How to train yourself to eat less? Training your brain may appear difficult (especially when it comes to food), but there are some basic tactics and recommendations that might assist you.
How to train yourself to eat less?
According to dietitians and psychologists, 95% of the acts we carry out daily are focused on our unconscious processes and habits that we’ve formed through time. This is also true when it comes to eating.
Fortunately, you can change your habits and adopt a weight-loss mindset. A new habit takes 21 to 90 days to acquire on average. The following are some simple things you can do to train your brain to eat less food.
1. Plan your meals for the day ahead of time
Planning nutritious and healthy meals before going grocery shopping helps you battle the powers of the snack food aisles. If you’re going out to supper with friends or family, try to check the menu and nutritional information online ahead of time.
Instead of purchasing a large family pizza, you may pick a healthy appetiser and a modest dessert from the menu. However, if you do indulge once in a while, plan purely nutritious meals for the next day.
2. Stay Off Your Phone to train yourself to eat less
Have you ever tried to start your day early by checking your email over breakfast? Or maybe you like to look through your social media feeds at lunch. You’re not by yourself. According to a Nutrisystem survey performed in January 2018, one-third of Americans can’t finish a meal without checking their phone.
This distraction may appear innocuous, but the repercussions can be enormous when it comes to genuinely enjoying your meal and being conscious of how much you’re eating.
In a February 2011 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers divided 44 patients into two groups and allowed one of the groups to play a phone game during lunch. All of the individuals ate nine savoury foods for lunch and then were asked to rate their hunger as well as recollect what they ate just after the meal. They participated in a biscuit taste test thirty minutes later.
The distracted group, it turns out, felt less full after lunch and ate much more biscuits in the taste test that followed. They also were less accurate in reporting the order in which they ate their lunch meals.
It may be as simple as putting down your cell phone and paying more attention to what’s on your plate to train yourself to eat less.
3. Sort through your pantry
Are you going to toss away all of the snacks? You don’t have to. Training your brain is more about arranging your kitchen and building a mindful and balanced eating mindset than it is about tidying it. Keeping your chocolates and cookies out of sight is a sensible and useful solution, because easy access may quickly lead to mindless munching.
4. Reduce your consumption by 20%
You may be eating 20% more food than usual without even realising it. The most basic method is to reduce the amount of food you cook. So, if you’re making 100g of spaghetti, subtract 20g to make it 80g. To fill your stomach and generate a sense of contentment, replace this 20g of spaghetti with 20% extra vegetables.
5. Before you eat, drink some water
Before meals, the miraculous drink can stretch your stomach and generate sensations of fullness even before you eat.
We all know that drinking enough water is beneficial to our overall health, but when you drink may also assist you to control your weight.
According to a 2015 Obesity study, drinking water before a meal may help you eat less and lose weight. The study’s subjects drank around two cups of water 30 minutes before each main meal. This resulted in a moderate weight loss for the water-drinking group over the course of 12 weeks — they shed around 2.5 pounds more than the control group.
If drinking plain water is tough for you, adding fresh fruit, sliced cucumbers, and/or herbs is a delightful way to enhance flavour without adding sugar or calories.
6. Reduce the volume
Would you trust me if I said that listening to your own chewing can help you eat less?
7. Consume gently
“The human brain takes 20 minutes to comprehend that the stomach is full,” I’ve said before and will repeat again. Eating too rapidly eliminates the opportunity for our brains to accept the message. If we eat slowly and slowly, we will notify our bodies saying, “Stop it.” Set a timer for 25 minutes using a timer app.
8. Choose your snacks carefully
People who are trying to reduce weight by eating less often experience hunger between meals. Make an effort to understand your cravings and satisfy them with nutritious foods. Personally, I recommend water and a fruity flavour of chewing gum to suppress appetite.
9. Keep a photo log to train yourself to eat less
Who doesn’t enjoy snapping pictures? Taking pictures of each drink, meal, or snack is a terrific approach to creating an awareness of how much you are actually eating. Examine it on a daily basis to see whether you’re consuming anything bad. Set a time limit for tracking your meals, say ten days, and then stop for a bit to avoid becoming obsessive.
10. Eat With a Utensil to train yourself to eat less
Taco Tuesdays with chips, guacamole, and tacos are great, but they may lead to overeating – but not for the reasons you may assume.
When we eat with our hands (for example, tacos, chicken wings, etc.), our sensory experience is enhanced by the direct touch, adding to the overall pleasure of the food. According to a December 2019 research published in the Journal of Retailing, this has also been found to increase our consumption.
So, no more pizza or French fries? Absolutely not. Just remember to be careful when eating with your hands. Food is designed to be enjoyed, but be mindful that a portion of that pleasure may come from the sensation of the food, rather than your true appetite.
11. Place your fork down between bites
Challenge yourself the next time you sit down to a meal to pause between bites and literally put your fork down. Why? A meta-analysis published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in July 2014 discovered that eating at a slower pace may result in a considerable reduction in how much you consume.
The study combined the data from 22 research studies that looked at the rate at which we eat our food, and the findings consistently supported the case to slow down.
There are a few reasons why taking a break may be beneficial to you: Slower eating may impact satiety hormones, making you feel filled faster, according to the study. It could also be related to the duration and intensity of oral food exposure – if you eat rapidly, you have a shorter duration of sensory input, therefore you consume more. Slowing down, on the other hand, may help you learn to eat less.
