Eat dinner on dessert plates.
Are your eyes bigger than your stomach? Large plates cause an optical illusion, making us think we have less food than we really do. A Cornell study found that people eat a full 25 percent more when they eat off a larger plate. Instead, swap out your large plates for smaller ones (max 10 inch) or serve dinner on dessert plates. An easy trick for a trimmer dinner!
Eat at the dining room table.
Prone to eating straight out of the container while
standing at the kitchen counter? In a study about which small changes work best
for weight loss, researchers found that sitting down to eat at the kitchen or
dining room table is among the most effective. So pull up a chair and make
mealtime a sit-down affair.
Drink a glass of water before eating.
Think you’re hungry? You might just be thirsty. Our
minds tend to confuse thirst with hunger, so drinking a glass of water before
eating can help you eat less, or even make you realize you don’t need a snack
at all!
Nix “family style” serving platters.
Dinner spreads with steaming bowls of garlic mashed
potatoes and heaping plates of chicken wings might look amazing in Bon Appetit,
but they’re a sure way to pack on the pounds. Serving food “family style”—with
the serving platters on the table—makes you more likely to opt for seconds, or
even thirds. Instead, serve your portion before you sit down and leave the rest
of the food on the counter.
Snack on pistachios.
Snacking goes awry when you shovel handfuls of food
in your mouth without even realizing it. Eating in-shell pistachios (a
low-calorie nut) may help you curb your vacuum-like instincts in two ways,
according to studies published in the journal Appetite. First, digging those
nuts out of their shells slows consumption (no shoveling here!) and can
decrease your calorie consumption (from the nuts) by 41 percent. Second, the
pile of empty shells serves as visual cue to remind you how much you’ve eaten,
thus making it more likely that you’ll stop when you’ve had your fill.
Grocery shop with cash.
It sounds strange, but take an envelope of cash
with you on your next shopping trip, and mentally commit to only spending that
amount on food. Besides helping you save money, paying with cash might keep
junk food out of your cart. Junk food is often an impulse buy (hello, holiday
theme Oreos), and paying with credit or debit cards lowers your impulse
control. Paying with cash forces you to think about what you’re buying, so if
you’ve been known to toss a bag of Doritos into your basket seemingly against
your own will, leave the plastic at home, folks.
Be the first to order.
Unless all of your friends are healthy-eating
superstars at restaurants, jump in there and order your meal first. Why?
Because if the people in your group order burgers and fries with a round of
margaritas before you, how easy it going to be for you to order the vegetable
stir fry and a glass of red wine? Exactly.
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If you want to outsmart your eating instincts, here’s the secret to success: Choose one of the tips in this gallery—just one, mind you—and commit to doing it for at least 28 days (the time it takes to form a habit). As food researcher Brian Wansink, PhD, says, “The best diet is the diet you don’t know you’re on.” Which tip will you pick to try?
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If you want to outsmart your eating instincts, here’s the secret to success: Choose one of the tips in this gallery—just one, mind you—and commit to doing it for at least 28 days (the time it takes to form a habit). As food researcher Brian Wansink, PhD, says, “The best diet is the diet you don’t know you’re on.” Which tip will you pick to try?
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