If you struggle with making the right food choices decreasing caloric intake can be challenging for you. Implementing these simple eating strategies I’m about to give you will be a great starting point.
Successful Weight Loss Eating Strategies:
Drinking
A good place to start for many people is to assess what you drink on a daily basis.
Sugar-sweetend beverages and coffee drinks over a day can add up to alot of unnecessary calories many people are not aware of just how many calories these drinks contain.
In some cases as many as 1000 calories can be cut by just limiting these beverages and replacing them with water.
Let me give you an example:
Lets say you get up and get a large sweetned coffee first thing in the morning (220 calories) at luch or just anytime at work you drink 1 can of coca-cola (140 calories) in the evening you drink 2 light beers (220 calories), thats 580 calories in one day!
Those are 580 empty calories, meaning they provide minimal or no nutrients.
If you’re trying to lose weight you have no room in your diet for the little extras like sugary-beverages, sweets and extra portions.
In fact, controlling portion size is a critical aspect of successful weight loss.
A tip for this is to mini-size your plates and glasses (e.g. use side plates)!
A research using food served in various sized bowls found that individuals consumed 59% more calories when eating out of the larger bowls. Another study using 5-day old popcorn (described as tasting like Styrofoam) also found that even with horrible-tasting food, people eating out of the larger containers consumed 53% more food!
By strategically using smaller plates and glasses, you can trick yourself to think you are consuming more food just as shown in the picture below. This can result in eating less calories.
Researchers have also determined that when you reduce your portions up to 20% it usually goes unnoticed, up to 30% or more creates more conscious awareness, so you will start to really notice a change in your portions.
Here are some more guidelines I can give you to a more successful weight loss:
Have regular meals
It will help to keep your metabolism higher and eating small regular meals will also help to keep your caloric intake low. Research shows that restraining yourself from eating (by skipping meals and starving yourself) end up binging or overeating. This is a physiological reaction to hunger and deprivation. Eat three, six or even eight a day spaced with reglular time interval.
Eat in a calm, conscious and relaxed manner
Chew your food in a way you get to taste it. Avoid stress-driven eating by paying more attention to what you are doing (eating) than what’s going on around you. By doing so you will be more receptive to the internal cues that tell you when you have eaten enough.
Shop with limits
Make your food purchases wisely. Bring home only foods that will contribute to a healthy diet. If you don’t have something in your house you can’t eat it. Im referring to candy’s here.
Most people tend to overeat on certain foods, usually sweets and salty snacks.
Make cooking easy
Try to cook when you have time, rather than when you are starved and in a rush.
Learn some quick and easy to prepare meals. Prepare your foods ahead of time as much as possible, and keep a good supply of basic ingredients in your house.
Don’t clean out your plate, pots and pans
So you’re pretty much done with eating, but there are leftovers on your plate or the pans instead of eating it there are two things you can do with left over food: throw it away or eat it, if you feel guilty of throwing food away store it in Tupperware and eat it the next day.
When you cook, cook ahead
Also known as ‘meal prepping’.. Cook ahead for a few meals or days. Since you’re allready cooking rice or chicken or just about anything adding some more wont make your cook-out longer. Portion out your food in freezer-safe containers and put them in the refrigerator or freeze them. Congrats! you just eliminated the excuse that you had no time to cook a healthy meal, as you now enough for a few days ahead!
Don’t wait until you’re starving
You will tend to overeat if you wait to get so hungry that you will eat almost anything.
Plan
If you know you mostly get hungry around 15:00 and end up with your hand in the cookie jar, eat a small snack at 14:30 to prevent that hunger.
Don’t eat out of a pot or serving dish, use a plate (a smaller one!)
Just as described in the article above, you are more likely to overeat and not even be aware of it if you don’t fix a set portion size on your plate.
Don’t watch TV while eating
This one might be hard for some of you, but you will get distracted and may overeat as a result.
Eat slowly
It takes time for the brain to get the signal that you are full. If you eat too fast, by the time you feel full you will actually be stuffed and ate more then needed.
