Can Changing Your Dishes Change How You Eat? (Giveaway Post!)

"Country Blue" melamine flatware is what I grew up eating off of. You will excuse my parents for their apparent lack of taste - it was the '80s so both melamine and country blue were omnipresent and with three little kids they were just being practical. Eventually they moved on and my mother purchased a set of beautiful white and red stonewear that looks much better in the family holiday dinner pics. The problem? I haven't moved on. That's right, I am eating off the same dishes today that I did as kid. Those little blue plates, now slightly chipped with some discoloration, have moved with me to college, off to my first job, when I got married and up to this very day. In fact, right now I have a blue salad plate sitting right next to my elbow with the remains of my muy delicioso lunch (thanks to Gym Buddy Krista!) on it.


Nice Flatwear = A Flat Stomach?
One of the diet tips you will frequently read is to make everyday eating a special occassion. Buy nice dishes that you set on a clean table with real napkins and no distractions, so the logic goes, and you will automatically slow down and savor your food more. To further amp up your dining experience and minimize overeating, you can add flowers or eat outside or any other number of things to prettify your eating environment. And some studies - like the infamous blue plate study - support this reasoning. Although I daresay you don't need researchers to tell you that eating in a clean, beautiful setting is preferrable to sitting in front of a cramped, cluttered computer desk (ahem).

According to this, the only thing my dinnerware has going for it is that my plates are blue and small (weirdly, everyone in our house eats off of child-sized dishes - even my husband!). It might be time for me to grow up and buy some actual dishes. Enter Accent Furniture Direct. When they first e-mailed me, I was confused about what home decor had to do with health and fitness. That is until I saw their supercute and funky NotNeutral line (which is also very affordable, I might add). Seriously, how cool would you feel eating off that plate (above) with a city map of London on it?

Although this set was my personal favorite. Who could eat a Little Debbie craptastic brownie off of a Zentastic plate like one of these?

Another favorite item are these cloth napkins. I recently switched my family from paper to cloth napkins in an effort to be more green and save some cash. While we - I live in toddler central remember? - use cheap white washcloths, these would be so much more fun:

Who wouldn't eat more salad if you had these Tim Burton-eque salad bowls?

And drinking all your glasses of water just got easier with these babies. (Makes you want to add a slice of lemon and mint sprig, no?)

This one has nothing to do with anything except that I just love it:

The Giveaway
Convinced? You can win one $60 gift certificate to Accent Furniture Direct by leaving me a comment below. You have three chances to win:

1. Do you think your enivronment impacts what and how you eat? Tell me about it!
2. Go to Accent Furniture Direct's page and tell me the name of one item you'd like to buy if you won.
3. Go hug a random person (i.e. someone who does not live under the same roof as you) and give them a compliment then tell me who it was and how they reacted! (This last item is just for my own entertainment but hey a girl's gotta have fun, right?)

Details: The company only ships to the U.S. and Canada so if you are from another country and win, you can sob quietly in your pillow or you can give it to a friend or relative.