WANT TO AVOID OVEREATING?
Hoodwink
yourself into eating less
Here’s
how to avoid overeating without thinking
All of us have indulged in mindless eating. Be it
polishing off a whole bag of chips while watching TV, gorging on ice-creams
and chocolate after a bitter argument or guzzling cup after cup of coffee
while at work out of habit, we have all been there and done that. Little do
we realise that we overeat not because we are hungry, but because of
emotional and environmental factors.
Studies have shown that people overeat up to 40%
while watching TV. Also, the bigger the size of our plates, the more we serve
ourselves. Here are some cool tips to avoid eating mindlessly:
Savour every morsel you eat
instead of wolfing down your food
SAVOUR EACH BITE
This is perhaps the oldest trick in the book.
If you’re going to devour food as if you haven’t eaten for a week, you are
bound to go overboard. So, don’t be in a hurry. Instead, start savouring
every morsel that you put in your mouth.
CHOOSE A SMALLER PLATE
It’s simple logic. We tend to
pile more food on bigger plates. On a smaller plate, due to lack of space,
we serve lesser food. Research suggests we eat lesser by up to 20%, this
way.
DIM THE AMBIENCE
According
to an international study conducted on fast food chains, a dimly lit
ambience and soothing music inspired people to eat lesser by up to 18%.
Now, that’s the kind of ambience typically found in fine-dining
restaurants. But why control food intake only at fine-dining restaurants?
Do it at home as well.
AVOID HUGE GULPS, TAKE SMALL
SIPS This may not sound like a tip,
but it works. Consuming liquid in small sips helps us. A recent study
showed that people drink more when they took bigger sips. That’s
because they underestimated how much they drank.
PARCEL IT HOME
Subconsciously,
we end up eating whatever is served to us in restaurants. But at times,
even when we are aware, we finish off those huge portions for two reasons —
to avoid wasting food and to utilise every rupee of our hardearned money
spent on the meal.
Well, here’s how you can kill both birds with one
stone — pack and take it home. Eat only what you want and ask for the
remaining to be parceled. Don’t bother about sounding like a cheapskate
when you ask for a parcel. There’s nothing cheap about not wasting food!
OPT FOR FOODS WITH STRONG SMELLS
A survey has shown this is a
great method to ensure you take smaller portions. The participants were
served vanilla custard, with varying degrees of vanilla scent. The
researchers found that the greater the intensity of the scent, the lesser
the participants ate.
USE CONTRAST-COLOURED CUTLERY
Want
to polish down lesser quantity of rice? Well, ditch that whitecoloured
plate. When the colour of the food and the plate is the same, it has a
camouflage effect. That will make us serve and eat more. But by using
contrastcoloured plates, we will heap lesser food.
Lisa Antao BT130206
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