Learning how to curb your appetite is a powerful way to help you lose weight. A healthy, balanced diet will help you beat food cravings but there are also a number of psychological, emotional and common sense strategies you can use to completely change your approach to eating. These strategies can help regulate your appetite effectively and efficiently for the rest of your life.

It’s common knowledge that doing things like food shopping when you are hungry is a bad idea as you are far more likely to binge on calorie rich sugary, fatty foods. So here, in no particular order, are 22 not so obvious strategies that can all help you control your appetite rather than it controlling you. Check out next month’s issue for 21 more easy ways to fight the flab and my top 10 weight loss super foods.

1. Buy a pedometer, clip it to your belt, and powerwalk an extra 1,000 steps a day. On average, sedentary people take only 2,000 to 3,000 steps a day. Adding 1,000 steps (15 minutes) at an elevated intensity will help you maintain your current weight and stop gaining weight; adding more than that will help you lose weight.
2. Eat five or six small meals or snacks a day instead of three large meals. A 1999 South African study found that when men ate parts of their morning meal at intervals over five hours, they consumed almost 30 percent fewer calories at lunch than when they ate a single breakfast. Other studies show that even if you eat the same number of calories distributed this way, your body releases less insulin, which keeps blood sugar steady and helps control hunger.
3. Eliminate soft drinks. A 12 fl oz can of Cola contains about 144 calories. It is not an ideal food if you want to lose weight. By NOT drinking a can of Cola, once a week, you save about 7,500 calories per year. This is the equivalent of 2 pounds of weight.
4. Find an online weight-loss buddy. A University of Vermont study found that online weight-loss buddies help you keep the weight off. The researchers followed volunteers for 18 months. Those assigned to an Internet-based weight maintenance program sustained their weight loss better than those who met face-to-face in a support group.
5. Bring the colour blue into your life more often. There’s a good reason you won’t see many fast-food restaurants decorated in blue: believe it or not, the colour blue functions as an appetite suppressant. So, serve up dinner on blue plates, dress in blue while you eat, and cover your table with a blue tablecloth. Conversely, avoid red, yellow, and orange in your dining areas. Studies find they encourage eating.
6. Clean your closet of the “fat” clothes. Once you’ve reached your target weight, throw out or give away every piece of clothing that doesn’t fit. The idea of having to buy a whole new wardrobe if you gain the weight back will serve as a strong incentive to maintain your new figure.
7. Serve your dinner restaurant style (food on the plates) rather than family style (food served in bowls and on platters on the table). When your plate is empty, you’re finished; there’s no reaching for seconds.
8. Passionately kiss your partner 10 times a day. According to the 1991 Kinsey Institute New Report on Sex, a passionate kiss burns 6.4 calories per minute. Ten minutes a day of kissing equates to about 23,000 calories — or eight pounds — a year!
9. Put out a vegetable platter. A body of research out of Pennsylvania State University finds that eating water-rich foods such as courgettes, tomatoes, and cucumbers during meals reduces your overall calorie consumption. Other water-rich foods include soups and salads. You won’t get the same benefits by just drinking your water, though. Because the body processes hunger and thirst through different mechanisms, it simply doesn’t register a sense of fullness with water.
10. Use vegetables to bulk up meals. You can eat twice as much pasta salad loaded with veggies like broccoli, carrots, and tomatoes for the same calories as a pasta salad dressed with mayonnaise.
11. Avoid white foods. Large amounts of simple carbohydrates from white flour and added sugar can wreak havoc with your blood sugar and lead to weight gain. Replace white bread and rice with plenty of whole grain breads and brown rice. One Harvard study of 74,000 women found that those who ate more than two daily servings of whole grains were 49 percent less likely to be overweight than those who ate the white stuff.
12. Switch to grain coffee or herb teas. Fancy coffee drinks from trendy coffee bars often pack several hundred calories, thanks to whole milk, whipped cream, sugar, and sugary syrups.
13. Eat cereal for breakfast five days a week. Studies find that people who eat cereal for breakfast every day are significantly less likely to be obese and have diabetes than those who don’t. They also consume more fibre and calcium — and less fat — than those who eat other breakfast foods. Of course, that doesn’t mean reaching for the sugary cereals. Instead, pour out a high-fibre, low-sugar cereal like oat porridge.
14. Avoid any prepared food that lists sugar, fructose, or corn syrup among the first four ingredients on the label. You should be able to find a no sugar version of the same type of food. If you can’t, grab a piece of fruit instead! Look for sugar-free varieties of foods such as ketchup, mayonnaise, and salad dressing. Avoid artificial sweeteners also as they are often worse for you than sugar.
15. Eat slowly and calmly. Put your fork or spoon down between every bite. Intersperse your eating with stories for your dining partner of the amusing things that happened during your day. Your brain runs behind your stomach by about 20 minutes when it comes to satiety (fullness) signals. If you eat slowly enough, your brain will catch up to tell you that you are no longer in need of food.
16. Spend 10 minutes a day walking up and down stairs. The Centre for Disease Control says that’s all it takes to help you shed as much as 10 pounds a year (assuming you are eating healthily as well).
17. Take a walk before dinner. You’ll do more than burn calories — you’ll cut your appetite. In a study of 10 obese women conducted at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, 20 minutes of walking reduced appetite and increased sensations of fullness as effectively as a light meal.
18. Wash something thoroughly once a week — a floor, a couple of windows, the shower, bathroom tile, or your car. A 10 stone person who dons rubber gloves and exerts some elbow grease will burn about four calories for every minute spent cleaning. Scrub for 30 minutes and you could work off approximately 120 calories, the same number in a half-cup of vanilla frozen yogurt.
19. Substitute a handful of almonds in place of a sugary snack. A study from the City of Hope National Medical Centre found that overweight people who ate a diet containing almonds lost more weight than a control group that didn’t eat nuts.
20. Make one social outing this week an active one. Pass on the movie tickets and screen the views of a local park instead. Not only will you sit less, but you’ll be saving calories because you won’t be tempted by that bucket of popcorn. Other active date ideas: Plan a tennis match, sign up for a guided nature or city walk (check your local newspaper), go cycling on a bike path, or join a volleyball league or bowling team.
21. Watch one less hour of TV. A study of 76 undergraduate students found the more they watched television, the more often they ate and the more they ate overall. So sacrifice one programme and go for a walk instead.
22. Sniff a banana, an apple, or a peppermint when you feel hungry. You might feel silly, but it works. When Alan R. Hirsch, M.D., neurological director of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, tried this with 3,000 volunteers, he found that the more frequently people sniffed, the less hungry they were and the more weight they lost — an average of 30 pounds each. One theory is that sniffing the food tricks the brain into thinking you’re actually eating it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 7:54 pm and is filed under Weight Loss. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.