Lessons From The Breakfast Buffet: Tips to Avoid Overeating!

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Nicole Burley, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

My husband and I just spent a few days at a beautiful resort in Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. Like many tropical resorts or vacation destinations, there was a glorious and abundant breakfast buffet every morning. Anything a human being could ever possibly want to eat for breakfast was featured at this buffet. From bacon and eggs, to pastries and doughnuts, to waffles and ham – you name it – it was there!

A buffet has the ability to strike both glee and dread into the hearts of food-lovers everywhere. On the one hand, it’s delightful and exciting to think that you can have ANYthing you want – in abundance. You’re like a kid in a candy store, filling your plate with all the fun things you want to taste.

On the other hand, a big buffet can inspire a lot of anxiety. For some of us, there’s a sinking feeling of doom. You just KNOW that you’re going to overeat. There’s a sense of powerlessness and inevitability to the whole endeavor that can be quite a buzz-kill.

Does this resonate for you at all?

Of course, when you’re on vacation, you want to relax, enjoy, not think about anything ‘stressful’ like calories or making healthy food choices. And you also want to embrace some new experiences and try things you might not normally eat back at home. Fair enough.

But as I watched people journey to and from the buffet, their plates spilling over with pancakes AND waffles, omelets AND quiche, sausages AND ham. I had to wonder…..how is this less stressful than choosing something nourishing and nutritious? Aren’t they going to feel kinda gross afterwards? Sluggish? Bloated? Gassy? Constipated? That doesn’t sound like my idea of a fun vacation!

No. I have to believe that the reason people were hoarding breakfast food on their plates was because….it was there. Because they could. Because it was ‘included’ in the room rate. Because it doesn’t ‘count’ on vacation. Because they didn’t want to ‘waste’ the chance to eat everything. The wisdom of the food choices was not a factor – nor was there any thought towards how all that food would make them FEEL after they ate it.

I submit that if we focused more on how we want to feel after eating, rather than focusing on how much food there is to eat, our plates would look entirely different. But, more often than not, we lose our connection to our bodies when we’re faced with a big buffet. Usually, we’re focused on getting our money’s worth, or reveling in the freedom of being able to eat absolutely everything in sight, plate after plate – seemingly without consequences. It’s like we think that buffet food doesn’t have the same impact on us as food that we had to order and pay for a la carte.

It does.

What if you asked yourself the following question before you ate anything at all: How will this make my BODY feel after I’m done eating it?

Notice that I didn’t ask how it would make YOU feel. These are two different questions.

If I asked you how YOU would feel if you ate a belgian waffle with whipped cream, you might say that it would make you feel ‘happy’ or ‘soothed’ or ‘rewarded’.

If, however, I ask you how your BODY would feel if you ate the same waffle, your answer might be that your body would feel ‘jittery’, ‘dissatisfied’ and ‘hungry an hour later’.

This is so often how we get into trouble, though! We blur the lines between our emotions and our stomachs, mistaking emotional yearning for physical hunger – and we over-indulge.

Please take a moment now to consider how kooky this is. If you were actually physically starving for food, and I told you to just be sad and weepy for 20-minutes and you wouldn’t be hungry anymore, you’d think I was insane. And yet, when we are feeling sad and weepy, we think that eating a box of malomars is actually going to fix our sadness. One system has nothing to do with the other. It’s like trying to fill the bathtub by running the kitchen sink.

We enjoy the feelings of FREEDOM and ABUNDANCE that come with a big buffet – and so we over-indulge in the food because we want to keep feeling those feelings, not because our bodies actually need or want that much food. As a result, we end up stuffed, sick, and less able to enjoy ourselves. Hardly free – and too clogged up to receive any more abundance.

Bottom-line: food is food – even on vacation, and even at the buffet. The practical reality is that when you eat too much – particularly too much salt, sugar, and fat – it changes your bio-chemistry and impacts your body and your health. Overeating delivers a factual impact – no matter how emotionally satisfying it may feel to indulge.

So, again, ask yourself: How will this food that I am about to eat make my BODY feel? Sluggish? Insatiable? Energized? Constipated? Vital?

How would you LIKE to feel after you eat?

Here are a few more tips on how to avoid overeating – whether you’re at a breakfast buffet, a dinner party, or eating at home:

• Sloooow doooown when you eat. Chew your food thoroughly. Try to eat without distractions (like watching TV or working at the computer). Take the time to receive the full experience of your food.
• Become an expert on how certain foods make you feel physically after you eat them. Take notes!
• Armed with your notes, ask yourself if the food before you is worth feeling jittery, or heavy, or bloated, or greasy inside. Make a conscious decision to eat it – or not to eat it.
• Fill your plate mostly with food that you know is going to make you feel good, energized, and vital. Eat those foods first, before tasting the more indulgent foods – and pay close attention to your appetite.
• If a certain buffet food item is going to make you feel yucky – but it looks reeeeally good – just take a little bit of it. Try not to take a full portion and ‘promise yourself’ that you won’t eat the whole thing. Sadly, that rarely works. If the whole thing is not on your plate, it’s impossible to eat the whole thing.
• You can always go back and get more. If something was awesome and you just have to have more – go get it. Consciously.

I could talk about this subject all day long. If you’d like to talk about it, too, there are many ways you can make that happen! You can sign up for my FREE chat-letter, you can register for one of my FREE tele-classes, or you can schedule a FREE 30-minute introductory coaching session=. I will look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks!

To your health and success -

Coach Nicole