Overeating is one of the biggest factors of weight gain. There are probably over 1000 reasons why you overeat – but that doesn’t matter right now, what does matter is that you know how to handle yourself when these situations pop up in your day. Below are 5 proven strategies that will help you control how much food you put in your mouth.

1.  Slow Down

Honestly, this isn’t rocket science.  You can start eating a bit more slowly today. A great way to kill some time while you eat is to “sip water between bites” or “chew your food before swallowing”. These tips are aimed to slow you down when you eat and here’s something you might find interesting. Did you know that it takes 12 or more minutes for food satisfaction signals to reach the brain of a thin person, but 20 or more minutes for an obese person? By eating slowly, this ensures that these important messages have time to reach your brain so you feel satisfied and not stuffed like a thanksgiving day turkey.

2.  Awareness

Take your eating to a whole new level. Instead of just eating while you work or drive, sit down and enjoy your meal with no distractions. When eat while you work, or drive this distracts you and your body won’t register the food (calories) and you’ll begin to over eat. Try and find a quiet place with no distractions to enjoy your food. I enjoy eating my meals outside, it’s peaceful and there’s nothing distracting me from my meal (except for those damn pigeons!).

3.  It’s All About The First Bites

Food enjoyment comes from the very first few bites. After the first few bites your taste buds start to lose their sensitivity to the chemicals in your meal that make it taste good.  Nourishing your taste buds by really savoring those first few bites can help you stop overeating.

4.  Change It Up

Instead of using those enormous plates and filling them up right to the edge.  Switch to smaller plates. This will help you pay more attention to the presentation of the meal and increase your awareness of the food in front of you.  Your brain basically looks at the plate and analysis the portion to see if it’s enough.  It takes some time, but in the end it’s a lot more beneficial to have a smaller plate.

5.  Go For The Satisfying Foods Instead

You know the foods that are not so satisfying but still pack on the calories? Yeah…you want to stay away from them. Keep in mind that the higher the fiber, protein, and/or water content of a food, the more likely it is to be satisfying in your stomach without going overboard on the number of calories.

As you can see the 5 strategies are realistic and if you’re really serious about controlling how much you eat I suggest you give at least 3 of them a try this week. Just pick the top 3 strategies that you’d like to try and see how it works for yah.

And as always if you have any questions or comments please post’em below and if you would like to share any strategies that have worked for you please do!

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