Diet Tips

Time Your Meals
Set a timer for 20 minutes and reinvent yourself as a slow eater. This is one of the top habits for slimming down without a complicated diet plan. Savor each bite and make it last until the bell chimes. Paced meals offer great pleasure from smaller portions and trigger the body’s fullness hormones. Wolfing your food down in a hurry blocks those signals and causes overeating.

Sleep More, Weigh Less
Sleeping an extra hour a night could help a person drop 14 pounds in a year, according to a University of Michigan researcher who ran the numbers for a 2,500 calorie per day intake. His scenario shows that when sleep replaces idle activities – and the usual mindless snacking – you can effortlessly cut calories by 6%. Results would vary for each person, but sleep may help in another way, too. There’s evidence that getting too little sleep revs up your appetite, making you uncommonly hungry.

Serve More, Eat More Veggies
Serve three vegetables with dinner tonight, instead of just one, and you’ll eat more without really trying. Greater variety tricks people into eating more food – and eating more fruits and vegetables is a great way to lose weight. The high fiber and water content fills you up with fewer calories. Cook them without added fat. And season with lemon juice and herbs rather than drowning their goodness in high-fat sauces or dressings.

Go for Whole Grains
Whole grains such as brown rice, barley, oats, and whole wheat also belong in your stealthy weight loss strategy. They help fill you up with fewer calories and may improve your cholesterol profile, too. Whole grains are now in many products including waffles, pizza crust, English muffins, pasta, and soft "white" whole-wheat bread.

Eyeball Your Skinny Clothes
Hang an old favourite dress, skirt, or pair of jeans where you’ll see them every day. This keeps your eyes on the prize. Choose an item that's just a little too snug, so you reach this reward in a relatively short time. Then pull out last year's cocktail dress for your next small, attainable goal.

Sip Smart: Cut Back on Sugar
Replace one sugary drink like regular soda with water or a zero-calorie seltzer and you'll avoid 10 teaspoons of sugar. Add lemon, mint or frozen strawberries for flavour and fun.
The liquid sugar in soda appears to bypass the body's normal fullness cues. One study compared an extra 450 calories per day from jelly beans vs. soda. The candy eaters unconsciously ate fewer calories overall, but not so the soda drinkers. They gained 2.5 pounds in four weeks.

Sip Smart: Limit Alcohol
When an occasion includes alcohol, follow the first drink with a non alcoholic, low-calorie beverage like sparkling water instead of moving directly to another cocktail, beer, or glass of wine. Alcohol has more calories per gram (7) than carbohydrates (4) or protein (4). It can also loosen your resolve, leading you to mindlessly inhale chips, nuts, and other foods you’d normally limit.

Sip Smart: Go for Green Tea
Drinking green tea may also be a good weight loss strategy. Some studies suggest that it can rev up the body's calorie-burning engine temporarily, possibly through the action of phytochemicals called catechins. At the very least, you’ll get a refreshing drink without tons of calories.

Catch the "Eating Pause"
Most people have a natural "eating pause," when they drop the fork for a couple of minutes. Watch for this moment and don't take another bite. Clear your plate and enjoy the conversation. This is the quiet signal that you're full, but not stuffed. Most people miss it.

Chew Strong Mint Gum
Chew sugarless gum with a strong flavor when you're at risk for a snack attack. Making dinner after work, at a party, watching TV, or surfing the Internet are a few dangerous scenarios for mindless snacking. Gum with a big flavor punch overpowers other foods so they don’t taste good.

Shrink Your Dishes
Chose a 10" lunch plate instead of a 12" dinner plate to automatically eat less. Cornell's Brian Wansink, PhD, found in test after test that people serve more and eat more food with larger dishes. Shrink your plate or bowl to cut out 100-200 calories a day – and 10-20 pounds in a year. In Wansink’s tests, no one felt hungry or even noticed when tricks of the eye shaved 200 calories off their daily intake.

Get Food Portions Right
The top habit of slim people is to stick with modest food portions at every meal, five days a week or more. "Always slim" people do it and successful losers do it, too, according to a Consumer Reports survey. After measuring portions a few times, it can become automatic. Make it easier with small "snack" packs and by keeping serving dishes off the table at meal time.

Try the 80-20 Rule
Eat until they’re 80% full. We can adopt this healthy habit by dishing out 20% less food, according to researcher Brian Wansink, PhD. His studies show most people don’t miss it.

Eat Out Your Way
Restaurant meals are notoriously fattening, so consider these special orders that keep portions under control:
Split an entrée with a friend.
Order an appetizer as a meal.
Choose the child's plate.
Get half the meal in a doggie bag before it's brought to the table.
Complement a smaller entrée with extra salad for the right balance: half the plate filled with veggies.

Burn 100 Calories More
Lose 10 pounds in a year without dieting by burning an extra 100 calories every day. Try one of these activities:
Walk 1 mile, about 20 minutes.
Pull weeds or plant flowers for 20 minutes.
Mow the lawn for 20 minutes.
Clean house for 30 minutes.
Jog for 10 minutes.