Gluttony Glee

Is there a switch in our brains that goes off when we stand in front of a buffet table laden with food?  The switch that turns you into a slobbering dog that needs to taste every little thing in front of you and then some.  Ooohh, I have 1cm left in my massively extended stomach, I think I will just have my tenth piece of cheesecake to make sure it is truly filled up. I don’t like buffets or the all you can eat deals, they make me anxious.  Not because I don’t know what to do (I know all too well) but because the thought of a bloated Christmas style stomach is just too much to bear. A couple of years ago while holidaying in Singapore we booked in to the Ritz Carlton for their super deluxe lunch buffet.  We stayed for 5 hours.  Sure, that does sound excessive but it was completely necessary in order to navigate ones way around the massive room.  I am certainly not proud of my performance that day and I still don’t like to dwell on the delightful feeling that accompanies eating more than your body weight in one sitting. So what to do?  Well, you can choose not to go.  However, if it is unavoidable I like to think of myself as having a laser beam on my head scanning the sumptuous feast.  I do a drive-by of the whole thing to work out what I REALLY want to eat and then snub the rest.  I try really hard to put only little bits of each on my plate and then have a little chat with myself about whether I truly need vs want to go back to get more.  I know this sounds like a little too much psychoanalysis but it really only takes a second and I am a strategy kind of girl. Plus it saves spending the rest of the day lying on the floor rolling around in agony. Anybody got any good anti-gluttony strategies they would like to share?