Get your minds out of the gutter! The nine inches I’m talking have nothing to do with bordellos, porn movies, enhancements or anything else. Okay, so now that those of you whose minds weren’t in the gutter have slid down that slippery slope, I’ll give you all a minute to compose yourselves. A few deep breaths should help with those naughty thoughts you’re having and if you need to go and have a cold shower, we’ll still be here when you get back.
Is everyone back on track and ready to listen? The nine inches that I’m talking about are nine inch plates. After John had his heart attack, we had to listen ad nausem to the doctors tell us we had to cut back, we had to lose weight, we had to completely change our lives or John was at risk of another heart attack. Some of the doctors were nice about it, but others were pretty militant our need to ditch butter, salt, and all of those other yummy things.
John and I both knew that we needed to start eating better and we needed to get healthy. We also knew that whatever changes we made had to be ones that we could live with or we were setting ourselves up to fail. A quick trip around the Internet led me to some interesting stories about people who had lost weight by switching to a nine inch plate instead of the standard 10 to 12 inch plate that most Americans use. Many people attributed large quantities of weight lost to just this simple switch.
This sounded like something we could really do and stick to, so I headed out to Goodwill to search for some nine inch plates. They were harder to find than I thought, but I managed to locate two sets of four nine inch plates that I brought home, washed, and put in the cupboard. The next step was getting rid of the supersize plates that filled our cupboards. None of them had much sentimental value, so before anyone could protest too much, I packed them up and took them off to goodwill.
The first few weeks on our nine inch diet left us a little hungry and looking for seconds after dinner, but soon our appetites adjusted to the smaller plate size and we were full after a 9 inch dinner. I also started cooking less so that we didn’t have all those tempting leftovers around and if I did end up cooking more than two plates (or three if Sean was eating with us) full of food, I put it away before we ate so that it wouldn’t sit there tempting us.
I’ve found since we’ve switched to a smaller plate, when I go out to eat, I’m amazed (and sometimes a little disgusted) by the amount of food that is piled on a plate and listed as one serving. If we’re at home and eating out, I generally ask for a to-go box before I even dig in and if I’m traveling, I try to order something low calorie and mentally push aside anything that doesn’t fit on my mental 9 inch plate. It doesn’t always work and sometimes I get sucked into the eat, eat, eat, mentality, but I am making a conscious effort to watch my portions.
We’re still working on the other changes and some of them are easier than others, but for now we’re enjoying nine inches of bliss every night.
Cairn by Cairn 