How To Eat Less

How to eat less? It’s one of the big questions for anyone trying to lose weight and get cravings under control. With a simple trick, you can harness the power of your mind to do it.

Staring Down Temptation

Many people believe that eating less is a question of willpower: you face the temptation and just say no to it. In reality, this almost always leads to failure, as the more you try to force resistance, the stronger the temptation becomes.

Instead, you have to stop actively resisting the temptation of food and instead occupy your attention with something different that fills up your mind:

Why Does It Work?

The reason this more often than not works is simple: We have a limited capacity for attention. Try reading a complicated magazine article while simultaneously solving difficult math problems in your head – chances are that you will find it very hard to do both simultaneously.

The marshmallow experiment vividly shows that for our own benefit we can have some say where we direct that attention to. When it comes to eating, there is a chance you already experienced the effect yourself or know someone who did: being so busy solving a difficult problem that your forgot it was lunch time.

Picture courtesy of “Father.Jack“.