Don’t Keep Reaching Into the Chips Bag

If you are going to snack, don’t keep reaching in the chips bag or jar of candy, or nuts, or whatever you have around to eat. Measure out a quantity that you are going to eat, check the box/bag/jar  for how many calories you are going to add to your day’s total, and put that container of food back in the cupboard. Sit down and eat that snack slowly, enjoying every bite.

In an economics class I took a few years ago, my professor gave us a lecture on Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. He gave an example of eating a pizza, stay with me here to see how this is related to dieting! The first bite of pizza is the absolute BEST bite, the next bite is great, and then you get into eating the rest, but it is not as good as that first bite. Basically, the law states that “as a person increases consumption of a product – while keeping consumption of other products constant – there is a decline in the marginal utility that person derives from consuming each additional unit of that product.” This is quoted from the web page this link takes you to.

We should translate this law for dieting. The first one or two bites of a food you love are the best, so why not stop there? They are the most satisfying bites, so why not stop there? Part of our problem is mindlessly snacking out of the bag instead of paying attention to how much we are eating.