Super Sizing: Money Shrinks While Waist Lines Grow

"Your Eyes are Bigger Than Your Stomach"

"Your eyes are bigger than your stomach," my mother said, which meant, "No, you can't have a milk shake." She didn't think my 10-year old appetite was sufficient to finish all that food, and she was probably right. Her motivation had less to do with whether I'd eat it, and more to do with the cost of the meal. She hated the idea of wasting money if I left some food uneaten. I remember thinking, "Who cares if I don't eat it all, I just want a milk shake!"

Some of us still carry that thinking, "Wasted food is wasted money," but consider the opposite. If you paid for it, whether you eat it now is irrelevant. Now you can spend the food how ever you please whether it be by eating some, giving some away or even tossing it in the garbage, it's now yours. The food belongs to you. You do not have to eat it to get your money's worth.

Super Sizing is Costing you More than Extra Money

Now restaurants encourage us to order the next size larger, by pricing the larger size only slightly higher than the regular. This appears to be a good value so why not go for it? Of course, if you get the bigger portion now you must "get your money's worth" by eating it all, and that's the problem. You are already receiving your money's worth when you take possession of your order. Whether you eat it doesn't make it a better value. Learning to throw away extra food is far better than eating it even though you're no longer hungry out of some faulty reasoning about value.

The main cost in a fast food meal for the producer is preparation, packaging and serving, not the food. It costs pennies for the syrup in your drink, but you pay over a dollar. A small order of fries costs nearly the same as a large for McDonalds to prepare consequently their profit margin is larger when they sell the larger size. Perhaps they give you a drink you didn't want in your "value meal." That's not a good value if you wouldn't have ordered it in the first place. Ordering the ultra huge super duper size costs the company a few more pennies and that's why the pricing makes sense for the restaurant. Convince the public they are getting good value by offering bigger servings for only slightly more money, and they will most likely order the larger size, which is exactly what has occurred.

The worst of it though is what all this super sizing has done to our bodies. We're now a walking advertisement for super size America.

Finally, consider the cost to your wallet of Super sizing:

* 3 fast-food meals per week X .79 cents extra for the "Super Value Meal" = 2.37 dollars per week

* 3 person family X 2.37 dollars = 7.11 dollars additional expense per week

* 7.11 dollars X 52 weeks/Year = Over 369.72 dollars a year! That's almost a dollar a day.

Nearly 370 dollars per year extra expense just because of those three little words, "Super size it." Think of what you could do with an extra 370 dollars every year.

If you don't want to give up your fast-food habit, at least cut back to ordering a regular sized meal and leave the super sizing for the big boys.

Take a look at your regular eating and drinking habits, especially away from home, and see where you can make some changes that will both save you money, and help you lose some weight at the same time. Super sizing is only a good value for the food industry, not for you or your waistline.

~~ Kathryn Martyn, Master NLP Practitioner, EFT counselor, author of Changing Beliefs, Your First Step to Permanent Weight Loss, and owner of OneMoreBite-Weightloss.com lost 80 pounds over 17 years ago. She maintains her weight using the techniques she teaches in her 8-week Ending Emotional Eating online weight loss program, private coaching practice and her popular workshops.

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