how big is a bite?

just something i was thinking about yesterday.  we all know that eating slowly helps, and that portion control is key.  but it occurred to me that it's a whole lot easier to eat slowly and eat less if we take small bites.  i think a lot of people take really big bites, so food disappears awfully fast.

so say you're having an egg on toast for breakfast (because it's a pretty standard-sized sort of thing, for the sake of illustration).  how many bites is that?

for me, it's about a 16 bites, give or take.  yeah, i know this, because i'm a little OCD about some things.  i eat the crusts first, and it's basically a four-by-four proposition. 

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tooties pop?

I'm just picturing the scene in Clueless, when Cher says "and, if you cut it into really small pieces, it makes you lose weight."

But essentially, yes, smaller bites leads to slower eating leads to filling full sooner leads to eating less.

Unless you eat such small bites that you feel like you are not really eating. If I ate raisons one raison at a time, I could probably go all day without realizing how many I had eaten.

Gah, it takes me 4 bites :[

Original Post by moon_doggie:

Gah, it takes me 4 bites :[

 no.  i'm gullible, but i'm not that gullible.  am i?

I have/had bad eating habits and eating fast/taking huge bites is one of them. I do chew. Toast is fairly light, I think if you really tried you could easily fit half of it in your mouth. And sad thing is, I've folded up toast so it could take 2 bites, it's bad, I know but when your on the go you don't think about taking your time.

Oh, and I should of mentioned I don't eat eggs, so yeah, that must make a huge difference.

even without the egg, i couldn't eat a piece of toast in less than ten bites.

i think it's an only-child thing: i eat slowly because i never had to compete for the leftovers.

on a peice of toast... 9 to 12 bites i'm guessing...

i eat slowly because i never had to compete for the leftovers.

I eat slowly because I was taught good manners.

Original Post by pgeorgian:

Original Post by moon_doggie:

Gah, it takes me 4 bites :[

 no.  i'm gullible, but i'm not that gullible.  am i?

 At dinner tonight, my dad had a slice of bread with tinned salmon on it.  He cut it in quarters and ate a whole quarter in one go.  So, doable. 

I lost loads of weight when I started cooking all asian food for a while and only ate with chopsticks

By the time you've finished eating, you're full!

I had three sisters, we were close in age. I think the reason I do eat huge bites quickly has a little to do with that. My mom cooked so well there was a rush to seconds sometimes. Any tips from anyone about way to remind yourself to slow down? I forget when I am hungry a lot of times. ( I am eating smaller more often now)

I am so bad with this too.  I seem to eat really huge bites and I know I don't chew my food enough.  I seem to gag when I have food in my mouth too long.  I have seriously been working on this but this is a really hard habit to break.

I have no idea why I do this.  I didn't have to compete for food or leftovers I just eat huge bites and really fast. 

Love to hear your suggestions to break the habit.

Eating slower and taking smaller bites does seem to satisfy my hunger with less. 

We go out to lunch at work a lot, and there is one guy that I asked if he had spent any time in prison (joking, as I knew he hadn't) because he tends to "guard" his food unconsciously and eat very quickly. 

Now at lunch we are always making some reference to his jail time when he's done eating long before the rest of us. 

thanks for changing ur avi pg :)

no bad dreams for kristie tonight yay

i think if youre not OCD when you start counting calories, you will be eventually

its such an obsessive task by nature. same with body-building.

for some reason i hear yoda in my head warning luke "you will be"

you didnt arrange the letters in OCD alphabetically by the way, which would be CDO. just, you know, sayin