Finding Balance & Avoid Overeating

Most of us set goals at the beginning of the new year to lose weight. While we can set ourselves up for success in the best way possible, sometimes we still find ourselves making small mistakes along the way. One of these mistakes I tend to see people make is overeating. When they allow themselves to eat something that they are trying to limit in their diet, or they aren’t giving themselves enough food throughout the day they tend to overeat. This is super common among most people, and is one of the biggest players in throwing us off track. So here are a few simple tips that we can try and add in to help us avoid overeating.

Use a Smaller Plate

I know this sounds a little crazy, but you would be surprised how much using a smaller plate will help us avoid overeating. Most of us tend to just fill our plates full of food and not pay attention to the amount of food we’re actually putting on our plate. Then we eat all of that food that’s on our plate before we realize the amount of food that we just ate. So by having a smaller plate, this will allow you to have less food on your plate at a time. This will help us with portion control, as well as help us tap into our hunger cues before possibly getting up for a second plate.

Stop at 80% Full

Generally, we tend to eat until we feel full and content. Sometimes some of us even eat our meals so fast that we don’t realize that we are full until our stomachs are hurting from eating so much. This is why being able to tap into your hunger cues and knowing how hungry you are, and how full you are play a big role in losing weight. If we take our time and slow down while eating it will help us realize when we are starting to become full. This will allow us to stop at about that 80% full feeling and will keep us from overeating.

Don’t Completely Ban Your Favorite Foods

I’m sure this is something that you didn’t think you’d hear me say! But in all reality it’s hard for most of us to just completely give up something we love, especially when it comes to food. That’s why we tend to see people overeat when they’re trying to completely give up some of their favorite foods. Just because you’re trying to lose weight and eat better doesn’t mean you have to completely drop everything you love to eat. It simply means that we need to learn how to limit and spread out the amount of times that we have that food. Just trying to completely drop that food from your diet all of a sudden is going to be extremely hard. So instead of feeling like you're torturing yourself by taking away what you enjoy, just begin to limit that food as opposed to just banning it completely.

Avoid Eating From Containers

This means to try and avoid things like eating out of a chip bag, ice cream carton, etc. Instead of eating straight out of that container, take the food out and put it onto another plate or bowl. This will allow you to actually measure out what you are eating, and eat what the actual recommended serving size is. We’ll find that when we measure the food out it’ll not only help us know exactly how much we are eating calorie wise, but it’ll also help prevent us from eating the whole container in one sitting.

Fill Up on Protein

As we’ve seen from recent posts, protein can benefit us in several different ways. One of the ways that protein helps us is it helps keep us fuller for longer. So on those days that we feel like our stomachs are a bottomless pit and nothing can satisfy it, try eating something high in protein. This will help us feel more full and content and can help us avoid overeating other foods that we don’t need to be eating. The added protein will also help our bodies recover better from our workout, so it’s a win, win!

These are just a few of the many steps that we can take to help avoid overeating. Most of these are small and might even feel mundane to you, but they can make a huge difference for you. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that’ll make the biggest difference for us. So start with the basics and begin to build your way up from there.

Wanting to know more? Schedule your free 20 minute introduction call with one of our coaches today!