If I Never Ate While Standing Up

This is one more version of the 'What Would I miss if I Never ...' exercise. I often eat before I feel hungry and/or binge waaaay past comfortably full while standing at my kitchen counter, sometimes while preparing food, sometimes while bingeing. I never binge while sitting down. So stand up eating at the kitchen counter can feel like bingeing or even lead to bingeing, even when I don't intend to binge. So I asked myself:

WHAT WOULD I MISS IF I NEVER ATE WHILE STANDING UP??

The rebellious freedom to break an eating rule;

Free samples in grocery stores;

Bites from soups and/or sauces which reassure me that what I'm cooking tastes good;

Distraction from boring food preparation chores;

Distraction from post meal cleanup tasks;

Immediate relief from feeling famished after I waited too long to prepare a meal;

Eating licks of peanut butter or melted ice cream from containers rather than putting that into a dish or preparing an actual meal;

Getting to eat some satisfying food after eating an unsatisfying meal (like eating peanut butter from the jar AFTER feeling unsatisfied from eating a low fat meal);

A way to decive myself about how much I'm eating;

The belief that I'm eating less by eating from containers, rather than putting the food on a plate and being confronted with the 'clean my plate or stop at satisfaction' dilemma;

All that food (mostly condiments) stuck to the from jars which I intend to rinse before recyclin, but not before scraping the sides with my finger or a spatula so as not to waste a single 'lick';

Sharing a medjool date with my husband while he does dishes after dinner;

Feeling less hungry before I begin a meal, but also not enjoying the meal;

(I'll add more items as those occur to me.)

What I seem to get from stand up eating is opportunities to eat what I don't let myself have at meals, as well as quick hunger relief when I'm starving. When I started this post, I believed stand up eating or snacks always triggered binges. However today I realized that I often want extra fingerfulls of peanut butter after eating a relatively low fat or unsatisfying lunch. I rarely want to snack on peanut butter between meals after eating a breakfast of peanut butter and fruit on a muffin or a dinner with healthy fats from salmon or olive oil. Nevertheless, stand up eating is often MINDLESS eating, when I don't focus on how my stomach feels. So I don't notice that I'm getting full. Also stand up eating what I REALLY wanted after I feel full from a meal, means I ignore my 'fullness' cues in order to feel emotionally satisfied. That often leads to feeling painfully full. A better solution to standup eating after a meal would be carefully considering what would satisfy my cravings and hunger BEFORE I choose food for a meal. Then I can feel satisfied and full after a meal.