Tips to Avoid Overeating

Overeating is one of the primary causes of weight gain. Try these helpful tips to avoid overeating that are simple ways to lower your daily calories.

One of the best tips to avoid overeating is to realize that most of the time hunger pains are not about food. When you first feel hungry, you are not really hungry. In actuality, you are in the early stages of dehydration. Before you reach for a snack, drink a glass of water and wait. If you are still hungry then, have a healthy snack. You can also drink a full glass of water (or have broth) before a meal to help you eat less.

Protein and fiber are keys to avoid overeating. These are things you should focus on when you are choosing items for both meals and snacks. They are slower to digest, so they leave you feeling fuller for longer. You won’t have the urge to eat again right away. Fiber is also something that does not digest as well as other foods. This means it fills you up but gives you fewer calories. Also, it keeps your digestive system working in top form.

If you avoid processed carbohydrates, you can also avoid overeating. White flour, sugar, and other processed carbohydrates digest quickly, and they spike blood sugar. You may feel full, but you are going to be hungry as soon as your blood sugar drops. That can be within half an hour after eating for some people. This is a vicious cycle that can keep you eating all day long, and that means too many calories. If you focus on avoiding these foods, you won’t eat as much, and it will be much easier to control your appetite.

The final and probably most important tip is not to try to avoid overeating with will-power alone. Though there is something to be said for doing things because you are determined to do so, will-power alone is rarely the remedy that carries you though a diet. Emotions can often cause someone to eat to deal with whatever it is that they are feeling, also called emotional eating. If emotional eating is something that you are struggling to overcome, seek help from a therapist or start a daily journal where you record your emotions and eating patterns.

Of course I am not a trail blazer when it comes to listing these tips to avoid overeating. The ones I’ve already mentioned are really helpful and basic, but there are also some amazingly creative tips out there. Here are some of my favorite creative tips to avoid overeating:

• 10 second fork rule – This is one of my favorites. During a meal, place your fork down for at least 10 seconds between mouthfuls. This slows down your eating and gives your brain and stomach enough time to communicate to each other when you’re full.
• Eat your meal with chopsticks – Chopsticks cannot be used as a shovel, unlike a fork. Using chopsticks while you eat will slow your eating down by reducing the amount of food you are eating in every mouthful.
• Eat a large salad before dinner – Start your dinner meal off with a large salad. The salad, which is high in fiber, will help curb your hunger before the heavier part of your meal begins.
• Eat multiple small meals – Eating multiple small meals during the day instead of two or three large meals can help you avoid overeating because your blood sugar levels are kept more stable. A crash in blood sugar is one of the main reasons people overeat either with snacks or at meals.
• Measure portion size by the handful – Controlling portion size is really helpful for avoiding overeating during meals. One of the best ways to measure a meal portion is to cup your hands together. The amount of space in your cupped hands is the maximum volume your meal should be.

These are just a few tips to avoid overeating, but I’m sure there are many more and I hope that people reading this post will share theirs. If overeating is one of your barriers to losing weight then I encourage you to explore different methods that may work for you. Some people are very creative in coming up with little things that they do to slow down their eating and keep it in check. There is nothing wrong with finding good tips and tricks to help you bypass many dieting pitfalls; in fact your weight loss success may depend on it.