Fill your plate

Today, I wanted to give you three little words that might help you to diet effectively: “Fill your plate”. If you’re thinking this is the last advice that you’d expect to see on a healthy-eating blog, then read on…

Have you ever been to a restaurant where they put your dessert in the centre of a giant white plate, with a chocolate or fruit sauce dribbled artistically over the mostly-blank china? It looks pretty – but if you’re anything like me, you might look at the size of your dessert and think hmm … is that all I get?

But if you had the same piece of sticky fudge chocolate cake in a café, on a much smaller plate, it’d probably look like a big serving.

Use a smaller plate

I’m sure you’ve heard this one before, but when you’re dieting, it helps to use a smaller plate. Study after study has shown that when eating from smaller plates or bowls, people are satisfied with less. If your plate looks full, you convince yourself that you’ve got a lot of food there.

Try eating a sandwich off a side plate, not a dinner plate. Pour your cereal into a smaller bowl.

Fill half your plate with vegetables

One easy way to make sure you’re getting enough fruit and veg is to fill half your pltae with vegetables at lunch and dinner. That might mean having salad and a sandwich for lunch, then chicken, potatoes and two or three different types of cooked veggies for dinner.

I wouldn’t advocate filling half your cereal bowl with carrots, but how about having a couple of pieces of fruit at breakfast time?

Don’t eat too little

The third reason I want to say “fill your plate” today is to encourage you not to try to starve yourself. In today’s rushed, instant-results world, we often wish that weight-loss could happen overnight. The reality, though, is that if you lose weight slowly, you’re much more likely to keep it off.

So don’t be afraid to fill your plate – and your stomach. Choose low-fat, high-fibre options that will fill you up without too many calories. Make sure you’re eating at least 1,100 calories per day.

The link to the free Dieting Basics ebook sample on Friday was broken for all the people receiving updates via email – my sincere apologies! If you click this link to the Dieting Basics sample, it should work (send hate mail to ali@theofficediet.com if it doesn’t…)

(Image above by sonicwalker)