It’s the new year and everyone’s on a diet, I mean, a wellness trip. Whether you want to lose weight or it’s none of my business, but please let all the following silly weight loss “hacks” die. Many of them graze disordered eating behaviorswhile others are just ways to make you unhappy for no reason.
(By the way, if you feel like your relationship with food is spiraling out of control, the National Eating Disorders Association has a screening tool, a helpline, and more resources. here.)
Smaller plates don’t make us eat less
This one is a classic: serving yourself on a smaller plate is supposed to make a small amount of food look bigger. As a result, you will eat less food overall and eventually lose weight.
But our brains and bodies are too smart to be fooled by this. The idea that smaller plates promote smaller portions came from a lab that later turned out to be engage in sketchy research practices. Other labs have done their own plaque size experiments and found that people usually not eat less when given smaller plates. Moreover, we get better at estimating portion sizes when hungry. The little plate hack didn’t fool us after all.
Drinking a glass of water won’t satisfy your hunger
There’s a common healthy eating tip that says if you’re hungry, you should drink a big glass of water, because sometimes our bodies can’t tell the signals of hunger and thirst apart.
But there’s no evidence that this is true, or that drinking a glass of water will help. One of the most cited articles On hunger, thirst, eating and drinking, we found that we actually get quite a bit not hungry any more after drinking, even if it were true that our body mixes the signals, the proposed solution is not likely to help.
Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with drinking a glass of water if you think you’ll like one, whether you’re hungry or not. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that hunger pangs are your body telling you you’re thirsty. Your body knows the difference between food and water, okay? That’s why you haven’t starved or dehydrated yet.
It’s not necessarily a good idea to eat like a bodybuilder
There is a stereotype that bodybuilders only eat chicken breast, brown rice and broccoli in small plastic containers. They eat with discipline and end up shredded, so it must be a healthy meal choice, right?
While it can be a great meal if you enjoy it, this combination isn’t the best or only way to prepare meals, especially if you’re not a fan of the individual components. Either way, chicken breast and rice are notoriously unforgiving when it comes to meal prep. They tend to dry out, especially if you prepare them without marinades or sauces.
So let go of your idea of healthy eating looks enjoy and make a plan that involves foods you actually enjoy. Upgrade to Chicken Thighslearn to use a good Marinadethrow away that dry rice in a waffle iron, or just make an entirely different recipe. It’s normal for food to taste good.
Oh, and while we’re discussing the habits of bodybuilders: no, eating lots of small meals does not “boost” your metabolism.
It’s a diet, not a lifestyle change
The latter isn’t so much a hack as an oft-repeated platitude: “It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change.” If you’re trying to lose weight, do it not make it a continuous process. Dieting is the act of deliberately undernourishment. If you want or need to do it for a short time, then own up to that choice and do it in the healthiest way possible. But once you’ve lost weight, go back to fully nourishing your body.
After all, it wouldn’t be healthy or smart to lose weight forever. Since we lose weight by eating fewer calories than we burn, the exact meals and habits that help us lose weight are not will be the ones that will help us maintain our ideal weight once we get there. At the very least, you will need to increase your portions.
So if you think your current diet or habits need to change, be sure to separate out what should change. in general (example: cook more often at home) and what should change temporarily (example: small portions). Eating and healthy eating are not at all the same thing.
0 Comments