Bad Habit: It’s that thing that we do when we’re not paying attention to what we’re doing. But what if you could change your habits so that you could start losing fat automatically without ever having to think about it? New research says that you can and it’s easier than you think. 1- YOU’RE DRINKING DIET SODAS It’s a logical assumption: Switching from a sugar-based soda to a non-sugar-based soda should help your health. While calorically speaking that might be true, diet sodas contain their own dangers and side effects. In a shocking study, researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center monitored 475 adults for 10 years and found that the participants who drank diet soda saw a 70 percent increase in waist circumference compared with those who didn’t drink any soda. 2- YOU’RE BREWING THE WRONG TEA A steaming cup of tea is the perfect drink for soothing a sore throat, warming up on a cold winter’s night, or binge-watching Downton Abbey. But certain teas are also perfect for doing something else — helping you lose extra weight. Pu-erh tea, for example, can literally shrink the size of your fat cells! To discover the brew’s fat-crusading powers, Chinese researchers divided rats into five groups and fed them varying diets over a two-month period. In addition to a control group, there was a group given a high-fat diet with no tea supplementation and three groups that were fed a high-fat diet with varying doses of pu-erh tea extract. The researchers found that the tea significantly lowered triglyceride concentrations (potentially dangerous fat found in the blood) and belly fat in the high-fat diet groups. It’s a natural fat blaster, along with barberry, rooibos and white tea. 3- YOU EAT MOSTLY WITH BIG GROUPS When we eat with other people, we consume, on average, 44 percent more food than we do when dining alone. Research published in the journal Nutrition found that a meal eaten with one other person was 33 percent larger than a meal savored alone. It gets scarier from there. Third-wheeling with two friends? You’re looking at a 47 percent bigger meal. Dining with four, six, or 8+ friends was associated with meal increases of 69, 70 and 96 percent, respectively. Though part of this has to do with the amount of time we spend at the table when dining with company, another study from the journal Appetite found people who spent longer eating because they were simultaneously reading didn’t eat significantly more, meaning time isn’t the only factor at play here. 4- YOU’RE MARRIED TO YOUR BESTIE For better or … fatter? Research suggests a committed relationship has the potential to wreak havoc on your diet. A study in the American Journal of Public Health analyzed the impact spouses, friends, and siblings played on dietary patterns over the course of 10 years. Couples had the greatest influence on each other’s eating habits, particularly when it came to drinking booze and snacking. 5- YOU ORDER LAST If you want to eat healthy when dining out with a group of friends, keep healthy company … or order first! A University of Illinois study found that groups of people tend to order similarly, especially when forced to give their order out loud. The researchers attribute the results to the fact that people are happier making similar choices as their peers. 6- YOU ‘LIKE’ FACEBOOK IN BED Spending hours on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest when you could be up and about burning calories is a growing health concern, health experts say. A study of 350 students from the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland found that the more time they spent on Facebook, the less time they spent exercising or engaging in team sports. Particularly fattening is catching up with your social networks before bed — or even in bed! A study in Pediatric Obesity found students with access to one electronic device in their bedrooms were 1.47 times as likely to be overweight as those with no device in the bedroom. That increased to 2.57 times for kids with three devices. 7- YOU DON’T EAT MINDFULLY Be mindful about eating mindfully. The practice has ancient Buddhist roots. It is, in fact, a form of secular meditation, asking us to experience food more intensely, paying close attention to the sensation and purpose of each bite. Mindful eating is not a diet — and it doesn’t ask you to eat less — but the approach is gaining traction as a successful weight-loss mechanism. In fact, recent studies have shown that mindful eaters respond less to emotional stress, consume significantly fewer calories, and have an easier time maintaining a healthy BMI compared with those who are unaware. 8-YOU DISTRACT YOURSELF “We eat for many reasons, but the main prompt for mindful eating is physical hunger,” says registered dietitian nutritionist Leslie Schilling. “It’s hard to be present if you’re eating at your desk, cyber-loafing, or watching television. When your mind is focusing on something besides your food, you don’t realize things like ‘Was the food actually good?’ and ‘Am I getting full?’ This often leads to ‘do-over eating,’ which isn’t so mindful. Eat with purpose and presence!" 9- YOU’RE NOT SENSIBLE The warm smell of cinnamon, the charred stripes on a grilled chicken breast, the crunch of an apple … Experts say paying attention to the sensory details of food is a simple way to start eating mindfully — and start dropping pounds. In fact, a study in the journal Flavour found that participants who took time to appreciate the aroma of a meal ate significantly less of a dish that smelled strongly than a mildly scented one. A second study found that people served a monochromatic plate of food like fettuccine Alfredo on a white plate ate 22 percent more than those served a more visually appealing meal that provided more color and contrast. Texture also comes into play. Researchers in Florida found that people tend to eat more of soft, smooth foods, which tend to be higher in fat, than hard, crisp ones. In one study, participants consumed more soft brownie bits than hard brownie bits until they were asked to focus on calorie content. 10-YOU RUIN THE MOOD “We are born pleasure seekers,” says Melissa Milne, author of The Naughty Diet, out in spring 2016. “It’s not just food calories that fill us up, but the pleasure we derive from eating them. Taking time to set the mood can increase your meal satisfaction, which means you’re less likely to overeat. In fact, pleasure helps the body relax, which aids digestion. This means you’ll metabolize an indulgent meal faster and smaller portion sizes will satisfy you.” 11- YOU FORGET YOU’RE FULL Stopping at a red light is more challenging when you’re flying at 100 miles per hour than when cruising at a slower speed. Knowing when to put down your fork is similar. Experts say gauging your body’s subtle “I’m full” cues is easier when you take smaller bites at a slower pace. In fact, one study published in the journal PLOS One found that people who focused on taking “small bites” of food consumed about 30 percent less soup for their meal than those who didn’t make the conscious decision. The mindful soup slurpers also more accurately estimated how many calories they had consumed. 11- YOU DON’T PLAY SQUASH 1 “Spaghetti squash is a great alternative to pasta,” Shaun T, the Insanity trainer who hosts a new podcast, Trust and Believe, tells “Eat This, Not That!” “I love pairing it with homemade spaghetti sauce so I feel like I am eating noodles, but am getting a dose of vegetables instead!” 12- YOU’D RATHER BE HEALTHY THAN THIN Maria Menounos lost 40 pounds. So we asked her for her No. 1 diet tip. “Let’s face it,” she says, “the entire diet industry as well as the messages we get from Hollywood, the media, and pretty much our entire country revolve around weight and size. Lose more pounds. Fit into smaller clothes. Get thin! The main thing I want to convey, though, is that thin cannot compete with healthy. Health is the most important thing in your life.” 13- YOU EAT THREE MEALS A DAY Despite diet experts and new research constantly telling you otherwise, many people still consume the bulk of their calories in two or three large meals each day, often — in an attempt to slim down — going for hours at a time eating nothing in between. Sure, you can lose weight on a reduced-calorie three-meal plan, but you can’t make your body burn fat more efficiently, which is key to long-term weight loss. 14- YOU KEEP POP A SECRET Don’t be ashamed of your popcorn habit, as long as you don’t use too much butter or oil. “Popcorn is one of my favorite whole grains. Whole-grain crackers, oatmeal, and whole-grain cereal also top my daily diet list,” says Elisa Zied, registered dietitian and nutritionist and author of Younger Next Week. “Even though whole grains get a bad rap, I don’t think it’s deserved. Studies suggest that whole-grain intake is linked with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.” 14- YOU DON’T EAT FULL-FAT It’s time to get fat not around your waist, but on your plate. A new report from the Credit Suisse Research Institute found that more and more of us are choosing whole-fat foods over skim, light, fat-free, or other modern monikers of leanness. And while many health organizations like the American Heart Association still want us to cut down on fat particularly saturated fat this full-fat trend may be a healthy rebellion against that decades-old credo, according to recent studies. 15- YOU EAT THE WRONG SALMON Lean protein like fish is a great way to fight fat and boost your metabolism. But the farmed salmon you get at the local market might not be the best bet for your belly. The cold-water fish has a well-deserved reputation for packing plenty of heart-healthy omega 3 fatty acids 1,253 milligrams of the good stuff and just 114 milligrams of inflammatory, belly-busting omega 6s. But the farmed variety and 90 percent of what we eat today is farmed has a very different story to tell. It packs a whopping 1,900 milligrams of unhealthy omega-6s. 16- YOU’RE NOT NUTS Stephen Colbert may be onto something. The UCLA Center for Human Nutrition researchers divided study participants into two groups, each of which was fed a nearly identical low-cal diet for 12 weeks. The only difference between the groups was what they were given to eat as an afternoon snack. One group ate 220 calories of pretzels while the other group munched on 240 calories’ worth of pistachios. Just four weeks into the study, the pistachio group had reduced their BMI by a point, while the pretzel-eating group stayed the same, and their cholesterol and triglyceride levels showed improvements as well. 17- YOU SIT TOO MUCH Ideally we sleep about eight hours for every 24. Most people spend an extra seven to 10 hours sitting at their desk. That means most of us spend the overwhelming majority of our time sedentary. Our bodies weren’t designed for this level of inactivity. Most of human evolutionary history has involved being active, searching for food and fuel. Nutritionist Lisa Jubilee says that one way to burn more calories daily is to stand more and sit less. She cites a British study that found that standing at work burned 50 more calories an hour than sitting. If that doesn’t sound like a lot, consider this: If you stand for just three hours every day, in one year you’ll expend more than 30,000 extra calories — which amounts to about 8 pounds of fat. 18- YOU DON’T PREGAME Your dinner, that is. While it may sound counterintuitive, eating before going to a work dinner or happy hour can actually take off pounds. A series of studies out of Penn State found that noshing on an apple or a broth-based soup prior to sitting down to a restaurant meal can reduce total calorie intake by 20 percent. With the average restaurant meal weighing in at 1,128 calories, saving 20 percent once a day could help you lose up to 23 pounds this year. 19- YOU’RE USING THE SCALE TOO OFTEN Stepping on the scale every day can be a one-way ticket to Crazytown, but abandon it completely and research has shown your weight is likely to creep up. Fortunately, a recent study from Cornell found there is a happy medium. People who weighed themselves at a set time once a week not only didn’t gain weight but also lost a few pounds without making any other changes to their diets. 20- YOU’RE NOT SLEEPING ENOUGH “The average American doesn’t get enough sleep, and while we’re sleeping, our body releases powerful fat-burning hormones that speed weight loss,” explains Chris Powell, trainer and transformation specialist on ABC’s Extreme Weight Loss. “I don’t care if it’s 15 more minutes or two hours: Every extra minute of shuteye will help you reach your goal that much faster. Plus, if you’re already in bed, the less likely you are to succumb to those late-night food temptations.” Source
