Losing weight without losing weight – it really is possible, says nutrition expert Brian Wansink. Just as you can gain weight unnoticed, you can become lighter unnoticed. With these tips you can get started in no time and mindless weight loss really goes without saying.
You eat healthy and not too much – you think – and yet one day the zipper on your pants won't close anymore. How is it possible that you gain weight without noticing, but never unnoticed lighter? Suppose you have a new job and are in the cafeteria pink cakes † Every afternoon with a cup of tea you eat a pink cake , five days a week. After a year you have a belly and six months later you step on the scale. Congratulations:you are ten kilos heavier. And just as you can gain weight mindlessly, you can also lose weight mindlessly.
You start with a diet that promises you a lean future. And it works. It's just such a shame that you start to expand again a few months later. According to the American nutritionist Brian Wansink Short-term diets always work because you think about every bite. But if you are not on a diet, you scoop up everything without even thinking about it. Not only do you not think about it, you have no idea how much you are actually bragging. People are according to Wansink poor observers when it comes to nutritional value. That has to change if you want to lose weight mindlessly.
Wansink conducted countless experiments showing how people eat way too much without realizing it. Test subjects who watched a video with a large bag of M&Ms got their hands on, snacked twice as much as the subjects with a small bag. But most striking was that the subjects with the large bag of candy did not realize that they had eaten so much more.
Wansink and his colleagues repeated the experiment with soup , popcorn , spaghetti and drumsticks † Each time it turned out that people can eat about twenty percent more or less without being aware of it.
We can also use that mechanism to lose weight. The body only sends signals when you stuff yourself or starve yourself. But body and mind won't notice if you eat 100 or 200 kilocalories less than usual every day. According to Wansink, this is such a small margin that no alarm bells go off in the body that alter the metabolism. In fact, it's the same mechanism by which our bodies don't warn when we eat a little too much every day.
The reason why no diet has lasting results is that the body and mind struggle when the daily calorie intake is suddenly reduced by hundreds of kilocalories at once. The idea of mindless weight loss is that you let the unconscious margin work in your favor. You do this by structurally making three small changes in your eating pattern that together save 100 to 200 calories. Why only three? Wansink:'Most diets fail because they demand too much from us. Three small changes are very doable. With three small changes in your diet you will be ten kilos lighter in a year than if you had done nothing.'
Cutting out your favorite food is a bad idea. But do you habitually eat popcorn in the cinema without really liking popcorn holds? Get rid of that popcorn. Do you always take a piece of cake when it's a colleague's birthday that you don't love? Then thank you kindly. Do you just reach for the bread basket in a restaurant out of habit? Stop that. And continue to eat whatever you like. Mindless weight loss is not a diet. It's a little reprogramming of just three regular habits.
Never be tempted into a strict diet. Limit yourself to the unconscious margin. By eating 100 to 200 kilocalories less per day, your body and mind are 'fooled' and you do not get a feeling of withdrawal. By this time next year when all your pot-bellied, broad-hipped friends are going back to carrot juice, you'll be ten pounds lighter than today. And the great thing is:it looks like you didn't have to do anything for it.
Forget everything you've ever read about losing weight. Just keep eating and drinking as you did. Leave nothing out, but make compromises. For example:"I only have dessert if I eat fruit first," or "I eat as much as I want, but never scoop a second time," or "I love cheese, but always use a cheese slicer." When going out, drink three glasses of wine instead of four, or drink this delicious sparkling mineral water instead of cola. This makes mindless weight loss a breeze.
You've found three dietary changes that you can make mindlessly without making a lot of sacrifices. Use an app or Fitbit to keep track of what you eat. Keep track of the changes every day for four weeks. It's the easiest way to switch from mindless overeating to mindless eating less. After a month you will see that the changes have become such an automaticity that you don't even have to think about it anymore.
Text:Manon Sikkel, Image:Getty Images
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