“I bet you can’t eat just one,” read the bag of ever-so-cocky Lays chips. The bag was Dill Pickle flavour to be exact – my favourite. I pondered what I had just read for a brief moment and then concluded. Challenge accepted. I furiously ploughed my fist into the bag of awesome and ripped out a single chip, shoved it into my mouth, and walked away. I had won.
I don’t always win though. To be honest, I rarely ever do. One of the reasons I’ve been so successful with weight loss and maintenance is because I know my limits. I know what my insatiable cravings are capable of.
For example: I know that I cannot have a small piece of tiramisu. I will keep eating until the whole slate of scrumptious dessert is gone. I would only be fooling me. So I save my tiramisu for when I allow myself to strategically gorge, which is another topic all on its own.
The fact that I’m trying to get at is that we’re all human and we all have no self control. (With food.)
There are certain foods that we should avoid eating often because they can rack up our calorie count quite easily. These are called domino foods.
Domino foods are foods prone to portion abuse. They get their name because once you have one, it creates a “domino” effect that leads you to eat more and more. This can really hurt any fat loss goal you may have.
Domino foods vary from person to person, but some common examples are peanuts, almonds, cookies, and chips. My personal worst domino food is the aforementioned tiramisu.
As you can see, domino foods can be both “healthy” foods, and unhealthy foods. A cup of almonds can easily add up to approximately 720 calories. I’m a firm believer that calories aren’t created equally, nor do I promote calorie counting, but generally speaking ingesting a lot of calories can demolish fitness related goals.
Learn what your domino foods are and don’t fool yourself into thinking you can have just one (or two, or three). Being honest with yourself is one of the hardest things to do, and once you master it, you can reap all of the benefits.
What are some of your domino foods, and what do you do to prevent overeating them?
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My domino food is definitely are potato chips. French fries used to be on that list, but thankfully I don’t crave them anymore. I still haven’t learned portion control with potato chips.. for me it’s all or nothing.. so right now, I focus on the nothing.. and that’s okay too.
The first part is figuring out what they are, so keep it up! Are you like that with any kind of chip?
Pretty much any kind of chip. If it’s crunchy I crave it. I’m hoping that one day I can eat chips in moderation. Working on it, but I definitely know that these are a domino food.
That tiramisu looks banging!! In the summer time, I can definitely put away a big ol’ ice cream sunday, no problemo!
So many mean foods pop out in the summer. They send our defenses into overdrive. I like to think there’s no such thing as a “bad” tiramisu. I’ll devour any lol.