My friend and I decided to catch up last night along with our teenage sons as we haven't seen each other for ages.

We met at some place called Lazy Moe's which we have never been to before. On the back of the menu it talks about how one of the things that makes them keep going is the look on peoples faces when their food arrives. Well the look on our faces was abject horror - surely that can't be a motivator. The amount of food was ridiculous. One plateful of food would have served an entire Ethiopian village.There must have been about 5lb of chips on each plate.It was just an obscene amount of food.

My son is 17 and can pack away a large quantity of food but even he hardly made a dent in the pile of chips. I had a baked potato but it was flattened and covered an entire dinner plate. I would have expected it to come with maybe a sprinkling of cheese but no it was covered in a thick layer of melted cheese and then there was sour cream as well! Not sure why that was necessary.

Now I don't know if these are the kind of serves that are regarded as standard in the US but if they are then no wonder there is such a huge weight problem. Especially if you have been brought up (as I was) to eat everything on your plate because it is wrong to waste.

The amount of food that this restaurant must chuck into their waste bins every day must be huge. So why do they continue to do it. Surely seeing the amount of waste should tell them that there is something wrong with their serves. That maybe bigger is not really better and that the majority of people would be happy with smaller portions. If push comes to shove then have 2 serving sizes on your menu. A normal serve and a gluttons serve.

Deliberately wasting all that food every day for no reason other than to boast about the size of your serves makes me feel sick.

Even though I've been fat myself, have been a chronic overeater and am definitely NOT passing judgement here, I've never thought of food in terms of getting a bargain with a massive plateful.

I guess i have to admit that although I did it (and still do, lets face it, sometimes) overeating was a shameful secret, not somethign done in public EVER. I have always felt disgusted by watching people scarf down huge platefuls, eat fast etc. So parmas as big as plate have never been something I would order in public, I'd eat a salad and pack in the calories with a few glasses of wine and maybe dessert. We have a chain here called Max Brenners that specialise in hot chocolates and you see all these people, big and small, sitting there drinking what is literally melted chocolate and cream and its just freaking NUTS. How can we condone doing that to ourselves? I have never been able to indulge like that without major guilt and embarrassment. I'm a snacking, grazing overeater, not a big volume at once type - and yet banding has still suited me extremely well.

My hubby is banded and I cant believe how much he eats either (and he has gained weight lately). I made his Breakfast this morning as we were going in to do Run Melbourne and I made my serving size, he was starving an hour later before the run! Quarter of a cup of oatmeal, quarter of a cup of milk, a half a banana chopped up, a few nuts and a little drizzle more of milk. I thought it was a big hearty breakfast for before a 10K!

I grew up poor and it truly was a case of grabbing as much food was available and eating it quickly because we didn't know what might be available tomorrow. It has taken the band for me to change my view of food (although that wasn't the only reason I became morbidly obese).

I'm glad I wasn't living in the US when I was younger or I would have been cleaning up those plates and become even sicker than I did!

Now I am a cheap date with my husband and I usually sharing a single main course for a meal.

I live in Australia and we have a place over here called sophias and the meals are massive like the ones your talking about we went there once for the first time I ordered steak chips and salad when the meal came I swear it had 2 kilos of chips of the plate and 3 yes 3 large steaks and the salad came on a serving platter it was ridicules, you could have fed 4 people with the meal I ordered, I didn't and couldn't finish it, it was such a waste,

Apart from Sophia's our restraints over hear have quite normal sizings and we don't have " up size " in maccas or burger king it's simply small medium or large,

I went to America when I was 19 and found that our large coke at maccas is your small, I couldn't believe it, we stayed at a motel across from Disneyland it was next to Dennie's and the meals there were quite large aswell,

Our country is making meal sizes big aswell compared to what they use to be,

I have a 3 year old and she's quite small petite ( she was a 25 Weeker) so she doesn't eat much but we went to the pub for a meal last week and I ordered her a kids size spaghetti, I swear it was a adult size after 5-6 spoon fills she was done and it didn't even look like it hadnt been touched,

I havnt been banded yet but I'm looking forward to it x

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It depends where you eat of course. As an Aussie, I avoid Sophias, La Porchetta etc coz the food is not only enormous, but its awful anyway. But pub meals are enormous and who doesnt love a good counter meal? A good one that is.

My kids are not completely being brought up to think enormous sizes are normal, because I complain non stop about it, lol. And when I buy fish and chips for example - I buy three flake for five of us and cut them in half! I only ever buy the minimum of chips. I dont add potato cakes and dim sims to the order. Probably only the other Aussies will know what I'm talking about!

500 grams of mince for spaghetti sauce does the five of us (two of whom are teenage boys). I dont serve them huge meals and they dont find they're starving!