bags of Oreos were quite easy to reach my hand in over and over without paying attention to the fact that the bag was slowly emptying.)
I pay attention to what and how much I’m eating – even if it’s healthy food.
I frequently change the ingredients in foods I make to cut unnecessary calories.
As a mom, I try to teach my kids to enjoy food and not just eat because they are bored or just “want” to see what’s in the refrigerator.
Rituals can make or break you. Please do hear me when I share that rituals should be flexible, because too much rigidity can lead to unhealthy eating habits, which is what we are all trying to avoid!
What’s your take on rituals and food? How do they impact your weight? Diane
for me it would be a CRAZY MAKER.
for my best friend it has allowed her to maintain her 100 pound loss.
it’s all so unique to, well, US.
you know IMO and all
Miz´s last fabulous musings ..“Mama, you need to start running.”
Rituals most certainly hurt weight management. I too enjoyed the fried food more than prepared food and that was my down fall.
Nowadays I too follow the guidelines you do. I was never someone who stand and eat but I mostly did eat in front of the TV. Now we eat at the dining table
blackhuff´s last fabulous musings ..I got to this point
There are good and bad rituals. I certainly have both.
But one thing that has always helped me is automation, meaning often eating the same foods. For example, if I start out the day with a broccoli slaw/cilantro/cottage cheese salad (yes, salad for breakfast), I have this often so I don’t feel like an overly large portion. A good sized sandwich with celery and an apple, not too big or too small, is perfect for lunch. I don’t feel like more. It’s when I go into the unknowns, such as restaurants, that I make bad decisions.
Marion@affectionforfitness´s last fabulous musings ..A Discussion About Tight Muscles & Ligaments
Makes me wonder if I have rituals. I have bad “habits.” Like… turn on the TV or pick up a book and reach for food. But the activity came first and the food came second. I’m thinking some rituals might be good for ME:)
Karen@WaistingTime´s last fabulous musings ..On the Road Again; I Just Hate to Get on the Road Again
I gained quite a bit of weight when I stopped the food rituals I grew up with. That is, instead of always eating when sitting down and enjoying a meal, I started to eat in my car, when watching t.v. and standing up in the kitchen. I have since gone back to my old rituals…
Andrea@WellnessNotes´s last fabulous musings ..My Summer of No Cooking
The one ritual I can say I definitely stick with is that I track everything… even the foods I eat that I have to wait a day to put on the tracker because only distance will allow me to admit I consumed them, LOL.
But then at least I have a record, so I know “Hey, Amanda, remember the cake fest? Yeah, you might want to back away from the cookies…”
Amanda´s last fabulous musings ..WW Weigh-In, Week 22
I guess you could say I have rituals cause I mimic your list!
The minds of good weight loss maintenance! 
Jody – Fit at 53´s last fabulous musings ..Gratitude Monday
My Unhealthy Rituals included:
Picking up chocolate and ice cream whenever I had stress
Ordering in pizza or Chinese food the day before every holiday
Starting a diet tomorrow, every Monday, every first of the month . . .
On the day before starring every diet I would binge on pizza and ice cream, salt and sweet, salt and sweet
My Healthy Rituals include:
Eating BEFORE I go food shopping
Planning my meals so when I am hungry I do not decide to eat irrationally
Taking a few brief minutes each day to write down my food
Reading labels and avoiding food that causes me to struggle
I am all about looking into everything I do to find what is sane and helpful and what is just a bad habit.
Jane~
Keepingthepoundsoff.com
Jane C´s last fabulous musings ..Oreo Cookie Creme Filling Madness
I started packing lunches at work, and I thought this when I saw how carefully made some bento boxes were. It did strike me that this attitude to food — that it had to satisfy more than one sense — was part of what made obesity less common in Japan. Crappy but generously portioned food is just NOT in that mentality. Good quality, carefully prepared, but less abundant is the way they go, which I agree with. Any “food” that costs a fraction of a penny per ounce and that can be mass-produced is not anything that should be put in one’s mouth much less swallowed.
There’s an attitude in the US that the food is sh*t, but at least there’s a lot of it, which is gross. Sh*t doesn’t become less sh*tty because you get 50 pieces of it for $9.99.
I lived in France for a while! When I was there they ate small portions, even though the meals took a while, most of the time was socializing, and they walked everywhere.
I believe your list can be very helpful to those who need help. Diane, I do not follow any rules, and I break plenty of the gold standard recommendations yet I am very fit. I think it’s because I do not need all these behavior aids as at the end of the day, I do not eat too many calories for my calorie usage.
In the past my “ritual” of ALWAYS having dessert was definitely detrimental to my waistline. Now? I don’t have dessert every night. A few times a week, or I choose something small as a sweet treat.
Lisa´s last fabulous musings ..Finding a Workout Buddy
Hi, Diane.
I’ve found that whenever I get “weight creep”, I’m fudging how much I’m eating so it’s back to measuring out portions because I’m following my appetite about how much to eat rather than following portion sizes and how many calories I actually need.
That’s not really a ritual, but it does make me more conscious of what I eat…
Two other rituals I use: on a regular basis, I “say grace” mentally and bless my food–at least 80% of the time (interesting when one is diving into “junk” one “forgets” to do this…)
And when my weight is creeping upward, I bring it back downward by counting my chews. I try to chew every bite of food 20 times. That slows down my eating and really makes me TASTE what I’m eating rather than just shoveling in volume. Plus I think it digests better….
PS I do also track what I eat. It’s been very useful not just for calories but for finding out what I’m sensitive to. For example, I realized recently I got really ill whenever I ate chicken when I ate out. I didn’t realize the pattern till I looked at my written record.
So I was at a charity food festival the other night and just told the people I was allergic to chicken and successfully avoided it. No problems… and last year I had ended up on prednisone cream with a huge rash that appeared, and I had no clue what I’d eaten to provoke it since I’d eaten so many things all together.
I’m not actually allergic to chicken itself. What I suspect is, that since I’m allergic to penicillins and some other antibiotics (basically if it’s not a “mycin” or a z-pak I tend to itch like crazy and I’m super allergic/have difficulty breathing with the “illins”) and much commercial chicken is fed antibiotics, I need to avoid it except in high end restaurants that actually say organic–or in chicken I buy at the store like at Whole Foods that I know hasn’t been fed any.
But I would never have known that if I didn’t track it…
The other thing is that one’s body will BLOAT to dilute substances it doesn’t like. I’m allergic to things like crab but didn’t have overt reactions to shrimp–until I realized around a year ago that the scale went up 4 pounds the day after I ate any. Water retention to try to “protect” me–once I started to avoid ALL crustaceans, it really helped. Plus I had less inflammation from arthritis by avoiding it.
So mild allergies/sensitivities can be detected by tracking… I hadn’t thought of that as a “ritual” but after reading Amanda’s comment I decided to add this.
I think that if you buy yourself some smaller plates and make a point of drinking water with your meal AT the dinner table, it’s a lot easier to avoid snacking on chips on the couch or eating heaping servings of pasta!
Emilie´s last fabulous musings ..Getting to Know You Monday: She Runs, She Eats
I believe I’ve had ever ritual that one could have. I’m kinda on a different perspective since I suffered from an ed in college and the toughts that still linger. As a kid I was given lots of healthy food due tour 2 acre garden, but we had at least 5 boxes of little Debbie cakes, T bags of chips, cookies, and lots of pop (soda). Althoug I’ve never been overweight due to my running obsession (ran in hs and college team), I’ve suffered. My rituals at the lowest of ed was writing everything calorie out. Now, (Im 27), I have rituals as eating at certain times (hungry or not), deconstructing my sandwiches, always eating things in a certain order, and other weird things. The worst ritual I have now is eating ice cream every single night(like 3 cups) and ending with 2 TBLS of peanut butter. Not good at all…but i almost panic if I don’t do it.
I saw an interesting experiment on TV where people were blindfolded before eating and told to eat until they were full. They consistently left food on the plate whereas people who could see would finish the plate. Although I haven’t tried it, I used this as a lesson to serve smaller portions and this has helped everyone in the family.
Ella Callahan´s last fabulous musings ..Top 5 Inversion Tables for Back Pain