The Mindless Margin

Saturday:

Time: 35:03 - Distance: 2.88 miles - Avg Pace: 12:09/mi.

Calories: 336
Soundtrack: Mindless Eating

I decided to switch my Saturday and Sunday walks, because I had an adventure planned for Sunday. So Saturday was just 35 minutes, up 6th Ave to Flatbush and Atlantic, and then back home. I continued listening to Mindless Eating, a book subtitled "Why We Eat More Than We Think." Really interesting stuff, about the psychology of food and eating and portion size and how things like variety or large plates or our assumptions about serving sizes cause us to overeat. It talks about how to use these same tricks in order to mindlessly eat less, using something called the "mindless margin," 100-200 calories a day we can eliminate from our diets without even noticing, and that can lead to steady weight loss. What's more, the addition of these calories--100-200 extra calories we often eat without being aware of it--can cause weight gain whose provenance we can't explain. So I'm playing with some of these ideas. Having tried *diets* in the past that call for elimination of certain beloved foods, I'm particularly a fan of this quote from Mindless Eating: "The best diet is the one you don't know you're on." Word.