How to lose weight without noticing

The traditional remedy for growing waistlines is diet. But none of the centenarians has ever been on a diet, and none of them suffered from obesity …

A 10% reduction in body weight is known to help lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, which in turn reduces the risk of developing heart disease. But how can this be achieved? After all, we do not live in the Japanese archipelago and are not surrounded by their age-old cultural norms …

In general, not much will have to change radically: centenarians, alas, have not tried pickled food and fast food, and also rarely eat meat.

Other temptations are easy to fight with a little trick: hide the sweets very far away, buy smaller plates and thinner glasses, and meet friends and family as often as possible, but treat them to dishes of vegetables and legumes and nuts, washed down with red wine. .

Follow the 80% rule

Many Americans eat until they are full, but Okinawans stop eating when they are no longer hungry.

If you are ever lucky enough to meet elderly Okinawans for dinner, you will surely hear how they pronounce the old Confucian saying: “hara hachi bu” before eating. This is a reminder not to overeat. There is a huge difference between the American “I’m full” and the Okinawan “I’m not hungry anymore.”

Everyone has their own fixed limit – the number of calories we can consume without gaining weight.

According to Wansink’s experiments, we can very well eat 20% more or 20% less without noticing it. But it is this twenty percent gap that plays an important role in weight gain or loss!

Don’t ask for more

Those who put off excess food before they sit down to the table eat 14% less than those who first take a small portion, and then go several times for supplements.

Use optical effects

Buy small plates and tall narrow glasses. In this case, you will eat less without noticing it yourself. In Wansink’s experiment, subjects drank 25-30% more from wide glasses than from narrow ones, and ate 31% more from a liter bowl than from a half-liter one.

Keep cookie boxes, candy jars, and other sugary temptations out of sight. Hide them in a closet or pantry. Put appetizing leftovers in an opaque container.

Make food look bigger. Make your sandwich look big with a generous helping of tomatoes, lettuce, and onions.

Beat the cocktail longer until it increases in volume: it will seem to you that you have drunk more. Do not buy huge packages of sauce or spaghetti.

Focus on food

A sure way to mindless eating, and therefore overeating, is to eat and do something else at the same time: watch TV, read a book, or write an email to a friend.

If you’re about to eat, sit down and eat, Dan Buettner says bluntly. So you better feel the taste of food and be able to stop exactly at the moment when the feeling of hunger disappears.

Eat seated and slowly

Many of us snack on the go, in the car, standing in front of the refrigerator, or on our way to a meeting. In this case, we do not notice what we eat and how much. Make it a rule to eat only while sitting, fully focusing on food. Eating quickly will encourage you to eat more.

Eat early

In the “blue zones”, those places on the planet where there are most centenarians, the main meal, as a rule, falls in the first half of the day. Residents of Nicoya, Okinawa, and Sardinia dine at noon, while Adventists in California’s Loma Linda have their heaviest meal, breakfast.

In the afternoon or evening, all residents of the Blue Zones have the lightest meal.

love vegetables

Eat 4-6 servings of vegetables every day and limit your meat intake.

Centenarians of the Blue Zones eat meat extremely rarely, mainly because they cannot afford it. To emulate their diet, try to cook meat at most twice a week and serve portions no larger than a deck of cards.

Be sure to use beans

They are included in the menu of all centenarians.

“What do they eat in Juan Diaz?” Dan Buettner asked Aida, one of the local centenarians. “Beans and rice,” she replied, and after a long pause she added, “Or rice and beans. Depends on mood”. And her hundred-year-old girlfriends who were sitting next to her laughed …

Organize a display of fruits and vegetables

Place a beautiful bowl of fruit in the center of your kitchen table. At the bottom put a note with the words “Fill me”. Instead of hiding vegetables and fruits in the lower compartments of the refrigerator, place them in a conspicuous place.

Treat yourself to happy hour

Buy a case of good red wine. Sit down with friends or your spouse over a glass of wine, using nuts as a snack.

In Sardinia, a glass of wine is drunk with every meal and at every meeting with friends, in Okinawa, both men and women drink a glass of sake with friends.

But the main factor is constancy and moderation (no more than one glass)! Whether you follow Dan Buettner’s advice to drink a glass of wine every day until old age is up to you.

Read more in D. Buttner’s book “Blue Zones” (Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2015).