Everyday Systems: nosdiet: message 1200 of 3212

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First off, thanks all for your congratulations. I
really do appreciate it.

I had a thought as I was urban rangering home from the
hospital the other day:

Portion control is obviously an important issue, and
not directly addressed by the no-s rules. But if you
think about it, it is addressed, and not all that
indirectly. Here's how: there is no practical way to
control portion size if you don't control portion
number. If you don't see it all in front of you at
once, you can't get a sense of how much it is without
a whole lot of calculating (which almost no one does
after the initial diet honeymoon). 

It's critical to develop and be able to rely on this
sense. Think of it as the difference between being
told "an 8000 pound object is approaching you from SSW
at a velocity of 32 meters per second" vs. seeing that
you are about to be hit by a truck. Which of these is
going to get you to step out of the way faster? Math
is great for many things, but your eyeballs are nice,
too. The nosdiet framework gives your eyeballs a
chance. It puts it all right there in front of them.
They're a much better tool for portion control,
because temptation really does come barreling around
the corner like an out of control truck. You won't
always have to time to reach for pencil and paper.

So many overweight people love to take multiple small
"no thank you" portions. They think as long as they
take less than a certain amount at a time, it doesn't
really count, that the portion control alarm won't go
off. And they're right; the alarm won't go off, but
that's the whole problem: it should. If bank alarms
were rigged to go off only when large amounts of cash
were stolen the vaults would soon be empty. And the
funny thing is people think they are fooling the
people around them. This is almost never the case;
they're just fooling themselves. Stick with fewer,
bigger portions. Better let the alarm go off and have
it ring in your ears than tip toe around it. An noisy
alarm can be a great teacher.

Reinhard