Every day, we have to constantly battle with our work schedules and daily routines that the focus on our diet can be totally missed or cast aside. However, we can overcome that with persistent reminders to ourselves to make our dieting into a habit.
1. Make Use of Visual Reminders
It is common that most people overeat due to external influences than internal cues to decide whether they are hungry or they have enough. Our external visuals can provoke our mind to stimulate a craving for food for example watching other people eat.
In order to keep your visual focused on your own diet, keep your food plate or your empty drink can in front of you to serve as a reminder of how much you have already consumed. So naturally, it becomes an evidence for your food crime.
2. Go for Smaller Serving Proportion
A common habit that all of us do is to go for the largest portion size or biggest food packet that the money is worth. Common sense will tell you that the portion size effect will contribute to the potential weight gain over time. Yet, this tends to happen for quite a number of times. So, be mindful that the focus is to keep to the diet rather than to save money (in fact, smaller portions mean spending less!).
Go for the smaller packages to reduce the amount of calories that you consume which you would gradually get accustomed to.
3. Use Smaller Crockery
Reducing the amount of food will directly mean a significant difference in the number of calories consumed. One simple way to do that is to reduce the size of the plates and glasses used for food and beverages. Bigger plates will make food portion look small and thus the tendency of filling it up is luring. For sweetened or alcoholic beverages, it is good to use slimmer taller glasses to reduce the amount of sugar intake while maintaining the elegance. On the contrary, use wide and short glasses for the usual water intake.
4. Keep Food Out of Sight
The quote ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ stays true and accurate to keep our minds focused on the diet. It is hard to resist the temptation if the food is placed right in front of us all the time. Thus, it is good to hide away treats and chips to keep our mind afresh. At least, leave some healthy snacks or nutritional foods visible if hunger strikes.
5. Keep Food at inconvenient places
If there is nothing you could do to keep food out of your sight, at least place them at faraway spots which would require you to move inconveniently to get them. The more work needed to get them, the less temptation it will get to eat them.
6. Eat Slowly
The idea of eating slowly is to get your body to react to the food consumed and send a signal to the brain to tell that you have eaten enough before a second serving. Besides, eating slower will let you savour the quality of the food and makes you feel fuller. Eating with a non-master hand or an unfamiliar utensil can help to slow down the eating process.
7. Unplug While Eating
Studies have shown that people tend to indulge more while watching television or listening to music. The longer the distraction, the more one tend to eat in accordance to the duration of the distraction. Thus, keep your eating time short and sweet. Concentrate on the eating at a slow pace and just savour the food that is on the plate.
8. Your Dining Companions Make a Difference
The person that you choose to eat with can make a difference in your diet. Unless the other person has the same goal as you (which might give you encouragement or as a safeguard to your food intake), it is likely that indulgence will let loose when both of you order different kind of food. Also, the more people that you eat with, the likelihood of eating more become higher especially when one starts suggesting to share. And the extra dining time would also mean that there is more time for desserts.
Sometimes, sitting next to slow eaters or people who eat less than you can work in your favour, influencing you to eat less or more. You can also request for the server to remove your plate once you are done to completely remove the need to eat more.
Conclusion
It can get difficult to resist the temptation to eat more especially when the food looks good or it is your favourite kind of desserts on the plate. It could also be that hunger pangs which keep haunting you for snacks. However, it is the end goal that you have set for yourself initially when you embark on the dieting journey. Remind yourself and keep in mind that the pain is temporary but the benefits and rewards will stick with you for a very long time. Keep fighting!
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