I was lucky enough to be in Malta last weekend and had a really lovely break. While we were there we were taken out for meals every evening and the first evening we went to this lovely Brazilian restaurant down on the waters edge.
The principle of the restaurant was that they had skewers of different meats such as chicken wings, Brazilian sausages, rib eye steak, fillet etc and that they walked around the room and cut you meat straight from the skewer onto your plate.
On your table you had a coaster which was green one side and red the other and basically while you left the coaster on green you would get unlimited amounts of meat carved onto your plate.
Now the food was fantastic! All of it tasted great but it so reminded me of the old me! The eat as much as you can mentality that got me big in the first place, the logic of 'value' based on having so much food that you would struggle to walk back to your hotel room.
When I was big I always made my menu choices based on what was biggest, what was the most expensive and basically what was the best dish that they sold! It was never based on what I liked the most, what I fancied trying because I hadn't had it before etc.
During the evening they brought round nine different meats and kept coming back with them for a second chance, I have never seen that amount of meat work it's way round a restaurant and because it was very nice it was tempting to just keep the coaster on green! The old me would have literally demolished piles and piles of meat and then felt sick and bloated but 'happy' because I had been out for a big meal.
So anyway the weekend went on and we went to a local Maltese restaurant on the last night, I ordered the calamari but the little chef came out to tell me he had none left but would make me a surprise dish if I was happy. I said go for it and a few minutes later he brought out the most fantastic local fish (called Rappa) which was THE freshest fish I have ever tasted, it was a small fish but I would have that dish a hundred times over compared to the eat as much as you like down the road.
Now I always say to people that it is 'Eat As Much As You Like' and not 'Eat As Much As You Can' but to be slim long term you have to break the beliefs that you have around value i.e. the more you eat the better, and also realise that moderation (which ultimately being slim requires!) is all about being able to stop before your body tells you to stop...
