I had one of those "moments of clarity" the other day and thought I would share. I used to share my house with my uncle (who is also very overweight) and cousin (who is only slightly overweight). One of our staple meals was the good old spaghetti bolognaise, which I always saw as a very low cal, low fat meal. I used high grade minced meat (very low fat), never added oil in the cooking and had myself convinced that this was one of our "healthier meals". I would cook up a huge pot, my cousin would eat a "normal" plateful and my uncle and I would pile our plates high, then go back and polish off the remainder for "seconds".

They have since moved out to their own houses and I cooked up a batch for myself just last week. The recipe I use doesn't make it easy to cut down the quantity, so I figured I'd just put the leftovers into containers and freeze them for instant on-hand meals over the next little while. I ate one cup of meat sauce/pasta mix for dinner that night and 1/2 to 1 cup for lunch the next day, then put all the rest into 1 cup servings and froze it.

The epiphany came when I saw how many one-cup servings were in that huge pot!! Even after taking 2 band-sized meals out, I had EIGHT cups left over!! I had to go out and buy more small plastic containers to fit it all. There was a total of 10 cups of food in that pot! I think my cousin would have eaten about 2 cups worth, and my uncle and I would have polished off 4 cups each in one sitting! What's worse, is that quite often, I would have made an even larger pot, if we were all feeling particularly hungry, and that would likely have made 12-14 cups - and we ate it all! NO WONDER we are fat!!

Have any of you had a moment like that, when you finally fully realised how screwed up were your previous perceptions of "normal sized servings"?

definitely! I noticed it when I order Chinese food and can make three meals out of what I used to eat in one sitting.

Lol, yeah. I used to struggle when we had spag bol to keep my serving size down. It was a dangerous meal when dieting becuase I would eat a lot of it.

Made like you say (which is how I make it too and I often replace half the meat with very finely grated veg) it IS a low fat, healthy meal. But in large quanity its not.

I can barely eat 1/4 cup of spaghetti, I tend to eat more sauce than Pasta these days.

I think we're going to notice it more once DH gets banded. We just tend to make lunches for him out of the leftovers but he very often goes back for enormous second helpings. Truly, I think we'll save a fortune once he's banded - I mean I never ate seconds or really huge portions so I havent noticed the savings with just me eating less.

Yes! Everytime we go out to eat! They bring the food and I'm like "wth, that's a lot of food". I always polished it off before without a problem. Now that just seems insane to me. The might as well be walking the cow out on a leash to my table.

Every dinner time! DH has a 'normal' sized portion on his plate while I have my measured portion on my smaller plate. Then 15 minutes later when he has inhaled his food, he looks at me and says, 'Still chewing?'

Yup, definitely see a difference. Chinese food, I don't even order my own meal anymore, I eat a couple bites of DH's. And I use to order a LOT from there.

My chili lasts too long now, I've been trying to tweak it to be a size where me & DH eat enough and no left overs. I keep missing the mark, and having too much left over, or he complains I didn't make enough.

Jachut, DH is getting banded? :biggrin:)

I never order my own meal anymore. I just share with DH. We have found that we need to remember to tell the waiter to not have them split it in the back though because I get nervous and jittery when they bring out a half order and it is still 3 times the amount of food that I eat. People look at us funny when I ask for a dessert plate or bread plate to eat my meal on. I tell everyone about my surgery so I just tell the waitress and they seem to be VERY helpful.

As for my epiphany moment...mine came when I inhaled an entire 9x12 inch cakepan full of carrot cake 1 month before surgery. That was when I decided I needed help and I haven't looked back since. It is funny when we get our epiphany moments, but when they happen they are life changing.