How to not eat

I just came home from a work function which was held in the local science museum and featured lots of tempting food choices.  I say tempting because, as someone who adopted a kosher lifestyle several years ago, the possibility of eating out is still very tempting. 

Eating only kosher food is a very strategic process, if you think about it.  First of all, there is the whole meat/milk separation.  Beyond that, there's the waiting time in between meat and milk.  Beyond that is the idea of kosher/non-kosher food.  This is where it's possible to create some murkiness.  It's possible to rationalize by saying that one can eat the fruit, or eat the breadstick or dinner roll, or enjoy the salad bar, or the ultimate - enjoy dessert.  It's possible.

But if you want to just avoid the temptation completely, just eat something with meat beforehand.  That's it.  That puts a lid on everything.  Eating meat means I won't be able to eat anything with dairy, and that rules out pretty much everything (since I should assume that desserts and sauces are made with dairy ingredients).  Fruit and the salad bar are still an option, but if you're already avoiding everything else, you may as well avoid everything, and besides, if you're eating out, would you really choose the salad bar?

So, if you want to be strategic about your eating, go the kosher route.  It forces you to think about dinner when you're about to have lunch, and snacks are an entire microcosm of strategic kosher eating.  I'm definitely not saying that kosher means healthy, but it does bring food to the forefront of our consciousness.