My friend, Nina, loved food. She is always the one organizing our group’s lunches, birthday parties, or dinners. My groups of friends get together over food at least once a week. It is easy for us to make plans for these food related events since we work for the same company. The week before Christmas, we attended 3 different office Christmas parties by inviting each other to the different department parties.

Since deciding that I want to loose weight, I find this social bonding over food a little troublesome. I find that I cannot control my weight when I eat out too often. When I was new to the city, I ate because I was bored and without friends. Now that I have friends, I find that I eat to spend time with them. Though we usually do something active (usually bowling) prior to dinner, the intensity of our activity is so low, it does not cancel out the 1,500 – 2,000 calories meal. These are the strategies I am doing to try the next time we go out to eat (which is tomorrow!):

1. Drink half of my glass of water or ice tea before eating.
Hopefully this will make me eat less.

2. Pacing my eating speed to the slowest eater in the group.
That would be my friend Sandra. She spends more time enjoying the conversation than she does eating. I find that I am usually done with my food before she is even halfway through. Maybe if I eat at her speed, I will consume less food and have some leftover for dinner like she does.

3. If I do not want the leftovers, then I am going to throw my napkin over the food.
I have a habit of nibbling at my food even when I am no longer hungry when it is in front of me. Even when I tell myself I will not do that anymore, I cannot seem to stop when I am not talking. I cannot imagine nibbling when my dirty napkin is covering the food. That would be weird. Though I have seen someone do that once in public and I thought it was disgusting.

So let me give plan a try. Maybe it will help. We are what we eat. But sometimes I think we are where our friends want to eat.