Your brain is wired to make you eat more, first with cues such as the size of your plate, and the effects of sugar and fat on what’s known as the pleasure center of your brain. Eating is fun—especially when common foods are enhanced to tempt your taste buds. Willpower takes effort and it needs to be all day long. A study found that people who put fruit on their kitchen counter weighed 13 pounds less, on average than those who did not have visible fruit. And those with soda on the counter weighed 24 to 26 pounds more than those who had a soda-free counter.
Trick your brain into thinking you’re eating more by using an 8-inch plate. Your 3 ounces of pasta on an 8-inch plate looks like a full serving. But when it’s on a 10-inch plate, it looks like an appetizer size, so you end up adding more. A specific color that will help you not to overeat, is blue. The contrasting the color of your plate with the color of the food can lead you to eat about 30 percent more than if the plate is blue.
Food served from the stovetop encouraged people to eat 25 to 30 percent less than the same food served family-style at the table. People who ate while reading, watching TV or playing games were more likely to consume as much as 25 percent more food than if they were not distracted, according to a 2013 study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Creating a calming environment that encourages you to slow down and pay attention to your food can help decrease the amount of food consumed. Bright lights can push you to eat faster and eat more. Fast, loud music will prompt you to eat more food. Use calming and quiet background music, pay attention to what you’re eating.
Use tongs instead of a serving spoon. According to a 2011 study published in the journal Judgment and Decision Making, it’s harder to grab food with tongs, which means you put less on your plate. Dine with one friend, and you’ll likely consume about 35 percent more food than if you ate alone.
Your server’s appearance can influence how much you eat. If your waiter is overweight, you’re three times more likely to order dessert and alcohol than if you have an average-weight waiter. The reason? Comparing yourself to someone who is larger gives you a “license to eat. As many as 92 percents of restaurants exceeded recommended daily calories in a single meal. The average entrée plate is around 1,500 calories, and that doesn’t include the drinks, the appetizers, the sides, or the desserts.
The reason foods such as potato chips and ice cream tempt you. Humans are programmed to like sugar, fat, and salt. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors needed a lot of calories to survive, so our brains are hardwired to seek out high-calorie foods. It also doesn’t help that most of our foods and flavors have been enhanced by companies to hit this perfect balance of sugar, salt, and fat called “the bliss point”. Our foods have been modified so much many cannot and should not be call real food. While taste alone won’t cause you to overeat, high-sugar snacks might. There is evidence that foods with a lot of sugar can trigger an addictive-like pattern of eating, making you more likely to binge.
Your brain may pressure you to overeat, but you can push back.
- Don’t put fruits and veggies in your refrigerator’s crisper drawer. Cut them up, and place them in an easy-to-see spot in your fridge so your family is more likely to grab them.
- Ask your server to box up half or two-thirds of your meal before it ever touches your plate.
- At the grocery store, walk down the healthy aisles first.
- Use tall, slender glasses for beverages other than water. The tall glasses look fuller.
