The corner of the lasagne

Here's an example. It's a Wednesday evening and you've made a lasagne, a big one, in the dish that feeds six. There are three of you. You serve yourself a good square and sit down, and it's as good as you hoped.

About two thirds of the way through the square, something changes. The edge has gone off your hunger and you feel comfortable. If someone took the plate away at that moment you wouldn't mind much. You don't put this into words, and you may not register it at all. The fork keeps going. You finish the square.

The dish is on the table, still a third full, and you cut yourself another piece, smaller, to be reasonable about it. You eat that. When you clear up, there's a corner left, the crisp one with the browned cheese. It's too small to be worth a box. You eat it standing at the counter, out of the dish, with the serving spoon.

By half past eight you're on the sofa feeling heavy and slightly sick. You're not thinking about how good the lasagne was. You're thinking that you've done it again.

Nothing terrible has happened, and one evening like this does no harm. But if you've picked up this book, it isn't one evening. It happens at most main meals. The takeaway on Friday goes the same way, and so does Sunday lunch at your mother's. So does the hotel breakfast, and the packet of biscuits that was meant to last a week.

I want to split the meal into two parts, because the rest of the book depends on it.

The first part runs from the first mouthful to a point I'll call enough. Enough is the moment when your hunger has gone and you're comfortable. It isn't the same as being full. At enough, you could eat more without discomfort, but you don't need to. It's a quiet signal and easy to miss. This book has no quarrel with anything you eat before it. That goes for the lasagne, for pudding, for chips, and for the cheese.

The second part is everything after that point, and I'll call it the extra. The extra is the last third of the square, the second piece, and the corner from the dish. It's eaten for reasons other than hunger. The food is there, or it's good, or it would be a shame to leave it. Sometimes the meal is pleasant and stopping would end it. Or your attention was elsewhere.

I'll use one more word. Overfull is where the extra leaves you, which is the heavy and sleepy state, a little uncomfortable, that arrives ten or twenty minutes after the meal. Feeling full is often the first sign you consciously notice, and by then you've gone well past enough. That's the meaning of the title.

I should say what this book doesn't claim. It doesn't claim that you eat the wrong things, or that you should eat less in general, or that enjoying food is a problem. It doesn't claim that you're greedy or weak. Chapter 11 takes that up. And it doesn't claim that every meal should stop at enough. A feast now and then is a fine thing, and chapter 12 keeps a place for it. The claim is about the default. The extra, as a habit, gives you very little, and what it costs is the comfort of most of your evenings.

Before the next chapter, I'd like you to collect a little information without changing anything. For one week, at your main meal, see whether you can catch the moment of enough. Eat exactly as you normally would. Afterwards, make a note of three things. Did you notice the moment? Roughly how much was left at that point? How did you feel half an hour after the meal? You'll miss it at some meals, and that's useful to know too.