An Easy Way To Lose Weight

You've heard this pitch before, right? Lose weight without dieting, no sacrifice necessary.

Dr. Brian Wansink, a psychology professor at Cornell, isn't making that claim exactly, but he does think changing your surroundings, and sometimes your eating utensils, can help you control what he calls “mindless eating,” and better control your weight.

“Our homes are filled with hidden eating traps,” Wansink said. “Most of us have too much chaos going on in our lives to consciously focus on every bite we eat, and then ask ourselves if we’re full. The secret is to change your environment so it works for you rather than against you.”

Wansink has identified what he calls myths about eating behaviors as a way to explain why Americans, on average, have been getting fatter.

Size matters

“People don’t think that something as simple as the size of a bowl would influence how much an informed person eats,” he said.

It sounds just a little too easy, but Wansink says data backs up his theory that the mind, not the stomach, plays a major role in how much we eat. He conducted a study of 168 moviegoers, who ate either fresh or stale popcorn from different size containers.

People ate 45 percent more fresh popcorn from extra-large containers than large ones and the people who were eating stale popcorn ate 34 percent more from the extra-large buckets than people eating fresh popcorn, according to the study.

"They just don’t realize they’re doing it,” said Wansink.

This strategy also applies to what we drink, which can be important since we tend to consume a lot of liquid calories. Wansink said his research found that people pour about 37 percent more liquid in short, wide glasses than in tall, skinny ones of the same volume.

Cereal bowl trap

Even a kid’s cereal bowl can be a trap, according to Wansink. One study showed children of different weights who were given a 16 ounce bowl were more likely to serve themselves twice as much cereal than children given an eight ounce bowl.

Wansink says another myth is that people know when they are full and stop before they overeat. His Food and Brand Lab at Cornell tested this by designing a “bottomless bowl.”

They brought in 60 people for a free lunch and gave 22 ounce bowls of soup to half, while the other half unknowingly got 22 ounce bowls that were pressure-fed under the table and slowly refilled. The results: people with bottomless bowls ate 73 percent more than those with normal bowls, yet when asked, they didn’t realize they had eaten more.

“The lesson is, don’t rely on your stomach to tell you when you’re full. It can lie,” Wansink said.

Tips

His tips for changing your environment and losing weight include:

• eating off salad plates instead of large dinner plates.
• keeping unhealthy foods out of immediate line of sight and moving healthier foods to eye-level in the cupboard and refrigerator.
• eating in the kitchen or dining room, not in front of the television.

“These simple strategies are far more likely to succeed than willpower alone,” Wansink said. “It’s easier to change your environment than to change your mind.”