Five Ways to Stop "Mindless Eating"

From the book, "SuperCharge for the WINNING EDGE" by America's Personal Trainer, Jack Medina
FIVE WAYS TO STOP "MINDLESS EATING"

Why do Americans overeat? How can they stop? These questions have been the life study of Brian Wansink, Ph.D., director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab in Ithaca, New York. He pioneered the field of food psychology, and for the past 20 years has studied Americans and their eating habits, specifically those characteristics he terms "mindless eating."

The #1 Reason We Eat Too Much

According to Dr. Wansink, the #1 reason we eat too much is because we use external cues, such as seeing no more food around us, rather than internal cues, such as feeling full, to tell us to stop eating. We have lost a vital connection with our bodies.

The Cues that Skew
Here are some of Dr. Wansink's findings and five ways we can stop mindless eating dead in its tracks:
1. Don't clear the dishes until the end of the meal, and avoid eating out of the bag or carton. This will make it easier to see and track how much you have already eaten.
2. The bigger the meal, the less accurate our calorie estimation is. For a large meal such as Thanksgiving, don't try to estimate the calories of the whole meal. Estimate calories for each individual serving you consumed.
3. Anything that takes our focus off the food we are eating makes us more likely to overeat. Don't eat in front of the TV! Sit down at the table and enjoy your meal without distractions.
4. Size matters: the larger the plate, serving bowl, packaged box, serving utensil -- the more we'll eat! Mini size your bowls, plates, and utensils!
5. The more variety there is, the more we eat. Use this principal to your advantage by serving a wide variety of fruits and vegetables -- you'll eat more of them. Also, keep the salad and veggies on the table, and leave the meat and starches on the stove -- the more convenient a food is, the more of it we'll eat.

BONUS: Cut out about 100-200 calories per day is not noticeable and amounts to only for of five fewer bites dished onto your plate AND it translates to losing 10 to 20 pounds per year!

The complete Mindless Eating book and CD are now available on Amazon.com. We recommend it as one of the best tools you can use to learn about healthy behavior change related to foods.

When it comes to healthy eating, what to eat is just as important as how to eat. Nutripoints clears up the confusion of reading labels and counting calories, because the system has tracked 26 key nutrients that yield a Nutripoint score for every food -- the higher the score, the better. So just choose from the highest rated foods you love to eat at least 100 Nutripoints every day!
www.nutripoints.com
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