episode 254: the easiest way to stop overdoing it with food

Dec 1

This week, I’m teaching you a quick, super-actionable tool you can start using immediately — especially if you’re heading into a season of parties, appetizers, cookie trays, latkes, and all the random “just take one!” moments that somehow turn into a whole meal.

We’re talking about The Plate Pit Stop — a tiny action that helps you stay connected to what you’re eating without tracking, restricting, or giving yourself a whole list of rules to follow. It’s shockingly simple… and even more effective.

Inside the episode:

The sneaky way grazing disconnects you from your hunger and your choices
Why your brain lies to you about how much you’ve actually eaten
How one tiny slow down moment can completely change the way a holiday event feels
Why this works even when you aren't trying “be good” or micromanage your food
How to use this at home

This isn’t about portion sizes or protein targets

It’s about awareness — the kind that makes you feel good when you leave a party instead of stuffed and pissed off at yourself.

254
[00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome back. The DI Diaries. If you're watching on YouTube, you're gonna see that I'm recording in my kitchen without a microphone because sometimes we gotta let it be easy. And I was down here working and I knew that going upstairs and hooking up the microphone and doing all that was gonna be a barrier to getting this done.
So I gave myself permission to do a little bit less and say it's good enough. It doesn't have to be perfect, right? I'm not like on Wondery. The sound quality is good enough. So this episode is gonna air the Monday after Thanksgiving, um, which maybe it could have been the week before, but I wanted to get last week's episode, um, with Nicole out and ahead of like Black Friday and all that.
And what I wanted to talk about today is gonna be super fast and short. I know holidays are here now. We're like in the thick of it. And, um. Time is always precious, but sometimes I feel like around this time of year for a lot of people, it just feels like there's even less time. And so I wanna just give you some short, really [00:01:00] actionable episodes.
And I feel like in my head, it's been a while since I've talked about some food specific stuff. Um, you know, two weeks ago was like the big body image episode and I so appreciate a lot of you listened. And I did hear from some of you, um, I heard from a lot of people who were like, yes, I agree with you. I didn't hear from the people who disagreed with me, which I kind of expected.
Um, but if you did disagree with me and I made you uncomfortable, I get it. I hear you. I totally validate and appreciate that you feel that way. And I would love to hear from you actually. If you have a different point of view, I would love to hear it. Um, again, it's meant to be a conversation, not like a one-sided, just, you know, uh.
Point of view. All right, so let's talk about this. I probably have done a podcast about this before. I don't even remember. Um, I wanna talk about one of my favorite tools for eating that's always useful, but it's especially useful around the holidays. And I have even a fun little liter literative name for it.
And it is, it is the [00:02:00] plate pit stop. The PPP, the plate Pit Stop. And basically what that means, kind of self-explanatory, is that when you eat something, it needs to have a pit stop on a plate. Between where you picked it up from and it goes in your mouth, right? It pit stops on the plate. It doesn't go from the serving dish or the counter or the dessert tray or the cheeseboard, the charcuterie board directly into your mouth.
It has a pit stop on a plate, and so I just kind of. You know, in passing mention some of the situations where this becomes especially useful, right? But on holidays, there's a lot of appetizer stuff, whether you're at dinner at a party and there's a lot of grazing and a lot of picking, and it's very easy.
We all do this, oh, I'll just pick up a piece of cheese. I'll pick up a chocolate covered m and I'll grab another cookie. I'll have another little stuffed breathing or another scoop of a tortilla chip into like the spinach artichoke chip, artichoke dip, and pop it directly into my mouth. And when we do that, we [00:03:00] lose all connection to how much and what we have eaten.
You think, you know, because I've done this too, you think, you're like, I had like three bites of this and I had three of those and two of those and one of those. Trust me, you had way more than that. You probably only remember the stuff that you actually put on the plate. And if you didn't put anything on the plate, you are forgetting, which is normal.
We all do it and there's so much research to back this up that like when we actually track food meticulously, we forget. And especially the longer we wait, obviously the more we forget. So this, putting your food on a plate helps with. A bunch of things. It's like a, it's like a, a, a three for one. It helps you have a much better sense of what you have eaten and how much you have eaten.
It slows down the process, right? If you know that you need to put that food on a plate, it creates a little bit of friction. It's kind of the opposite of [00:04:00] me going upstairs, right? To, to do this podcast today with. With the microphone. I was trying to reduce friction. You are actually trying to add friction and the point in adding friction is not to stop yourself from eating it, but it's to try and make a as thoughtful of a decision as possible during the holidays, at parties, at dinners, at family stuff, there's so much food around, there's so much special food around, it's even harder to make.
Thoughtful choices than it is maybe at other times of the year. And so this skill, this very tangible, tactile skill, can help you do that, right? Because if you know, if you're not just picking a cookie up off of a tray and putting it in your mouth, if that cookie has to go on a plate, you have to go get a plate, you have to put the cookie.
On the plate. You see it on the plate and then you eat it. And that's multiple steps. That's going to give you some time. It stretches out the experience so that you are slowing things down and it's giving you a chance [00:05:00] to. Um, pause, slow down and think through, do I actually want this thing? Why am I eating this?
And you may not overtly ask yourself those questions. That's okay. The inherent slowing down of the process of having to put it on a plate is going to. Um, facilitate that happening kind of in a, uh, maybe a, I'm not gonna say like subconscious, but in a slightly, I don't even wanna say automated. It's going to give you an opportunity to pay a little bit more attention, is really what it's gonna do.
That's probably the best way of saying it. Even if you're not overtly asking yourself, like, do I really want this? Or Why am I eating this? Just the fact that you have to pick it up, get a plate, put it on a plate, is gonna make you pay more attention, right? When you're grabbing something off of a tray and putting it directly in your mouth, you really don't have to pay any attention.
Um, and so those, this idea that it gives you a lot more awareness of what you ate and how much you ate, right? So we, I think all of us can agree that we wanna [00:06:00] walk out of every holiday event feeling good. Nobody wants to walk out feeling stuffed and gross and disgusting. But yet that is sometimes often what happens, and I get why.
Right? Because there's so many special foods around that we may only get once a year. And certainly there are certain foods where you may choose to overeat them. You may choose to eat past your normal point of fullness because it's special. And when you're doing that with intention and you know why you're doing it.
Cool. I definitely choose to do that. Um, but there's also a lot of eating that we are not as thoughtful about because it's around because other people are eating it because we feel obligated. 'cause someone made it. And there's a lot of that family stuff. Oh, I made my special dip, don't you want some? No, I fucking hate that.
And you feel like you have to eat it. Anyway, there's a lot of that. Um, and a lot of, well, I don't wanna waste this, right? This is, this is sitting out, like, what am I gonna do with it? There's a lot of reasons why we eat, and so giving yourself a chance to slow [00:07:00] down and just pay attention to what you're eating in any form is helpful, right?
Even if this only alters or impacts how much or what you ate. A quarter of the time. Awesome. That's actually huge and you won't know that, right? Like you're not gonna be like keeping track of it, but doing this will impact what you're eating, how much you're eating, and why you're eating it will and a thousand percent will.
I know it factually from own personal experience and from every single one of my clients that has practiced this because they all do and they all love it. And they're like, oh my God, this actually is transformative for me. Right? And they all come back and they say, I picked my appetizers. It often helps you even be more thoughtful about kind of like what you're choosing, right?
Because so often we'll grab things like we're, we're just like passing by or we're standing around talking and we're just picking, picking, picking. Um, and we're grabbing things that, do we even like this? Like why am I eating [00:08:00] this? So it makes you even be more thoughtful about what you're choosing. So not even the what in terms of like.
I'm not even really talking about nutrition guys. I'm not even talking about protein and veggies. I'm talking about the what in terms of something that I actually want to eat and like, versus something that's kind of just sitting there or that like, you know, I like, but I don't love. Um, it gives you an opportunity, again, just to uplevel your thoughtfulness and your awareness without taking away anything, without like being obvious, without anyone knowing what you're doing.
You can have an impact. And again, just by doing this, just by committing to practicing this, it will impact things like I. It's one of those things where if like you just do this, you don't have to do much more work beyond it, right? You don't have to sit there and like think about, well, how hungry am I and how am I gonna rank my hunger and how full am I?
And you know, did I [00:09:00] get enough protein and how many servings of veggies did I have? Like I'm not talking about any of that. Just doing this is going to do the work for you, if that makes sense. Meaning that there's not a lot of like internal mental work. There's not a lot of decisions that you have to make.
Putting your food on a plate is going to do the work for you, which is why it's so fucking cool and useful all of the time, but especially around the holidays. Right? And so how can you apply this outside the holidays? You can apply this in your own home, right? How often do you stand and take, you know, chips out of the bag standing in front of the pantry or a couple spoonfuls of ice cream?
And I, and I do this ever when I'm not consciously practicing this, right? I'm a human. I obviously grab things from the fridge and the pantry and all of that. Um, I've also done a lot of work around food and so I have a lot of flexibility and I give myself a lot of leeway with certain skills because I know that I can grab three or four chips outta the pantry and put it away and be fine.
If you know you can't do that, then that's [00:10:00] not something, that's something where you using a plate, a napkin, whatever it is, is going to be hugely beneficial for you. Right. So using this at home in those situations of like where, you know, you tend to eat out of a bag. Plate pit stop. So it's not, you're not restricting it.
I'm not even telling you to say like, oh, I could only have X portion size. This isn't about like. Oh, I have to have my protein first. This is simply practicing putting whatever food you want to eat, whether it's a gummy bears or veggies or chips or chicken, whatever it is, putting it on a plate so you know how much you ate, you know what you ate, and you inherently slowed down the process so that you are being thoughtful about what's going on your plate, and it's that simple.
So that's what I wanted to share. Um, I feel like I tend to repeat myself a lot on these podcasts I know, which I don't think is a bad thing. But I would love to hear if you have tried this, if you're going [00:11:00] to try this, and what situations it was helpful for you. Um, I'm gonna try to remember to share like some pictures over, um, on social media of like me doing this.
Um, 'cause certainly like holiday time, like, you know, all the giant appetizer situations and like what Danny makes Lakas and we have this giant, two huge trays of Lakas. People are walking through the kitchen, like they've had their, their meal, they're picking up lakas, right? They're eating them. Um. It happens in so many situations.
We're so conditioned to eating that way, and so that's why this shift of simply putting your food on a plate, the plate pit stop, can really be transformative truthfully, without a ton of work, without a ton of effort, and without a lot of mental energy, right? This isn't, again, something where you have to like really think through like your values and emotionally regulate yourself and sit in discomfort and all this stuff.
This is like, this is pretty transactional. It's pretty easy. Which is what I love about it and why it's so cool for the holidays. So there you go. That's what I got for you. Thank you for listening. Um, I will be, [00:12:00] I'll be back next week.