Adjust Your Brakes to Lose Weight

The New Year is here and everyone is bursting with new resolutions.  Healthy eating and losing weight are often on the top of everyone’s list.  Here’s one key change you can make to get your waist back after the ravages of the holidays:  Adjust your brakes.

What does that mean?  It simply means don’t eat until you are full, simply eat until your stomach is only about 80% full.

But how can you actually know when you have reached that magic 80% number?  Well, here are some tricks that will actually allow you to know when you have reached that place before you suddenly find yourself full and stuffed.  These are tips to help you eat less and stop earlier in the process.

Get new glasses: Not the kind that sets on your nose but the kind that sets on your dinner table.  Choose tall and narrow glasses over short and wide glasses.  You will find that you drink about 25 to 30 percent less.  In addition, get some new plates and bowls as well.  If you use a 15 inch or 11 inch plate (really more like platters), you will automatically serve yourself more food and subsequently eat more food.  However, a 9 inch plate can be fully filled without fully filling your stomach.

Leave food in the kitchen: Research has shown that people who serve themselves from the kitchen counter then walk away to sit at the table eat about 14% less on average than their counterparts who serve themselves from the table.

Change the landscape of your kitchen: You know how information overload can make decision-making impossible?  Well, too much food and too many choices in the kitchen, like snacks on the counter and platters of food to feed a small army, can impair your brain’s ability to make a smart food choice.  What you see is what you are most likely to eat.  So hide away candy or just give it away and set out a bowl of fresh fruit.  Put all the fresh produce in plan sight in your fridge.  In the pantry, keep only a couple of packages of a single type of healthy treat (unroasted nuts or dried fruit) in small quantities.  Ditch the supersize quantities from the discount aisle.

Supersize with your eyes: Make it simple.  Make your food look bigger by enhancing the healthy aspects of your food.  Make your hamburger patty half its normal size and then pile on the lettuce, tomatoes and onions to make your burger look big and delicious.  Then put it on that 9 inch plate.

Change the variety on your table: The more choices you put on the table for dinner, the more likely you are to eat all of it.  Instead, make your meal menu a main dish with two side veggies.  It’s healthy, filling and easy to make.

Sit down to eat: Absolutely refuse to eat on the go, in your car or while watching television.  Eat only at your table.  Never take food into the living room or to the computer.  Sit down and pay attention to what you are eating.  Being mindfulness of your food will result in eating less and feeling full as well as satisfied much sooner.

By consistently applying these brakes to your eating habits, you will find yourself falling into a natural pattern of eating that will support healthy weight for life.  And who knows?  You may never find “lose weight” on your New Year’s resolution list ever again!

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