How I Lost 60 Pounds Without Even Trying: Part 4

6. I naturally experienced portion control. The smallness of portions in Europe is adorable to Americans, even though the packaged volume of food is actually similar to how things were sized in the US thirty years ago.

Why are portions so much smaller? Why so few pieces in a package? Well, merchandising is scaled to the size of local homes and cupboards. Europeans simply are not conditioned to having huge amounts of things to store in their typically quite small kitchens. Because they interact with the city every day, they can pick up whatever they need daily, and don't have to hoard it. Sure, folks keep extra drinks in their cellars. But in general, everything from bread to yogurts is sized for an average household of 2 or so. (This is an eco-problem by creating excess packaging, but that's another story.)

Let's say I bought packs of four puddings at the store for an after dinner dessert. There are only four in a pack. Each petite portion contains about seven or eight bites of high-quality pudding.

You eat the pudding, and it is gone. It is strangely satisfying to eat a small amount of something and experience it going from being there to being gone. It's over, and if you really enjoy every bite, you experience satisfaction.

There are limits to what people both need and want, and in this case European manufacturers decide what the limits are. Often, they get it just right: one doesn't need or want any more than what comes in each container. I ended up eating much less than I had in America, and generally enjoying it more. There was an end to it, and the end was in sight.

I never had to literally stretch myself to accommodate super-sized portions. I never had to "just get to the end of it." Consumption is not as strenuous in Europe.

How I Lost 60 Pounds Without even Trying - Fridays

3. I never ate a second helping.
At the first meal I ate with my in-laws after getting off the plane, I helped myself to another heaping portion. It tasted good and there was some left in the dish, so, why not? But there is something about having a very neat and self-righteous elderly father-in-law raise an eyebrow as you scoop into the vanilla pudding for a second time, that makes you never want to do it again. Ever. It was perhaps the first time that anyone so tidy and sure of himself ever reacted so naturally and critically to my overeating. As if there were limits and I should know what they were, and why didn't I? The meal was abundant, I had eaten plenty. There was dessert, and I had my share of that, too. My father-in-law wasn't interested in making sure I could exercise my unfettered liberty. His subtle judgment held a mirror up to my behavior, and I became aware of myself...overeating.

4. I ate out in restaurants a great deal less.
Restaurants in Europe can be expensive -- not necessarily the meals, but all the extras, like drinks. And, the service is structured so that you will be spending more than an hour for the experience. Either sitting there waiting to be brought the menu, waiting for your food which can take up to half an hour, actually eating it, or waiting for your server to come back and bring the bill...all told, it adds up to a long-term commitment of time and money. Again, it is undignified and weird there to rush through life's little pleasures. So, we went from eating out perhaps once or twice a week (either sit-down or fast food) in America to eating out once every four months and having take-away or fast food twice a month at the most.

Tune in for more ways to learn how one loses 60 pounds without even trying, just by living the European lifestyle, next friday...