You got to make the moment last!  Especially when eating.

I did a longer blog about Elegance on my sister blog, www.joy-cafe.com/joyblog.

In our fast-paced excessively clinical, contemporary world, many things have fallen by the wayside.  Elegance is word that means, “dignified richness and grace.”  Richness and grace tend to make you think of an era when people took time to have tea with one another. 

I discovered my mom’s egg cups recently.  We ate our boiled eggs in those cups when I was growing up.  I’d forgotten.  Mom taught my brother and me proper table etiquette – how to set a table and what use each utensil for.  Her theory was to teach us as children so that after we grew up we’d never be embarrassed dining out in a formal setting.

I hear your brain churning wondering, “Nan, what does this have to do with weight loss and getting back into your little black dress?”  Plenty!

So many in our society tend to rush into a fast food restaurant, shove down the food, rush back to their cars, go home, and plop down in front of the television for the rest of the evening.  I remember eating out with my brother a few years back, and we both shoveled our salads down as if the food was going to be snatched out from under our noses any minute!  My son is the same way.  I have NO idea where this came from BUT IT HAS TO STOP!

If you shovel your food down, by the time your stomach registers, “Hey, we’re full down here.  No, we’re more than full.  We’re overstuffed.  We feel awful!” you’ve eaten way too much.  I’ve heard it said that it takes about 10-20 minutes for your stomach to register fullness.  If you eat slowly, take the time to savor your food, and sit down at the table with a real plate, you just might stop eating long before you overeat!

I really think I ate so mindlessly over the past few years that I probably never registered what I was eating.  You know I didn’t gain all this weight by magic!  So Alpha Hubby and I are trying to make an effort to eat at the dining room table and use the good dishes!  We are taking time to savor the food (which tastes better now that we cut out chemicals) and eat like elegant people, not like pigs with our snouts in the trough.  He he.  Had to break up all this uppity-up stuff!

SLOW DOWN!  That’s my bit for today of what I’ve learned in the past few weeks.  I need to take my time eating and stop when I begin to feel a tiny bit full.  If any of us wait until we are really full, it’s too late.  We are overstuffed – and it will show!

  www.littleblackdressdiaries.com  and www.joy-cafe.com/joyblog