We eat with our eyes

The science suggests that we will continue to eat until our eyes cannot see anymore food, even when we are full.  There has been lots of research into why we over-eat.

The main reason we put food in our mouths is not that we are hungry but because it is in front of us and available. If we pop to the fridge for a drink we may also grab a quick snack, a handful of something, not a lot, but those snacks add up over the year. Research tells us that if we are less than 6 feet away from food and we notice it, we are much more likely to eat it. Either now or later, despite not being hungry.

Follow these simple tips and you will find that you no longer over-eat and watch as the pounds melt away.

Tip #1 Keep "ready to eat" food and treats at least 6 feet away from you. 

The harder you make it to snack on junk food, the easier you make it to adopt a healthy lifestyle and lose weight. If you keep snacks in a container you are less likely to snack than if you put it out in the open.

Tip #2 Put snacks in a container. Better still put it in a container that is not see-through.

This halves the amount of absent minded snacking that takes place.  Wrap leftovers in the fridge in tin foil and earmark it for another meal or lunchtime sandwiches instead of just saving it.

#2b Keep the wrappers and dirty plates in view to remind you what your have eaten.

If you have the evidence of what you have already eaten in front of you, you will feel fuller sooner.  There is a famous piece of research where students were given chicken wings, some had the bones in front of them others had them tidied away.  The group who had a reminder of how much they had eaten ate significantly less than those who had clean tables and clean plates.  Knowing this makes it easier to make good lifestyle choices. Restaurant owners know about this and tidy away as soon as you have finished so that you will order more food, unless they want you to leave!

Tip #3 Keep empty packets, sweet wrappers and dirty plates in front of you whilst you eat.

You will eat less, because you will feel full, and you will feel full sooner than if you can’t see what you have eaten.

Tip #4 Trying to reduce the junk food you eat? Want to eat less chocolate? Do you keep treats in your desk drawer?

Keep the wrappers for the week in front of you or in the treat drawer, and you will eat fewer.  Trick your brain into thinking that you are eating more than you really are and you will still feel full.

Tip #5 Use just slightly smaller plates and have slightly smaller portions.

Slightly reduce your food crockery size and you will plate-up less food and so eat less. Despite this you will feel just as full because your brain will assume it has eaten the same amount. Over time, scale down plates and portion sizes more and notice yourself scaling down too.  Little by little is the key here.

Better still use white plates and avoid blue ones.  A hospital in the UK wanted to get its patients to eat more of the food they offered.  They found that presenting food on blue plates lead to patients eating 25% more food.  White plates were the most unappetizing color.

Tip #6 Use tall thin glasses to reduce the amount you drink.

Tall thin glasses, as used to serve expensive lagers, give the brain a false sense of consuming more than you have.  Again the brain feels more full and so you eat or drink less.  Short and deep food bowls appear to be hold less and so people put more food in to make up for this.  Notice the shape of some ice cream sundae bowls, tall and thin at the bottom.  The food industry have playing tricks with our brains for years.  To build a healthy lifestyle, do the same and reduce how much you eat and drink.

Tip #7 Pack Meals with Veg and Salad.

When you are eating a hamburger, go crazy with the salad and light on the mayo.  Single burger, lose the cheese and you will lose the gut.  Our brain feels full based on volume of food eaten not on what that food consisted of.  So to lose weight, pack in more low calorie, healthy food and gently edit out the high calorie, high energy foods.  Slow Down your eating. Give Leptin a chance!

Tip#8 Eat slowly to fully appreciate your food.

Big isn’t always beautiful.  If you want to lose weight naturally without doing anything different, just by having a healthy lifestyle, then scale down a little at a time and watch yourself shrink too.  You need 20 minutes before the hormone Leptin is released in your body.  This hormone is the messenger that tells your brain and your body that you have had enough to eat.  So the less you eat in those first 20 minutes the less you will eat before you feel full.  There are lots of useful tips to help you just by knowing this fact.  Focus on smells, tastes and textures of your food.  Savour each mouthful and notice how full you will feel.

Tip #9 To help you slow down, use smaller plates, and use smaller cutlery.

Small cutlery slows you down.  Small plates just make you automatically put less food on your plate which will also help you slow down your eating.

Tip #10 Have warm food or food which needs cutlery to eat it which takes longer to eat.  Giving Leptin more time to send out its message.

Food which takes utensils to eat and warm food both take longer to eat than fast food.  This gives Leptin more time to act and signal that you feel full.  Perhaps I should recommend that you opt to eat everything with chopsticks?

Tip #11 Cut sandwiches into smaller bite size portions and support a healthy lifestyle by only picking up the next bite once you have fully eaten the last piece.

Again allowing time for Leptin to signal that you are full.

Tip #12 Eat a small bowl of soup before you have your main meal will result in you eating less food because you feel full sooner.

Research has found that you will eat less despite eating two courses.  This is because eating takes longer and so you give leptin a chance to signal that it is full.  You will plate up less food on the second, more calorific, course as long as you eat the soup first before you plate up the next course.  Cafeterias, where you get your starter, main and desert course plus extras like bread result in you doing the opposite.  Here people will over order it they do not plan what they would normally eat and copy that volume.

Tip #13 when eating a snack, keep healthy snacks on hand and unhealthy ones away from your self.

Make unhealthy snacking harder on yourself and you will do it less.  By keeping fruit and nuts close to hand you are much more likely to eat these than chocolates.  Healthy snacks give slow and steady energy release and so reduce energy and mood dips which cause people to eat even more junk food.

Tip #14 Keep unhealthy snacks out of the house so that you have to make an effort to purchase junk food.

Only buy as much as you are going to eat.  This makes your association with junk food become more negative.  The bigger the container the more you will eat.  A huge bag of chips will result in you eating more than if you had lots of mini bags of chips. Healthy lifestyle research has shown a family bag or share bag will cause you to eat more than if you had the same amount in front of you but in smaller, individual bags.

Tip #15 If you have oversize bags of food, separate them into individual portions and store in ziplock air tight container.

You will eat less at each occasion.  The least healthy, fattening and heavily sweetened food is the cheapest to make and the most profitable, so has the most money for advertising.

Tip #16 Beat the advertisers.

If you do not buy junk you cannot eat it.  Adopt a healthy lifestyle, buy food because it is on your shopping list, not because it is cheap.

Tip #17 People buy more of one product if it is labelled as MAXIMUM OF FOUR ITEMS per customer.

This limiting is there to get you to buy more, not to preserve stocks for others.  The more junk in the house the more you will eat.  Take back control of what you eat, use a shopping list.  Research has shown that if we are distracted when we are eating we continue to eat because we have not seen the amount of food we have eaten.  If you do not notice what you are eating you do not feel as full.

Tip #18 Focus on the Food.

When eating focus on the food not others and you will fill up with less calories.

Tip #19 Turn the TV off when eating.

Do not snack next to the t.v. or at the cinema.  How full we feel is affected by who we are with and what we are doing.  If eating out with friends, we will eat more than if eating alone.  Sometimes double.  If eating out with someone who has a more healthy lifestyle than us we make better choices too.  Research has found that girls on a first date tend to eat less as they don’t want to appear “unladylike” by having a big appetite, whilst men will eat more, to appear more “Manly”.  Some people may eat more just because the bill is being split.

Tip #20 When eating out plan what you want to eat to avoid over eating.

Concentrate on your food and be assertive about how much you want to eat.  Hidden calories account for the creeping weight gain.  If people gained weight quickly then they would notice, stop and adopt a more healthy lifestyle.  Some of the most hidden calories are in drinks.  Some fizzy drinks contain 14 sugars in a single can, with popular drinks having at least 8.

Tip #21 Carry a bottle of water all the time.

You will drink more of it and so less sugary calorie dense fizzy drinks.This is the simplest and also one of the most important tips to adopting a healthy lifestyle.  This tip alone could have a massive impact on your weight, your mood and your mental and physical functioning.

Tip #21(b) Don't confuse thirst for hunger.

Make it easy to manage your thirst by keeping a bottle close by.  If you have not done it already make this healthy lifestyle choice now.  Sugar free fizzy drinks, those zero calorie sweet drinks confuse your brain too.  The brain expects to have some food coming when you drink these, and so when none arrives because it is artificial sweetened, it sends a signal to eat.  Many people snack, not long after drinking these drinks.

Tip #21(c) Avoid snacking by drinking water instead of artificially sweetened drinks.

Variety maybe the spice of life but it is also the engine of weight gain too.  The more different things you put on your plate at a buffet the more you will eat.  Also the closer to hand the food is the more you will eat.  Use these tips to deal with buffets and you will keep the weight down.

Tip #22 Be the last to join the queue at the buffet and you will have less choice and so eat less.

Tip #23 Eat away from the buffet, if possible in another room out of sight of the remaining food, even outside and you will not be tempted to graze on the leftovers.

Tip #24 Limit the variety of things that you put on your plate and you will eat less.

Pile that plate with healthy food and limit the high calorie food to just two items and you will fill up without the calories.  Food is often labelled low fat when it only means it has less fat than before.  This can be as little as 10% less fat so if you are adopting a healthy lifestyle it would be better to avoid this food altogether.

Tip #25 Read the labels.... Carefully.

Use caution when reading the nutrition advice and ask yourself - "what are they manufacturers not telling me?"  Some foods are nicknamed Halo foods because they appear healthier than they really are.  The label will say REDUCED or LOW IN (sugars or fat) or HIGH IN (something like vitamins).  These labels often leave people with the impression that they are healthy, when they are high in fat, sugar or salt.

For more information on losing weight - and keeping it off, visit RI Hypnosis Center Today!