Fit with Fave Week 2: Shrink Your Plates

Hello and welcome to week two.  A plate shrinking week.

I hope you were successful in communicating your intention to change a few things about the way you eat to the ones you eat with most!  I’d love to hear how it went, if you feel inclined to comment it up.  Anyone’s spouse/other/buddy jumping on board with them?  They’re just in time, because this week is an action week.

Side note – this may seem slow for some of you, so I’m going to start adding a go-ahead challenge at the end of each new challenge, for those of you who get frustrated when things move too slowly.  Look for it in italics at the bottom of this entry.

Here’s the thing- this is less about science and more about common sense.  Here’s your challenge for this week: Start eating your dinner (and lunch, for that matter) off of 7-8″ plates.

Not sure what size your plates are?  You can measure!  The average dinner plate has increased in size pretty dramatically over the last several decades, and most dinner plates are about 10-10.5″ in diameter.  We’re asking you to bust out those salad plates, kids, and start using them for your main meals.  That’s it!  That’s the whole dare!  Keep eating whatever you are eating, but start doing it off of smaller plates.  If you need to go back for seconds for a while until you get used to it, that is okay by me.

This challenge doesn’t really require a lot of explaining – smaller plates, less food, the visual satisfaction of a full plate with more normalized portions = happy brain = happy belly yada yada yada.  You can figure it out.  So, since we don’t have a whole lot of explaining to do, maybe we need to do some shopping?

Want to use this as an excuse to get some super cute new plates?  I would.  I usually stock up on single salad plates when they go on sale at Anthropologie, so I have a whole mismatched collection, but here are a few pretty things off of which you could get excited about eating:

Loving Target’s new Threshold line.  I found these, and these, and these. (that last one is a bit big, but that rim will give you a hard time if you try to overload it)

Also at Target: Affordable modern, rustic blue, a little humor with your meal, or classic vintage.

How I usually roll (wait for sale prices!)

Some great summery options here.

Happy plate seeking and shrinking!  Put those dinner plates away for your next holiday party.  Added bonus: more on-hand cabinet space!  Look at you, already winning.  😉

love.

Edited to add: A note on eating out – obviously, most restaurants are not going to serve you smaller plates.  If you’re eating with someone who shares your tastes, split a meal – you’ll save money and probably still wind up full.  If that’s not possible, order up a to-go container at the beginning of your meal and squirrel half of your plate away for tomorrow.  You might look a little silly, but remember – everyone else is way too worried about how they look to be paying attention to your eating habits.  🙂

Go-Ahead Challenge: Eat more nuts!  Add a small handful of nuts (any nuts) to your daily snacking routine, or exchange the cream cheese on your bagel for peanut butter, or slap some almond butter on some celery instead of hummus or ranch or whatever you’ve been dipping in.  The less salt and sugar involved, the more awesome you get to brag about being, but for now, go with whatever you can handle that gets you eating more nuts!

Two things – obvi, if you are allergic, don’t do this.  Also, adding a brownie with nuts doesn’t count.  Nuts must be the only or at least main ingredient.  Nice try, though.  Half credit if you add nuts to the brownie you were going to eat anyway.  I’m easy like that.

We’ll talk more about why nuts are awesome in a few weeks.  Till then, you can look it up if you’re so inclined.