Cut Calories Without Counting Them

Cut Calories Without Counting Them
Cut Calories Without Counting Them

No question about it -- writing down the calories in every morsel that passes your lips or entering them on your diet app works. Countless studies prove it. But there's hope for the less conscientious. You can lose weight without playing the numbers game. Tip the scale in your favor with these calorie-paring tactics:

  • Ah, chew! On average, people chew each mouthful of food just 15 times before swallowing, but a more thorough molar mash-up can melt pounds. Compared with people who chew less, people who chomped their food 40 times had lower blood levels of the appetite-hiking hormone ghrelin and higher levels of CCK, another hormone that's believed to suppress appetite, say the authors of a recent study. Even better, the chewers ate nearly 12% fewer calories. That could add up to a 25-pound loss over the course of a year!

  • Set a skinny table. Simply eating off smaller plates can help you slim down. People who ate off salad plates rather than standard dinner plates lost an average of 2 pounds a month, according to classic research done by Brian Wansink, PhD, at Cornell University. Other simple strategies that cut calories: eating only in the dining room and kitchen, and rearranging the pantry and fridge so unhealthy foods were above eye level and healthy ones were right in the line of sight.

    Wansink, author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, also offers an easy way to cut back on sugary beverages, which also leads to weight loss: Switch to tall, skinny glasses and you'll down about 37% less than if you use short, wide glasses.

    Take a picture of everything you eat for a week. Here's why.

  • Befriend your inner Buddha. This familiar icon may be on the roly-poly side, but studies increasingly find that applying the Buddhist concept of "mindfulness" to eating helps blast binging and boosts weight loss. Being a more mindful muncher means eating slowly and thoughtfully rather than scarfing down a meal while you surf the Net or pay the bills. People who focus on what they're eating enjoy their food more and find portion control easier, researchers learned. Here's how:

    → Make each meal last for at least 20 minutes.
    → Hold your fork in your nondominant hand (your left if you're right-handed, and vice versa).
    → Use chopsticks!
    → Take note of the color, aroma, and texture of each food you eat.

Here are more mindful-eating tips.

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