I was having a cup of coffee in my local Asda the other day. Now Asda is not the place that immediately springs to mind when the thought of somewhere to relax and enjoy a book wanders through the mind. However, since its revamp, the library coffee bar (my old lunchtime haunt) stopped serving a decent brew since they made some sort of arrangement with Starbucks (though it tastes like nothing Starbucks ever served). Weak, watery, and no detectable coffee flavour – in my humble opinion. It’s also about twice the price of ‘old’ coffee. They do a nice green tea and excellent food though so they are not completely off my list. The biggest problem with the new coffee bar is that it has lost the quiet and intimate atmosphere of the old one. A victim of its own success it is now so busy at lunchtimes that there is never a seat available.
BB’s when it opened several years ago served the finest coffee I’d ever tasted, but that rapidly deteriorated to dishwater. This was when I discovered that a ‘small’ coffee was fine, but a medium (or ‘regular’ in the modern idiom imported from somewhere that thinks a soup bowl is a reasonable size for a coffee cup) was watery. Ah ha! It is the same cup of coffee with hot water added to make up the volume difference, I reasoned. So I started to enjoy a small coffee each day and then they took small cups off the price list!!!
Then Asda Runcorn, bless them, built a huge conservatory in the shape of a giant A (for Asda I guess) on the side of its store, while using up most of the car park to add an extension on the side as well. I could never understand making the store bigger to attract more business, but making the car park smaller so the business can’t get in. Anyway, this conservatory turned out to be the new caff and in the new caff they had a coffee machine. The system was this: queue up for ages while one person manages the till, acts as waitress for orders, and simultaneously serves food to queuing customers; buy a cup for a £1; take cup to coffee machine, press button, enjoy a delicious and totally consistent brew of coffee.
So that’s how I ended up in Asda one day sitting in the sunshine and warmth of the conservatory café enjoying my book on wedding photography when I realised that most of the customers in the café were more than a little overweight.
Interesting, I thought and did a quick count. 8 overweight, 3 about average, and two slim. Then I noticed what they were eating. Now I have to say that Asda is typical cafeteria food – chips, sausage, fried eggs, greasy looking lasagne (that’s just the liquefying cheese though), meat pie… Good variety, but I don’t remember seeing any salad. I had some kind of cake there once and it wasn’t good cake – but there is lots of cake – just don’t eat it if you are a cake lover like me.
So if you wanted to eat healthily you’d simply go somewhere else. I noticed plates piled high, and then cleaned – with one exception. The slim people were a couple with a baby. The young lady had had a plate of chips and other stuff and she had finished her meal. She was enjoying her conversation with her partner and keeping an eye on baby, but about three quarters of the meal was still on the plate (clearly finished and pushed to one side) and no attention was being paid to all that wasted food.
This reminded me of something I’d read about the way that slim people think about food in a way that’s quite different from the way overweight people think about food. Slim people don’t have better metabolisms or anything genetic to keep them that way. They simply see food as fuel and when they’ve had sufficient they’ve had sufficient and nothing would cause them to eat any more – no matter how much is left on the plate.
For a slim person food has no personality; it has no power; it has no way to affect how they feel. If they feel good they feel good. If they feel low they feel low. Food just doesn’t enter into it. Does that mean they don’t enjoy what they eat – no! It means they enjoy it fully while they are eating it, but when they are full they stop. They don’t then mourn the loss of the pleasure left on the plate. They see it for what it is – a congealing mess that if anyone was presented with as it is, would go straight in the bin.
Think about that. The difference between overweight and slim could be nothing more than the way you think about food.
I can show you easy ways to change the way you think about food and start the process of losing weight.
A client of mine a few weeks ago shared a comment with me that has stuck with me since. She attributed it to Kate Moss – ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’. And it’s absolutely true.
Make that your mantra to be repeated between each mouthful and watch your life change as you take back control.
And if you’d like more hints and tips on how to lose weight and develop a ‘slim-thinking’ mindset then check out the first of my series of free videos on how to lose weight now.
Enjoy your food.
Michael
