I have "Clean Plate" syndrome? What is that you ask? It's when a person feels guilty for leaving even the littlest amount of food on their plate even though they are full from eating. I found myself doing that this evening.

I just joined a nutrition class at the local community college today. It's my way of truly committing myself to learn about foods as well as developing and implementing a healty lifestyle of eating.

This is what I had today:

Breakfast - 1 cup 1% milk and 1 medium banana (I'm not much of a breakfast person) - total calories accoring to fitday.com = 208 kcal

Snack - 1 cup green tea = 10 kcal

Lunch - Subway Chicken Roasted Salad = 140 kcal; Dannon Yogurt = 80 kcal; 2 bottels of water at 20 fl oz each = 0 kcal

Snack - 1 medium size apple = 80 kcal


By the time I got home, I was feeling pretty good. I was not starving. I currently live with my parents and my mom does most of the cooking. Tonight she made lentil soup. She told me that everyone already ate and whatever that was left in the pot was mine. I took most of what was left in the pot and I think that was 2 cups worth of lentil soup. I was good with that amount. Then my mother noticed the little bit of soup left and told me to finish it so that there weren't any left overs. I understood her point...it really was just a couple of scoupes left of it. She put it on my plate and I was already starting to fill full. I could have left it on my plate, but I felt too guilty for wasting food and therefore wasting money. Thanks to my nutrition class, I'm more aware of why I can't seem to force myself to stop eating until my plate is clean. It is due to habit. Specifically, it's because, when growing up, my parents (my father in particular) would get on everyone's case about money...and that we shouldn't waste any money, which included eating all the food that was on the plate. Anyway, I digress...

I found out 3 cups of lentil soup is 600 calories. So I had a total of 1128 calories today. I will most likely have 1 cup of low fat milk before the end of tonight. I am within my daily calarie intake, but I want to know if anyone else has suffered from "clean plate" syndrome and, if so, how did you over come it? I still feel very full from dinner and that was 3 hours ago!

I suffer from something similar. It's a mix of "clean plate" and "boredom" syndromes. For example, if I'm at a restaurant and I've eaten my fill but there's still something on my plate or in the bread basket, I'll eat it. I can't help but wish that the waitstaff would come by a little sooner and get all that crap outta my way!

I have fought it and I know exactly what you are talking about. It is something that was taught to my generation and I think a contributing factor to the obesity epidemic. We all clean our plate even though at some restaurants it is 3-4 servings. I do not make my kids clean their plate. Sometimes I'll tell them "take two more bites of apples and then you may be excused."

Now I try to always leave bites on my plate. I just tell me "I am trying to learn to stop when I am full." Everyone who eats with me knows that I have a struggle wih my weight.

Thanks for sharing! I use to do that, but one thing that has helped me not grab for the extra table left overs at a restaurant is always having my glass of water full. I find that if I have some water to drink and have my hand around the glass, then I am less likely to reach for the bread basket. Also, I make sure to flagged down the waiter so that she/he can remove whatever food is left in my sight and pack it up to go....or else, I really would eat it all even if I'm full.

Now here is the screwed up part. As soon as I get home or within a couple of hours of getting home from dinner, I find myself very tempted to eat the restaurant left overs...and I usually do eat the rest of it at home on the same night! I am still trying to figure out why I do that. I really LOVE the taste of the food and having that "full" feeling...but not to the point of feeling like I'm going to throw up from over eating.

I do the same thing. At home when we were younger it was always try to clean your plate, and they stressed it even more so at school.
I've gotten better, but it still tends to creep up at times.

Ah, my husband and I both have this and we have been working together to over come it.
We both come from very poor backgrounds, where sometimes there wasn't enough money to buy food. My husband especially, had more siblings than I did, so he learned to eat it quickly and as much as you can before someone else gets it. Mine was more moviated by "eat it now because you might not get food later". This is weird, because I ended up being over weight as a kid, because I ate everything and all of what I could get. If that meant eating lunch at school, then going over a friends house after school (who didnt eat lunch) then eating again, then going home and eating as much as I could from what was at home, then thats what I did.

When there are some bites left ESPECIALLY if we go out to eat, since that was something we did not do as kids (I make it sound like DH and I came from the same family, lol, we did not, just both same kind of childhood), anyway out to eat, we eat EVEYTHING until we are sick! Its really kind of sad.

But over the years we have been working on it. At home I cook much less, so we dont have a lot of food to be eaten. We also will say to each other out loud, that we are no longer poor. That its ok to throw away food and if we get hungry we can buy more. We remind ourselves that our fridge and cabinets are not bare, and we will not starve. And that we are NOT starving as we are both over-weight.

When we are out to eat, its harder, We remind each other that we can come to this restuarant again in teh future and order this meal again if we want. That it will not be the last time we eat here.

I still feel guilty throwing away food, but its getting easier. I ask my self "are you still hungry?" and if I answer "no" I ask "why are you still eating?..Throw it away. Its ok."

Oh yup. I got ya! And in addition, I've always eaten foods in order of preference, from least liked, to most liked, because that way I'd be more likely to follow my parents directions and "clean my plate". (you know... oh boy am I stuffed... BUT what's left is my absolute FAVORITE! *keep eating...)

ugh, I am much better about boxing left overs now than I used to be. I'm improving!

I call this "eating to clean," because it comes sometimes more from a place of "neatening up" rather than scarcity thinking.

(I started a thread on it many months back.)

It means eating simply to get something out of the way, so you don't want to store leftovers, or while clearing out a mixing bowl, or to "even up" portions, or to trim the edges of something that looks messy. The thing is, instead of discarding, you are using yourself, your own body, as the equivalent of a sink drain or a garbage can.

What I do is store the leftoverrs *first* and then eat the meal. It's a lot harder to take out an already cold portion container in a fridge then add "just that last little bit" that's still warm in the pot

FreeBird I think I suffer from the "Clean Plate" Syndrome too. Especially when I am out. If I am full and there is not enough for me to pack up as left overs I feel very wastful having them throw it away so instead I eat it, even though I am full. I am a lot better now than I was before but it still happens sometimes... especially if the meal is a little more $$ than what I usually spend. I feel like I paid for it all so I am going to eat it all.

Crazy I know.

That's a great idea Sacha!

Yup, and it's a habit that I'm still working on. And I get really irritated when my kid comes home from school and tells me the lunch lady makes them finish all of their food. If there is ever a "fullness switch" for some people, this is a great way to break it and continue the cycle of overeating "just because the food is there."

I have a few mottos: "I am not a trashcan" and "Better in the trash than on my, um, rearend." Except I use a different word that sort of rhymes with trash.

I used to. I live with my dad and his religious wife myself. They both put tremendous pressure on me to eat their leftovers and whatever's in the pot, etc. Yet they both chastise me for my weight. It makes me so angry because most people don't realize that most fat people aren't overweight or obese because they're "lazy" or "selfish" and "gluttonous", it's, a lot of the time, borne from a desire to please others and not to be "wasteful". If you don't eat that soup, a child in India won't go starving there. In fact in India and in Africa's cities, a nascent obese "epidemic" is slowly emerging there.

And, it isn't wasteful. The human body can be very "wasteful". How is it any more wasteful if it remains in the pot or flushed down the toilet after it travels through your body? Hang in there! {{Hugs}}

It can be VERY hard to overcome our own guilt and our own desires to eat more and our own addictions, that doubles when others try to give you food out of love when that is their motivation. But time to be firm, you have to be able to speak up and tell them that you really can't eat all that. And, you'll have to do it over and over. Until they eventually learn not to make so much.

I love that quote! (The "rear end" one! ) I may have to start using it.

You made a really good point about how school tells kids to keep eating even when they are full. My son has the opposite problem right now. He doesn't eat enough and has had weight gain issues and would easily go all day without food, and does not eat without someone encouraging him, HOWEVER, my husband and I have discussed that as he gets older, should this swing in the other direction we would not want teachers / lunch people making him eat.(like DH he was under weight, picky eater, hated eating, then during teenage years it changed and he became over weight and ate too much)

I don't think schools should indiscriminately encourage every child to eat. I know I will make sure my son at a young age in encouraged in school, but I wouldn't want teachers to just do it. Also my son has a lot of issues with different foods. Oral motor sensory stuff, and he cant have foods at certain temperatures, or textures. And encouraging him to eat something he doesn't want, will result in him gagging and vomiting.(I only send prefered foods, but if someone were to bring something in to school for a party) Which is an improvement since he used to choke frequently because he had trouble chewing certain foods.

Ok I'm off my

I always hate wasting food. I don't know why. My parents never said I had to clean my plate, in fact, my mother is adamantly against that sort of thing for children. When she was little, she was very sickly and so she had a lot of problems eating. Her mother thought she was helping by always packing her two sandwiches and a thermos of milk-just in case she got hungry before or after lunch. The nuns at her school wouldn't allow her to play outside until she had finished everything in her lunch pail. Of course, she never got to play outside because she could never finish what her mother packed. She will RAGE if she hears someone tell a child to clean their plate.

It's not so much a problem with me at home because I have my two dogs who are god's most perfect garbage disposals. I feel fine giving them my leftovers as they need to eat anyway. It's when I go out to eat that I find I will eat everything. Regardless of whether I want it or not, I just can't leave it and it's usually not enough to take home for later. I've gotten to the point that I have to throw a napkin over the plate so I can't see it.