Here’s 6 Ways I Dropped 125 Pounds and Curbed Mindless Eating for Good

Consuming healthier foods is a big component to changing your waist size, but it’s not going to be maintainable if you are over-indulging and not being conscious when you eat.

Here are some strategies you can start working on right now to improve your chances of making weight-loss easier and long-lasting:

1. Use smaller plates: If you’re like me, you don’t like to waste food or feel like you’ve been cheated on food either. Having a full plate sends a signal to your brain that you’re consuming a satisfyingly full meal, regardless of the actual quantity of food. Conversely, a partially empty plate looks like a meagre meal and leaves you craving more. Using smaller plates and filling them up is a proven way that I personally use to eat less without noticing.

2. Keep snacks out of sight or out of the house: Have you ever found yourself drawn to the appetiser table at a family gathering or constantly munching on food at a Super Bowl party? Study after study has shown that people eat so much more when food is in plain sight rather than put away where it can’t be seen, even if they know it is there. The extra work it takes to go find the food in the pantry will force you to question the price of your action. This will give you the opportunity to talk yourself out of a choice you may later regret. To avoid extra snacking, keep tempting foods out of sight in your pantry or the back of the refrigerator, not on your kitchen countertop or in rooms of the house in which they do not belong. Better yet, keep those enticing foods out of the house altogether.

3. Don’t eat from the package: Your stomach is like a 3 year old—it can’t count. Have you ever eaten an entire bag on potato chips and then wonder what happened? When you can’t see how much you’re eating, you’re more than a little likely to lose track and consume double or even triple the amount you’d eat if you took the time to serve yourself a proper portion. Eat from a plate or a bowl. Just make sure you get a good visual of everything you’re going to eat before taking your first bite. If this is difficult for you, try portioning out servings from the package into smaller food storage bags in advance and just grab one portion each time you want to snack.

4. Don’t eat in front of the TV: For the vast majority of us, distracted eating leads to overeating. Sadly, for many of us, the end of a show or movie is another powerful signal that suggests a meal is over. So parking your rear in front of the TV with your dinner plate for an Orange is the New Black marathon is probably not the best idea. With the invention of Netflix and DVR, there’s no reason why you cannot take thirty minutes to sit down and have a proper healthy meal before enjoying your shows. Declare the living room a food-free zone!

5. Chew thoroughly: Once you start paying more attention to your eating speed, you may be astonished to observe that you aren’t actually chewing your food. If you’re one of those who chew the minimum number of times before swallowing or devouring another forkful, chances are you’re eating considerably more at every meal than your thoroughly chewing fellow diners. Slow down, chew each bite (counting your chews can help develop the habit), and watch as you fill up faster on fewer calories.

6. Eat protein for breakfast: Experts love to promote eating breakfast as some kind of phenomenal weight-loss cure, but breakfasts with a good whack of protein are the only types of breakfasts proven to suppress hunger and decrease eating throughout the day. Skip the stack of pancakes and have a raw smoothie with seeds, nuts, and hemp protein powder instead. You’ll have increased energy and become less likely to snack.

What did you think of these strategies? Do you have one you would like to share? Please leave a comment with your ideas!

References: 

http://jn.nutrition.org/content/134/4/974S.short

http://journals.ama.org/doi/abs/10.1509/jm.11.0610

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1753-4887.1998.tb01732.x/abstract

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02686902