One day a week, forget your diet—whatever it is—and eat what you crave. Knowing you have that day coming will make you more likely to stick to your eating rules throughout the week.
Since your metabolism is at its peak in the morning, you have a better chance of working off high-calorie foods if you consume them for breakfast. Also, if you have high-calorie foods in the morning, you’ll be less likely to crave them later in the day. So if you need a cupcake every day, have it for breakfast.
Cutting carbs altogether will leave you feeling tired and can cause headaches and difficulty concentrating. Plus, it just makes you feel deprived. Thin women know to keep good carbs like quinoa, brown rice, millet and whole-grain cereal around. The high fiber promotes a flatter tummy and keeps you full longer.
It’s almost impossible to eat too many vegetables. They’re ridiculously low in calories (for example, a whole bell pepper contains only about 25 calories). You can pile a plate high with veggies without overeating. Plus, their high water content makes you feel full quickly, and again the high fiber promotes a flat tummy. And since you can eat a lot of them, you get the satisfying feeling of eating a lot.
Protein is essential for a lean body. It boosts your metabolism so you burn fat more efficiently, and can fill you up on small portions. Try to eat protein in the morning; high-protein breakfasts can curb cravings throughout the day.
Sugary soda is obviously off limits, but even the diet variety can cause weight gain for several reasons, one of which is psychological: you allow yourself more food because you drank a diet soda. Most juices today have just as much sugar as soda’s do, and still carry extra calories. Cutting out all liquids other than water can instantly give you a 200-calorie cut.
Having just one bite of dessert—like a small piece of chocolate—signals to your brain that the meal is over. So indulging in 40 calories from a bite of dessert could keep you from eating another 200 calories of the main course.
A lot of weight loss (or weight gain) is dependent on how full you feel when you go to bed at night. If you feel full, that means you have excess calories that have not been used. And now you’re going to lie (mostly) still, until probably eating again first thing when you wake up. If you refuse to change what you eat, try to at least eat half the regular portion at nighttime.
Unless you’re at a restaurant that has a portion-controlled menu, odds are you’ll be served a plate with twice as many calories as you need for that meal. If you start to pay attention, you’ll probably see that the women carrying to-go boxes out of the restaurant are on the slender side.
Whether you’re on a six-small-meals plan, a three-meal plan, or a three-meal plan with two small snacks, eat the same number of times each day, and eat at around the same times each day. Skipping meals or eating at irregular hours makes it hard for your metabolism to work at its highest efficiency.
Downing a tall glass of water carefully, but relatively quickly, before any meal will jump-start your digestive system, which remains relatively dormant between eating times. It also will help you feel a little fuller before you even start the meal — another trick that goes from stomach to head.
The joke continues to be on your brain and stomach. Chewing every mouthful slowly will trick your brain into thinking you have filled up more quickly. It takes an average of 20 minutes of eating to get the signal. This way, less calories will be consumed, and you won’t be inclined to reach for seconds.
You don’t need to use chopsticks just to eat sushi or fried rice. Chopsticks allow for less per-mouthful intake than a fork or a spoon on just about any type of food. They also require more concentration and skill, making eating a slower proposition.
This might not work for everyone, but putting the cutlery in your non-dominant hand will force you (sometimes awkwardly and comically) to work harder to get the food from plate to mouth. Again, it could slow down your intake.
This isn’t suggested when you’ve been invited to dinner with the Queen, but if you’re alone or with someone who appreciates your weirdness, try taking whiffs of your food first. Studies show that the more you sniff at your food, the less hungry you are on account of your brain thinking you’re actually chewing and swallowing it.
Apparently, fast food joints try to keep the color blue out of their interiors because it’s a natural appetite suppressant! This is allegedly a nature-nurture thing: the rarity of this color in food (blueberries, blue corn, blue potatoes..think of anything else?) has adapted the human brain to see this hue as an unfamiliar edible color. Instinct then tells you it’s not safe to eat. So, basically, your brain will quietly freak out and maybe shut down your appetite a little bit after you paint the dining room walls blue, dress your family up in blue, and eat off of blue plates.
Whaaatt??!!! Yep. Don’t click away from this screen yet in disbelief. It’s actually not counter-intuitive at all. Skipping meals and cutting out large amounts of calories will make your body imbalanced, and put your eating habits off kilter. Simply put, you need calories to burn calories, and when you cut out essential fuels for the weight-loss fire, you’re prone to overeat or undereat. Often, the body will drop calorie-burning muscles rather than fat if food-deprived, leading to an unmanageable weight cycle. So. Eat your breakfasts, get your little snacks in, and eat low-calorie, but also healthy and wholesome food.
