(Giveaway!) Exercise Self Control Over Food... Without A Straightjacket

Guest Post By Michael Alvear

So this next guest post contains a giveaway, yay! Although sorry, you cannot win a stylish straightjacket of your very own.

Instead, two random Cranky Commenters can win a free copy of Michael's Alvear's E-book: Eat It Later: Mastering Self Control & The Slimming Power Of Postponement.

To be honest, part of the reason I was intrigued my Michael's pitch to contribute was not just that he's got an ebook on a useful topic, but that he modestly didn't even mention that he was the co-host of HBO’s The Sex Inspectors, a late-night sex makeover series!

How cool is that? Cranky Fitness doesn't get out much anymore. The opportunity to be vicariously associated with reality television, sex, and staying up past 9pm was too hard to resist.

As it happens, some of his Michael's other titles are a bit risque, so be forewarned.  One of possible interest to readers might be one of Michael's own personal favorites: 

Not Tonight Dear, I Feel Fat: How To Stop Worrying About Your Body & Have Great Sex.

Anyway, giveaway winners will be picked in a week so please check back. --Crabby.

Most of us think of self control as exercising white-knuckled willpower against G-force desires that leave us physically exhausted and emotionally spent.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to suit up your armor and spend loads of energy to say no to foods that make you want to leave home, family and career just to smell the packaging. I’ve discovered a much easier, calm way to practice self-sovereignty, even in the face of an “Everything” bagel.

Snackorama!

You know how every now and then you can't quite get your act together to plan and prepare and shop for a nutritious meal, and so you think: "screw it, I'll just see what I've got in the fridge?" And so you pull out maybe some grapes and cheese and bread and a leftover chicken drumstick and maybe some cut-up vegetables and dip, and you take all these snacks and throw them on a plate and say, "voila: dinner!"

OK, maybe you don't. But I do, and to stretch the analogy reeaaaaly far, that's sort of what today's post is. I just have some random things to say about various foods, and rather than think and plan and come up with a coherent meal theme, I thought I'd just throw three unrelated food items out there on one plate page and say, "voila: Wednesday's post!"

Note: viewer discretion advised. One of the treats I will confess to eating will leave you SHOCKED and AMAZED that any health blogger, even one named Crabby McSlacker, could seriously recommend it.

The Curious Case of The Irresistible Almond Butter

So it wasn't that long ago that I wrote a post about portion control in which I mentioned I sometimes enjoy peanut butter or almond butter sandwiches. (With honey, bananas, and a big glass of milk).

And sure, I'd noticed I was starting to eat these sandwiches more frequently. I just assumed that, as happens with a lot of food items, my cravings were a "phase." I often go through periods when a certain food appeals to me a whole heck of a lot. I eat it like crazy, then... phhhhttt! I don't feel like it anymore for a long time.

But it's been months now that I've been totally obsessed with peanut butter and almond butter sandwiches! Well, I don't write poetry to them, or sneak out of bed at 2 am to have a rendezvous or anything. But I do seem to require one pretty much every day.

What is UP with that? Has a similar food obsession ever happened to anyone else? Is there a cure?

And it didn't help that a few weeks ago I got an email on behalf of Justin's Nut Butters saying: wanna try some samples of our portable peanut butter and almond butter squeeze packs? They come plain or in flavors.

Normally, in a non-nut-butter-obsessed time of my life, I'd remember that accepting free stuff to eat means I eventually have to write a review of said free stuff, which I never actually feel like doing. So I would have said no.

But, well, in a weak moment fueled by almond-butter-lust I said yes.

So these little portion controlled squeeze packs arrived, and they are indeed cute!



And they're convenient, especially if you're going somewhere where hauling an entire jar of peanut butter around might not be practical. The packs are also portion controlled--there are little 100 calorie packs and bigger 180 calorie ones.

As to the flavors, I have to admit I was skeptical. I thought: almond butter should come in one flavor, almond. But the Almond/Maple and the Honey/Peanut varieties? Both tasty! The maple, in particular, could have easily been gross and fakey and disgusting, but instead, it was subtle and pleasant and not overly sweet. The peanut butter also comes in cinnamon flavor, which seemed to me a really bad idea. Sure enough, I tried it, and for me--yuck. Those are two flavors that are both lovely, but not together. Others of you may be more open-minded about that.

Anyway, I give Justin and his Peanut and Almond Butter packs two sticky thumbs up!


Easy Tasty Guacamole Recipe

I love guacamole, and it's one of those foods that tastes too delicious to be good for you. It's like the Nutrition Gods weren't paying attention when they invented avocados: wait, these things have fiber and antioxidants and potassium and folate and oleic acid? They should be all stringy and gross and bitter! What were we thinking, how did they end up so yummy and creamy?

Anyway, the trick to easy and tasty guacamole: have access to good salsa.

If you can get a container of good fresh salsa from your grocery store deli or local Mexican place, the guacamole work is all done for you!

Just mash up avocados, and gradually add salsa and garlic salt until it it tastes wonderful.

You'd think you'd need fresh garlic (and it's probably better for you) but garlic salt seems to work just fine.

Note: this is eat-at-home guacamole; it turns brown pretty fast. If you want take-to-the-potluck guacamole, you might want to squeeze some lemon or lime in there too.


Dessert Fake-Out

Ever feel like just a little something sweet, but know that you need to be limiting the amount of sugar and butter and white flour and bad fats you eat?

There are, of course, virtuous ways to handle that dilemma: just say no. Or have fruit. Or eat some anti-oxidant-packed dark chocolate, the healthy 95% kind that tastes as bitter as 3 day old coffee grounds.

The whole 100 calorie pack industry exists for just this reason, for damage control, but somehow these never work for me--they're too small for 100 calories, and they remind me of my junky treats from my youth without actually tasting as good.

So my new cheat option, when it's not yet time for a real splurge? Tiny little vanilla mini-meringues from Trader Joes.

These things are so silly! Each one is only about the size of a peanut M&M. And there is nothing nutritionally "good" about them, other than that, to my knowledge, they don't contain poison. But they are only 1 calorie apiece. One calorie! Nothing with actual sugar in it is ever one calorie!

So with my immature toddler brain, quite easily fooled on matters of portion control, I can have like 25 or 30 sweet crunchy meringue thingies and feel like I've had "dessert." (Note: they must be eaten One at a Time to achieve this fake-out effect). Plus, if I have them along with a nice healthy cup of green tea, in my mind, the green tea virtue cancels out the tiny bit of meringue indulgence and it comes out even.

Anyone out there have any food obsessions, or any nifty snacks or treats you've discovered that you want to tell us about?

Portion Control, Pizza, and Peanut Butter

But It's Just One Slice!
Photo credit: Brocha

(This was supposed to be a back-from-vacation, well-researched, educational post incorporating the latest breaking health and fitness news available on the web! Instead, it’s a post about pizza and peanut butter. Sorry—we got delayed on the last leg of our trip and spent a couple extra days without internet. Good for the soul! Not so good for the blogging. But we're back home now--thanks for your patience!)


I’ve know I’ve written about Portion Control before. But the subject intrigues me: controlling the size of our meals and snacks seems like it should be simple and straightforward. But it’s not! Instead it’s a complex psychological battle. How does the sensible part of our brain remain in control when the childish, greedy part of us always wants “more, more, more?”

(And note: by "portion control," I don’t mean limiting one's intake of healthy food when one is actually hungry. I’m not a fan of any diet, eating plan, or lifestyle that requires ignoring true hunger signals on an ongoing basis. The kind of “portion control” I’m referring to is the kind that’s meant to combat the consumption of unholy amounts of food simply because it tastes good.)


Of course one tactic in the portion control battle is the use of logic, reason, and self-discipline. Which works great when I'm feeling all logical, reasonable, and self-disciplined. That occasionally happens, I swear! But most of the time? I need to resort to Stealth and Trickery.

What is A Serving Size?

Years ago, when I was actively dieting (though I didn't call it that--I called it going on a "thing" because I didn't like the word diet), portion control was psychologically simpler. I knew what kind of foods I should eat and what I should avoid; I knew how many calories I could eat per day; I looked up the calorie counts of everything I ate; I weighed and measured and tallied and kept a detailed food diary. It worked! I lost weight. But it was tedious and restrictive and a royal pain in the ass.

Now I don't weigh and measure and tally anymore--but I would really like to keep those sneaky pounds from creeping back on as the years go by. So I have to try to keep to "reasonable" serving sizes, despite being quite greedy when it comes to tasty food. How do I manage to feel like I've gotten "enough" without totally scarfing up everything in the kitchen? It's tricky!

In the previous portion control post, I noted that it helps than I'm an idiot. I'm as easy to fool as a toddler when it comes to portion size. So by employing simple tricks like changing from a short fat glass to a tall skinny one, or using a smaller plate or bowl, I can believe I'm actually eating more than I am. Hooray for stupidity!

But it's an ongoing battle, and I continue to find new challenges and dumb-ass solutions. My latest battles, as the title suggests, involve pizza and peanut butter sandwiches. (Also cereal and dinners at friends’ houses). I’m hoping some of you have tips for other foods and situations too—unless of course you are all driven solely by logic and reason and self-discipline?

Pizza is Easy—At Home!

Pizza is a great example of what a nitwit I am. I have discovered I can be satisfied with much less pizza if I first fill 90% of my plate with salad, and then take a single piece of reasonably healthy whole wheat pizza and cut that single slice into 3 or 4 skinny, skinny, slices.

By doing this, I now miraculously have more pizza!

(This necessitates starting with a regular sized slice, not a giant one like the cute kid above is holding--or it sort of defeats the portion control goal).

And I know the pizza slicing trick works, at least for me. Because when I am in a social setting, I generally do not make an ass of myself by dissecting my pizza into tiny pieces. Instead I end up eating several full-sized slices of pizza. One slice, no matter how big, is just not "enough."


Don’t Invite Me Over to Your House

Speaking of social situations… why am I totally unable to limit myself to a reasonable portion of food when someone else cooks dinner for me? Of course it’s nice to be polite and make sure my hosts know how much I appreciate their efforts. But I could do that by eating a normal amount of food and expressing my pleasure about the food with words.

For some reason though, words feel inadequate! I seem to believe it requires second or third or fourth helpings to get the sincerity of my message across.

So I am trying to train myself to take smaller initial portions, since I know darn well I will be heaping more on my plate as soon as I can. I say "trying" because, well, I'm not all that good at it yet.


Peanut Butter Sandwiches

Lately I’ve resurrected a childhood favorite: the peanut butter sandwich. (As a kid, I had peanut butter and jelly; now I seem to prefer my peanut butter with honey and banana slices. And sometimes I use almond butter instead of peanut butter. But it’s essentially the same deliciousness.) This is a source of great pleasure, but also involves major Portion Control Angst!

Here’s the problem: Take two slices of whole wheat bread, enough peanut butter, honey, and bananas for a proper, proportionate filling; a big glass of milk (mandatory), plus the rest of the banana (because every meal needs to have at least one fruit or vegetable) and it all adds up to more calories than I need to eat at one sitting. (Unless I’ve just hiked 20 miles. Which I rarely have done by lunchtime on a typical weekday.)

So I need to make this meal smaller. But wait a minute... I can't! I used to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a big glass of milk as an after-school snack when I was a kid. And then I’d go on to finish dinner without a problem. So how could it be possible I don't get a whole sandwich for an entire meal as an adult? I'm entitled to one! A whole sandwich is the “official” serving size, everyone knows that.

I seem to by physically unable to fix half a peanut butter sandwich. I may intend to when I get out the bread, but after I take out the first slice something mysterious happens and all of sudden the second slice is out there too and peanut butter is being smeared liberally and the little honey bear is drizzling honey and there are banana slices everywhere. I have no control over the peanut butter sandwich situation.

But finally, a solution occurred to me: I go ahead and take out two slices of bread, but I cut off the crusts, generously. This cuts down the size of the sandwich, but it still makes it seem like a whole sandwich. Less surface area means less peanut butter, honey, bananas, and milk to wash it down with. But I haven't had to compromise with a measly half-sandwich.


Cereal Silliness

The final Dumb Trick involves cereal. Have you ever noticed how small the recommended serving size of cereal looks in a bowl? If you don't measure it out, it's easy to eat two or three serving sizes and still feel like you're not getting "enough."

The obvious solution is to use a smaller bowl. But here's another technique that's weirdly effective: do you put fruit on your cereal? If so, put the fruit in first, then sprinkle cereal on top. Magically, it takes much less cereal to feel like a "full" bowl when the fruit sits underneath rather than on top!

Is anyone else this easy to fool? Got any good tricks for making less food "feel" like more?

Random Friday, Compact Travel Edition

The Actual Plane Crabby Is Taking is Just As Safe and Comfortable

Why so Compact this week? Because the Crab is traveling again, which means she is packing and fretting rather than blogging.

Actually as you read this, she is very likely in a blurry haze, staggering towards baggage claim in the Boston airport, having (hopefully) survived a red-eye flight despite her airplane fears. She can't sleep sitting up, so she will be sleep-deprived and contentious, the perfect condition in which to make final decisions about floor tiles and bathroom vanities and kitchen faucets. (For those who are new to Cranky Fitness, the Crab and her long-suffering Lobster are remodeling a place in Provincetown MA, which they plan to occupy fairly soon. They are running out of time to dither around about it).

Crabby's plan is that if she specifically mentions the fact that she is flying and that she fears the plane will crash, it would be WAY too much of a coincidence for each one of you if that very flight ended up crashing. Crabby is banking on all that accumulated improbability to help keep the plane aloft. Clever plan, huh?

Anyway, so Crabby will just throw a couple items out there, and Merry might too. (You betcha! There's an essential component to a Random Friday post, which can be found only at the end. Can you guess what it is? -Merry)

Now on to the abbreviated randomness!

Wrapper Tip
Our friends at Healthbolt, who always have the best in off-beat as well as on-beat health stories (and no, I have no idea what I meant by that) are reporting a helpful tip for candy eaters. According to a recent study from Cornell University, you can cut your candy consumption in half simply by saving the wrappers so you can see what a pig you've been. (The trick also apparently works with chicken wings).

Haiku
Those of you who are regular readers of Cranky Fitness may have discovered that (a) Crabby is a simple sort who likes poetry that rhymes and (b) Merry is a classier type who tries to slip in stealth haiku when Crabby isn't looking.

So Crabby was amused to see another great blog, Scrumpy's Baker, offering up a whole post of fitness-related Haiku. So go check it out, and feel free to offer up your own efforts here or there or both places!

Frosted Mini-Things
Remember a while back we were talking about products with stupid warnings?

Well Crabby just noticed that the Lobster's favorite breakfast cereal was being very careful to warn those folks who may have wheat allergies with a cautionary label:

Contains Wheat Ingredients

Really? Cause who would have guessed that Frosted Mini-Wheats might contain wheat?

Bored At Work?
I'm guessin' so, otherwise why would you be reading us? Anyway, when you're done here you could always check out whether you have any haunted houses or UFO's or other freaky things going on in your neighborhood.

Or, you could find out what the geeks scholars are up to by checking out real-time Wikipedia edits. Why is this interesting? I have no idea, but it kinda is, at least for thirty seconds or so.

Sweet Love Songs:
Here are two videos you've either (a) seen before, because they're all over the internet or (b) will be incredibly offended by, if you don't have an adolescent sense of humor like Crabby does.

Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman are a couple, and both are comedians. Sarah performed this video for their anniversary or Jimmy's birthday or something, Crabby can't quite remember. Anyway, it's crude but quite amusing, or at least the Crab thought so.



And Jimmy's response, also pretty funny, is here.


Have a great Friday, everyone!



[p.s. This is Merry again... did you notice? Not One Single Cat Video!!! Yes, I was shocked too. So here's the best I could do: a link to a Jumping Cat Monastery in Burma]

Make Friends With Fractions

Question: why is it so hard to remember that it's possible to eat a half, or a third, or even one and three-eighths of something? What is so compelling about whole numbers and unitary "serving sizes"--long after the invention of tupperware and aluminum foil and refrigerators that are perfectly capable of saving leftovers?

And sure, sometimes you can't save leftovers, and it seems a shame to "waste" food. But if you've got extra food on your plate that you could eat but you're not all that hungry for, then hell--it's already wasted! That food is not doing any more good sitting in your stomach than in a garbage can.

When Crabby remembers that a piece and a half of whole wheat toast is really the "right" serving size for her at breakfast, she is so much happier. Because while a single piece of bread simply does not yield enough toasty goodness, two slices of toast is more than she needs, given that she eats quite a few other things along with the toast. One and half pieces of toast: a perfect amount.

Yet far too often, Crabby throws two pieces of bread in the toaster anyway. It's as though slicing one in half would be akin to cutting her own skin open. Noooo! Toast comes in pairs, you get to have Two Pieces, it's a Rule!

Same problem with cheeseburgers. Crabby does not eat them frequently, but on the rare occasions when she does, she likes the big fat medium rare restaurant type burger, not a skinny dried-up overcooked fast food patty. But she is not a hyperactive 12 year old anymore. She does not need to eat an entire big-ass restaurant cheeseburger!

So just watch Crabby at a restaurant with her giant cheeseburger sometime, carefully cutting it in half and pushing the unnecessary half to the far side of her plate. What restraint!

The feat would be much more impressive, however, if she'd leave the extra half the f*ck alone. But she doesn't, does she? After she's gobbled up the first half, she'll eye the other half longingly, then decide to slice off just a bit more, and, then... well, you know the rest. She returns to the second half of the burger again and again until the whole thing is gone.

(Of course one of the best reasons to acquire a Significant Other is the ability to split cheeseburgers. Well sure, there's the lifelong companionship and joy and all that stuff, but--built in portion control! Alas, sometimes, one's partner isn't there or is not in the mood to provide cheeseburger portion control assistance, and if Crabby had more sense, she would never, ever, order a cheeseburger in these instances).

The good news is that just as the ability to divide things into fractions can be forgotten or ignored, this ability can also be rediscovered again! This morning, for example, Crabby had a piece and a half of toast and was very pleased with herself, so she knows it's possible.

So if you're forgetful like Crabby, you may want to keep in mind that you do not need to be ruled by "serving sizes"--they're arbitrary. Fractions are your Friends!

Is this a problem anyone else has? Or is Crabby the only one who needs to repeat fourth grade?

Hunger

Our friend Kery over at Color Me Fit had an interesting post the other day about feeling extra hungry one weekend. Kery's thoughtful observations about hunger got Crabby thinking about it too.

So it occurred to Crabby that with all of our recent discussion of Portion Size (what with special plates and tall skinny glasses and whatnot), she was making a major assumption that she left clean out of the discussion. And thus some of us may be talking about completely different things when we talk about limiting portion sizes.

When Crabby strategizes about decreasing serving sizes, she means: tricks to keep from eating well past the point of satiety just because something is tasty.

She does not believe anyone should ever have to go hungry in the name of health. If arbitrary portion sizes are too small to fill you up, then you need to eat more.

But what is "hungry?" What is "full?" These are tricky concepts, because there's a lot of space in between "starving" and "stuffed." Many of us find eating pleasurable. The amount we want to eat is frequently a great deal larger than the amount we need to eat to avoid a state of uncomfortable hunger.

Also, there's a difference between "real" hunger, in which one desires food, almost any food that's not vile, versus eating for entertainment or for emotional comfort. Are you craving chips and cookies and ice cream and nachos but not somehow you're not quite hungry enough for roasted chicken or green beans or spaghetti? Then perhaps you're not "really" hungry. This is the type of eating that Crabby thinks should be controlled--not eating from "real" hunger.

So without doing any research or providing any helpful links to actual studies, Crabby is just going to go out on a limb and proclaim: No diet/lifestyle-change/eating plan or whatever is going to work on a permanent basis if it leaves you feeling hungry all the time. Crabby believes that if you are eating almost exclusively healthy nutrient-dense foods--whole grains and lean protein and fruits and lots of vegetables and reasonable amounts of healthy fats--than you should never have to experience "real" hunger except when it's time for your next meal.

(And what if you just want to starve yourself "temporarily" to meet a goal weight? Good luck with that. From what Crabby understands, what one does to keep weight off is not all that different from what one had to do to lose it. So going slow and adopting lifestyle changes you can keep to always seemed a much more sensible plan than starvation, at least to Crabby.)

But all of this is easy for Crabby to say. She's not fat. Her metabolism works in such a way that she can maintain her desired weight by exercising a lot, eating healthy, and avoiding more than occasional gratuitous recreational eating.

Suppose, though, that she were like many of you--suppose she did all that healthy stuff and was still heavy? And what if she had to put up with all the crap that society dishes out to people who are overweight? Would she still say "eat more if you're really hungry?"

She sure hopes so. Strong healthy people come in all different sizes, and she hopes she would be proud of her strength and good health regardless of the size of her waist or the number on the scale.

So smart readers, is Crabby full of it? (No pun intended). And what do you think of limiting portions to the point of hunger. Do you/would you do that yourself?

Amazing "Portion Control Tool" Helps Diabetics Reduce Meds

A fun new study on portion control out of the University of Calgary found that diabetics using a special "portion control tool" lost weight--in fact, as much weight as they would have by going on medication.

Seventeen percent of participants using this special "tool" lost five percent or more of their body weight. And twenty six percent who used the "portion control tool" were able to decrease their use of diabetic medications. Hooray! That's impressive.

And what was this cutting edge "portion control tool" that was so successful?

It's a plate! A really funny-looking plate! Well, it's actually kind of cute, especially if like your plates on the whimsical side.

Crabby doesn't want to make a habit out of using people's pictures without permission (sorry, IGallop), or at least not until she figures out what the rules are. So she'll refer you to the Diet Plate website to show you what it looks like. Sort of adorable, no?

The study that used the Diet Plate has already been discussed all over the blogosphere by people much smarter than Crabby. So you may have already formed your own opinions. But that won't stop Crabby from tossing in her two cents! After all Portion Control is a favorite subject here at Cranky Fitness. (And Crabby has lots more sneaky tricks, but she doesn't want to use them up just yet. She's going to need material for future posts).

So one thing Crabby likes about this study is that it's more proof of one of her favorite theories: people are dimwits! And this is very good news, because we can use our own dimwittedness to great advantage.

Because of course there's no reason you can't put less food on your plate all by yourself. If you know you need to eat less, then eat less. But we don't do it! Now, however, maybe we will because someone has invented a "special" plate. It's actually clever: it's got smaller surface area than normal (but a nice big rim), and they've put little lines on it that label various parts of our meal and set limits on how much to eat. And research says it actually works! How cool (and dumb) is that?

However, there's one surprising downside to the amazing new Diet Plate: it costs $30! Doesn't that seem awfully high for one plate? If you want a matching bowl with that, and the whole "plan," it will run you quite a bit more. (Crabby was going to give you that figure too, but the website went down as she was writing this because the Diet Plate people were getting too much traffic!)

Rather than spend $30, Crabby prefers to just take the idea, which is free, and eat on a smaller plate. (And actually, Smart Readers already suggested this idea back in the comment section of the previous portion control post). And perhaps we can use some sort of barely edible garnish, like skinny carrot sticks or celery slivers, as a divider to make sure we go way easy on the potatoes and way less easy on the broccoli.

Or, better yet, we can wait a few weeks for some discount chain to crank out a cheap Diet Plate knock-off. (Is that too mean? But Crabby sort of thinks the Diet Plate People have it coming for trying to charge $30 for one plate). On the other hand, if you've got the cash and don't want to wait or try to arrange garnishes or paint lines on your plate--just go ahead and order it! If it helps, it's worth thirty bucks. Crabby promises she won't make fun of you.

Oh, and another thing that tickles Crabby about the Diet Plate people is their marketing. Here's one of the come-ons for this plan:

"Want to eat with your family without being made to feel different because you want to lose weight?"

Then buy the Diet Plate?

Because Lord knows, eating off your own weirdly painted and brightly colored "special plate" will make you feel much less conspicuous when dinnertime comes around!

Unless, of course, you decide to spring for special Diet Plates for the whole family... Oh.

Actually, Crabby thinks the whole idea is a good one. She just thinks it could be cheaper. She is someone who is easily fooled by the shape and size of the containers her food is served in, so she would probably be a good candidate for her own Very Special Plate!

So what do you guys think? (And no need to stay on topic--any thoughts about anything are always welcome at Cranky Fitness).

Portion Control and Being An Idiot

There are people out there who have no trouble at all with portion control, but not many. For most of us, there is a big difference between what we need to eat, and what we want to eat. And a lot of the time, unless we're really strict with ourselves, want is going to win out over need.

Here's one strategy that may help: Be an Idiot.

Often you can fool yourself on portion size as easily as you can fool a two year old child. There's even Actual Scientific Research on this which will be discussed below. In the meantime, Crabby will give you an example.

Do you remember from psychology class how there's a stage in child development where kids think that a tall, skinny glass has "more" juice in it than a short fat glass, even when they watch someone pour the same liquid from fat glass directly into tall glass?

Well Crabby is every bit as naive as a toddler. She used to drink her morning orange juice in a big fat tall glass. Eventually she realized she was drinking about 16 ounces of juice--well over 200 calories. What to do? She couldn't just fill up the glass part way because it looked too short. She felt deprived. It was only half a glass of orange juice.

So Crabby bought a new set of tall skinny 8 ounce juice glasses, and now she doesn't feel deprived, because she gets a full glass of juice every morning. It's dumb, but it works.

So a couple of guys at University of Pennsylvania, Andrew Geier and Paul Rozin, actually get paid to study this stuff. They've conducted studies on "unit bias"--how people decide that a particular portion of food is the right amount, and how that influences how much food people eat.

In one study, they put a large mixing bowl of M&M's at the concierge desk of an apartment building. Below the bowl hung a sign that read "Eat Your Fill" with "please use the spoon to serve yourself" written underneath. (Had she lived in that building, Crabby would no doubt have found many reasons she suddenly needed to visit the concierge's desk).

The tricky researchers sometimes set out a small spoon for people to use, and sometimes a large one.

When there was a small spoon, most people took a single scoop, even though the sign encouraged them to "eat their fill." But when the spoon was larger, they'd take a much bigger scoop and eat twice as many M&M's.

"It is more than just people afraid of appearing greedy," said one of the sneaky scientists. "They didn't know they were being observed. We have a culturally enforced 'consumption norm,' which promotes both the tendency to complete eating a unit and the idea that a single unit is the proper amount to eat."

Crabby swears she saw an even more amusing M&M study which she can't find anymore, which may well be by the same sneaky scientists, because how many researchers are out there studying M&M consumption? Anyway, the study said that if you give people a bag of M&M's all the same color, they won't eat nearly as many as if it's a multicolored bag. More variety can trigger people to eat more, even though they must know they're all the same flavor.

So: be an idiot like Crabby. Use skinny juice glasses, small spoons, and divide your M&M's up so you're just eating one color at a time.

Is anyone else this dumb? Have any good tricks to share?