part0019

There are things in your house you probably don’t even think about that are working against your diet. The first of these is the size of the plate you use to serve your food.

We have an idea of how big a plate should be for a main course, an appetizer, and dessert. But those sizes are wrong. The average American eats two to three times the recommended serving size of their meals. When you have a large plate, it tricks you into thinking you need to fill it.

The average plate size in the 1980s was a small nine-inch plate. Today the average plate size is 12 inches. The average slice of pizza? 30 percent larger. Average bagel size? 50 percent larger. The list goes on and on. The point is that as a population we’re drowning in the mountain of food that’s served in restaurants and at home.

It feels unnatural to only fill a third or even half of the plate. Even though it’s more than we need, and even though we feel full, we sabotage ourselves by using oversized plates. Because you don’t want to have an empty-looking plate, you fill it up. Then, because you feel pressure to clean your plate and not seem unappreciative of your meal, you continue eating, even after you feel full.

The first step is to buy and use smaller plates.

You should never eat from the containers or the packaging the food comes in. Whether it’s the fanciest of restaurants, a microwavable meal, or a fast-food meal, don’t let container sizes trick you. If you put it on a plate, you can better assess how big your meal is.

Separate your eating location from your food-preparation location. It does you no good to bring the containers and the plate to your dining room table and then have those containers right in front of your face tempting you.

Prepare your food in the kitchen, move it to a plate of a reasonable size, and take that plate to the dining room. This creates a separation so you don’t have tempting food right in front of you. When you’re full, you’ll stop eating.

The beauty of a smaller plate is that it will trick your mind into believing there’s more food than there actually is.

This principle is called the Delboeuf illusion , which says that surrounding something by lots of white space makes it appear smaller. You don’t want to do that.

Instead, use a smaller plate so you get the opposite effect—your meal feels larger.

Research into this illusion has found that with larger plates people make inaccurate estimates of serving sizes. The larger the plate, the smaller they think the serving size is, even when it’s exactly the same.

An experiment was done at a health food camp to see how this plays out at mealtime . They gave the campers different-sized bowls, and those with larger bowls ate 16 percent more food than those with smaller bowls.

Large dinnerware causes us to serve and eat more without even noticing. At the same time, large bowls and plates convince us that we’ve eaten less.

It is a good idea to avoid buffets, but if you are put into that situation, grab the smaller plate. Even if you fill up a smaller plate twice, it’s often less food than filling the larger plate once, and you’ll feel like you’ve eaten more.

Additionally, we can maximize the effect by adding a pause at the end of each plate.

There’s a time delay between when you finish eating, that moment when your stomach is full, and when the signal gets to your brain. During that time delay, you have enough food in your body, but your brain doesn’t know it. You’re still receiving the hunger signal, so you continue eating even after you finished feeling hungry.

The way to overcome this is to pause or hold for 20 minutes after every single plate. Eat a small plate and wait 20 minutes. If you’re still hungry, go back to the kitchen or make another trip to the buffet.

If you don’t, then you’ll have resisted overeating. You’re becoming more in tune with what your body wants and needs.

Furthermore, there are a number of small habit changes you can make that can do wonders for your portion control efforts.

Learn serving sizes: As we’ve mentioned, portions today have become ridiculously large. Because of this, most people tend to underestimate serving sizes these days. That’s why it’s important to learn how to read food labels . Unfortunately, manufacturers purposefully make it hard to understand their labels because the more you eat, the more money you’ll spend on their products.

At some point, it’s worthwhile to understand the metrics behind serving sizes. This will help you to visualize what’s “enough” food for you.

As an example, here are a few portion sizes that can help with your visualization efforts:

Most people think they know a portion size, and most people are wrong. The super-sized mentality has skewed our viewpoint on what’s considered normal. By understanding portion sizes, you’ll know how much is appropriate to eat at each meal.

Eat more vegetables: One of the keys to mastering portion control is to eat lots of vegetables throughout the day. Vegetables are low in calories, packed with vitamins, and filled with antioxidants and minerals. When it comes to controlling your portions, you can almost ignore large servings of veggies because they have a low amount of calories when compared to other foods.

Use portion-control plates: As mentioned before, since 1980 the average plate size has increased from nine inches to 12 inches. That’s an increase of 33 percent. So a simple solution is to reverse this trend and buy a 33 percent smaller plate . Fill it up as much as you want, piling on the veggies and salad. That way you’ll be full, satiated, and eating properly sized meals.

Don’t want to buy new plates? You can do the same thing with a portion-control plate tool . Simply lay it over your plate and fill up your fruit, vegetable, starch, and protein sections.

Pack your leftovers immediately: After loading up your plate at mealtime, immediately pack away the leftovers. If you are really hungry, you can always unpack your leftovers later. But this simple habit will remove the likelihood of “eating out of convenience.” By packing the food away, you’ll increase the chances of stopping after a single-serving meal.

Turn a single meal out into two meals: If you do go out to eat, only eat half the plate. In fact, ask your waitress/waiter to bring a “to-go box” the moment they bring you a meal, and immediately put half away for a future meal. Most of the time, you can’t control the “badness” of a restaurant meal, but you can at least reduce the total number of calories.

Prepare single-serving packages: If you cook large amounts of food, separate the leftovers into single-serving packages. This makes it easy to grab a perfectly portioned lunch for work or school.

One word of caution: Don’t overdo it. The result? “You’ll end up in a perpetual state of ‘starvation mode,’ which often results in overeating followed by the subsequent feelings of guilt, shame, or failure from not following your diet,” explains metabolic training expert Nathan Trenteseaux, owner of Underground Fitness Revolution in Florida.