A Six-Step Guide To Eating Less And Looking Your Best

The way you gain weight is simple: You ingest more calories than you're burning off. As one may deduce from that, the proper way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories. However, a lot of people find that changing their diets around is extremely difficult. Some need a few great tips to help them out with the weight loss.

A lot people have heard about preparing meals in advance. Well, why can't you also prepare snacks in advance? You can prepare a snack portion way ahead of time and keep it on hand until you're ready for it. You can make a small salad with fruits and/or veggies; you can portion out some crackers and cheese. You can mix up nuts, seeds, whole grain chips, and a host of other healthy snacks and leave them hanging out.

It's true that we essentially eat with our eyes. Food that's attractive is much more appetizing than food that's unattractive. To that end, you can also trick your entire body and mind into believing that you're eating a larger meal by simply putting it on a smaller plate. The "bounty" feel is what overeaters are looking for. This can be achieved with half the amount of food on a plate that's half the size.

When you eat too quickly, you are far more likely to overeat. This is because your brain doesn't have time to receive the signals from your stomach that you're full. When you eat slowly, however, you're giving your stomach much more time to send those signals. Once you feel full, you're far more likely to stop eating.

Playing off of the previous tip, smaller bites enable you to eat slower. This is something that can build up and become a habit over time. You will begin to take smaller bites, thus slowing down your eating time. You will start to chew your food more and you will begin to actually savor the flavor. Eventually, you will be in the habit of eating casually and slowly instead of simply throwing the food down your throat.

Yet another tip to help you control your eating times, the start-and-stop action of having to resituate your fork after every single bite is a great way to slow you down. You're looking to impede your own progress by holstering your gun after every shot, so to speak. It's a really effective way to train you to slow down your eating.

Having a conversation during a meal, in other words, eating with other people, will allow you to eat more responsibly. The communal setting does two things. First up, you definitely don't want anyone to see you throwing food down like it's your last day on the planet. Secondly, conversation and enjoying your time will take your mind off of eating. You'll be eating as a common activity rather than for a meal.

These few tips alone aren't going to transform you from an overweight individual into supermodel fit and thin, but they are a great starting point. If you can control what and how you eat, half the battle is already won