No Matter What Diet They Are On
1. Incorporate variety into all your meals. The temptation is to just eat a lot of a single food, particularly for the first two meals of the day a bowl of cereal in the morning; the same green salad at lunch. Don’t do it. It is more work, but you will find it easier to eat less overall if at every meal you include different food types and textures. Don’t save that for dinner time when you are more likely to overeat.
2. When you eat out, order a couple of appetizers and skip the main course.
3. With every meal try to have foods that are different in several ways. Have something crunchy, something smooth, something cool and refreshing, something spicy.
4. One easy way to increase variety is to add a low-calorie soup to your menu.
5. Sweets are also part of the variety we crave. Try incorporating a small serving of fruits or low-calorie sweet into most of your meals. This may also reduce your risk of bingeing on sweets (for those of you who have this tendency).
6. Identify your cravings and incorporate that food (or a key aspect of that food) into your next meal or snack. If you find yourself craving a slice of cake, try to figure out what it is that appeals to you about that right then. Is it a desire for something sweet? Then have some fruit or a piece of gum. Is it something smooth that you want? Have low-fat yoghurt or a low-fat ice cream. Something buttery? Try a piece of toast with a scraping of butter. By isolating the quality of the food you crave, you can try to satisfy it with a food that is lower in calories.
7. Remember, what you crave is variety, and your mouth can’t tell how much of a food you are eating. Eat a small amount and see if that satisfies you. It often will
For carbohydrate counters: This type of diet is a real challenge for variety seekers, because at least part of its power comes from the limitation on variety. Even though your selection of foods is very restricted, especially in the early part of the diet, focus on providing yourself with a variety of textures and other sensory aspects of the food.
For calorie counters: This type of diet is really perfect for variety seekers because you can choose any type of food you want. The key for you is going to be portion control. If you don’t get the variety you crave, you may still not feel satisfied. You might blame the small portions, but the real problem is insufficient variety .
For fat counters: Carbohydrates are naturally the most diverse of all food groups, so satisfying your need for variety should be relatively easy. Remember to serve yourself small portions, and if you are not satisfied at the end of the meal, consider trying a small portion of another low-calorie food rather than going back for seconds of foods you have already eaten.
