It is nice eating with someone else. Studies show that just having someone to eat with helps seniors (probably younger people too) experience less social isolation and depression. My neighbor is 95, both of us live alone so after I retired, I started visiting her regularly and the last 2-3 years I have been taking food over and eating with her pretty regularly, usually whenever I cook up something fresh or like last night, when I pull something out of the freezer. She gets "meals on wheels" for lunch during the week so it is usually evenings. Every couple weeks she will give me money and tell me to go somewhere and get carryout for us. Not a good "diet day" but kind of nice to get a take out burger or chicken now and then.

You would think! But no, I'm in Kansas. Yet I have people I know here who say climate change isn't a thing.

Thanks for the kudos. I have to go with counting, I think because I have to see the numbers. I can eat limited size portions but the counting reminds me I have had enough portions. Half cup of ice cream is a serving (cruel one but yet a serving) and if I look at it as 140 calories out of the day's allowance, I know what I'm dealing with. If I don't count calories, I can limit to an NLEA serving size but I don't know how to translate that into how much total food I can have in a day. I could have just one portion of ice cream with one portion of cake after a portion of chicken and sweet potato and veg and bread and....... Well, I just wouldn't know when I needed to stop. It would be simpler if I didn't have to count, which for me includes recording as just keeping a running total in my head only works for so long. Of course, what would be really nice would be if I had been one of those weird people who never had to think about what they ate, they just don't put on weight. Missed that boat though.