How To Eat Less To Prevent Weight Gain?

Data provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) indicated that 1.9 billion adults are overweight or obese globally. Obesity is a serious health issue as it raises the risk of getting diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke and certain types of cancer.

The main reason for causing overweight and obesity is a lack of energy balance. People are just taking in more calories (foods and drinks) than their body uses. There are so many reasons that people eat more than their body need. One of them is what a study revealed: adults usually consume more food when it comes in bigger packages or is served on larger plates. 

Researchers from the University of Cambridge analyzed 58 studies that examined how the size of things such as cereal bowls and snack bags influences the number of calories people take in. A total of 6,603 participants were involved.

In the paper published September 14, 2015 in the ‘Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews’, the researchers showed that smaller containers, dishes and cutlery might simply help adults consume up to 16 percent fewer calories (equivalent of up to 279 kilo calories per day) in the United Kingdom and 29 percent less in the United States (equivalent of up to 527 kilo calories per day).

While the effect of smaller sizes for dishes and packages did not vary by gender and was similar for normal-weight, overweight and obese people, children did not appear to be affected by size when deciding how much food or drink to consume.

Most of the studies reviewed, as the researchers acknowledged, did not follow people for long periods and there was a lack of data to assess if sustained changes in container and plate sizes over time might help weight loss or maintain a healthy weight. Data was also lacked on the impact of bottle, can or glass size on alcohol consumption. Nevertheless, the results did highlight the paramount role of environmental influences on food consumption and did suggest that limiting exposure to larger serving sizes might be an effective tool to get people eat less.

Besides small serving sizes, it is also necessary to pay attention to frequency of meals that has to be high. In other words, people have to eat regularly at short intervals in order to keep the basal metabolic rate high and more importantly, to eat healthy and stay away from junk food.

Another thing to note is that, limiting serving sizes alone might not be enough to curb obesity epidemic because obesity epidemic is a result of a number of different and complex influences. Factors like inactive lifestyle, age, lack of sleep, and medicines can all cause people to gain weight.