Ice cream before Dinner

Hi all. I have been on vacation (thus explaining the lack of posting the last couple days) but had an experience I wanted to share.

Yesterday the kids wanted to go get ice cream. After playing on the beach all day and trying to work out a schedule where I could get a shower and prep dinner and make all of that happen so we could walk downtown to get ice cream before the shop closed, I realized I couldn't make it all work.

So we came up with a plan B. Plan B was to have the kids walk downtown to get ice cream before dinner -- dinner would be ready when they got back. Here is what I am thinking....

If the kids eat ice cream before dinner and they get more full, it is more likely they will eat less dinner. If they ate dinner first (when what they really wanted was ice cream) they would eat their normal amount of dinner and then finish all of their ice cream. Thus, eating more calories total.

So what would happen if we ate more like this -- when we were hungry for a sweet, we ate a sweet -- when we were hungry for ribs or a steak or a salad, we ate some of that. Why do we try to trick ourselves with healthier choices first and then end up eating the food we really wanted in the first place.