You may have good intentions to limit your portions, but what happens when you start cravings? Your appetite is affected by more than hunger. It is also influenced by the sight of food, the atmosphere in the room and what the people around you are eating. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to external signals that tend to cause overeating.
It's also helpful to pay attention to your body's internal signals. Do you eat when you are really hungry or when you are bored? Do you tend to stop as soon as you are full, or do you keep eating until your plate is empty? Your own body and emotional state will serve as a better guide than calorie counting. Note whether you tend to overeat in response to stress, anxiety, or nervousness, and think about strategies to avoid overeating when those moods hit. Here are some ways to counter habitual eating choices:
Hide snacks, or better yet, don't buy them
People joke about the 'see eat' diet - you see it, you eat it. But it's not really a joke. You tend to eat more snacks when you see them lying around. If you have snacks, put them in the back of a cupboard where you won't be tempted by seeing them.
Serve in the kitchen
To discourage second servings, serve portions on every plate in the kitchen instead of bringing serving dishes to the dinner table. Keeping the leftover food off the table makes it less likely that you'll reach for more.
Do not multitask
Keep meals distraction-free:don't drive, watch TV, read, check email, or do any other activity while eating. All of this can lead to mindless eating. Instead, find a quiet spot and sit and eat. Multitasking while eating makes it easy to consume more food without realizing it, for example while reading or working on the computer. Mindful eating, on the other hand — paying attention to what you eat, while enjoying the flavors, aromas, and texture of your food — can help you enjoy your meals more and eat less. (The same goes for snacks.) If you eat when you're standing, you don't pay attention to your food.
Learn to distinguish hunger from hunger
The next time your body asks for chocolate or chips, ask if you are really hungry. Physical hunger has several indicators, including fatigue, dizziness, or an emptiness you feel in your stomach. Rather, a desire is a feeling of discomfort or restlessness in your mouth or head. Hunger disappears with food you eat, while a craving is satisfied only by the specific food you crave. If you've eaten recently — and especially if you're craving a certain comfort food like ice cream — it's more of a craving. Then try to distract yourself. Take a walk, call a friend or turn on music and dance around the house. Most cravings disappear within 15 or 20 minutes. Don't starve. It only gets stronger.
Take it easy
It is standard advice to chew slowly so that you will feel full after eating less food than if you ate quickly. Eating slowly doesn't always work, but when it does, the reason has as much to do with the brain as it does the gut. Scientists have known for some time that your stomach's fullness is only part of what makes you feel satisfied after a meal; the brain must also receive a series of signals from digestive hormones secreted by the gastrointestinal tract. The complex signals that control appetite are only partially understood, but eating too quickly may not give this intricate hormonal crosstalk system enough time to work.
