7 Tips For Eating Less and Feeling Fuller

By: MarcyAtZeel

It's often not enough to work out if you want to lose weight. After all, an hour of running burns 400 to 600 calories, on average. Sounds good, but it's very easy to take in all those calories, and more, with one misguided beer-drinking, nacho-eating trip to the bar. Our point is that you need to watch your diet as well as work out to attain weight loss goals.

Fortunately, legions of dieters and calorie-watchers before you have come up with myriad clever tricks to make watching your weight a bit less tedious. Herein, we offer seven quick tips to help you cut backAmp your metabolism with cayenne calories.

1. Shrink the Plates
We tend to eat what's on our plate. It's hard to undo years of parental conditioning. One solution: buy smaller plates. A Cornell University study showed that we tend to fill plates when serving ourselves, so using a smaller plate means you eat less. Feel free to put healthy vegetables on big plates, though!

2. Add cayenne pepper
Recent studies show that aside from burning your tongue, cayenne pepper may moderately speed your metabolism, causing you to lose weight faster. So why not add a shaker of cayenne to the salt and pepper on your table?

3. Embrace veggie puree
A study by the appetizingly named Penn State Laboratory for the Study of Human Ingestive Behavior recently found that adding veggie purees, like pureed spinach and carrots, to recipes reduced calories and increased levels of vitamins. The great news is that they were just as filling as non-veggie laden meals.

4. Eat early, skip appetizers
Need to eat at a restaurant not of your choice? Have something to eat before you go. A container of low-fat yogurt is filling enough that you'll be fine with a salad and won't be tempted to order a Chili's Awesome Blossom (at 2,500+ calories).

5. Doggie bag the entree
Restaurants tend to offer excessive amounts of food, sometimes double or triple the normal portion we'd eat. So if, for example, you order a 10-ounce steak, ask for half of it to be immediately wrapped up. That way, you'll eat a more normal portion at dinner and will have another moderately-sized portion of food to eat later in the week.

6. Snack early and often
Bring snacks with you so you can eat every three to four hours. This prevents low blood sugar-spurred calorie-ingestion frenzies. Good portable snacks include bananas, walnuts, Kind bars and string cheese. Keep snacks to about 150 calories.

7. Orange you glad you started with an orange?
Not only are oranges full of vitamin C, but the fruit can make you feel fuller so you eat less. Also, the act of peeling the orange may make you more mindful about your food, so you're less likely to binge.