Count This Instead of Calories to Lose Weight In 4 Weeks

Thank your elementary school math teacher: Counting can help you lose weight. But focusing on calories and pounds may not actually be ideal. Rather, people who tallied all their bites lost around four pounds in just a month, reports a new study in Advances in Obesity, Weight Management & Control.
In the study, researchers from Brigham Young University instructed participants to make just one change in their diet: count everything. For a week, they counted the number of times they lifted food to their mouth, the number of sips they took of any liquid other than water, and the number of chomps they took throughout the day. After that, the group specifically committed to taking 20 to 30 percent fewer bites.
Four weeks later, without making any effort to eat fewer calories or healthier fare, the participants had lost weight. The researchers called counting bites “a doable, cost-effective option for the 70 percent of Americans who are overweight.” (Don't have a month? Try these 6 Weekend Weight Loss Tips to Slim Down.)
The most likely reason is that they gave their brain longer to register that they were full, thereby unintentionally reducing their calorie intake. But paying attention to every gulp and gnaw probably also helped participants become more mindful, which research has shown can help women lose weight.
Adding up every nibble, though, can be too rigid for some to reap the benefits. Participants who didn’t finish the experiment dropped out because they struggled with keeping up on counting their bites.
Luckily, there may be an even easier way to end up at the same place: When you sit down to eat, slow down. Past Chinese research has found that people consume about 12 percent fewer calories when they chewed each bite 40 times compared to 15. And a 2013 study in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics reports that taking the time to chew your food and pausing in between bites helped people eat less in a single sitting and stay satisfied for a longer period of time—no math required.

'Everything In Moderation' May Lead to Weight Gain

"Eat everything in moderation" seems like a pretty healthy approach to eating: Trying new foods will open up your tastebuds to new healthy meals. Not depriving yourself of dessert will help you avoid binges. But this seemingly balanced approach may actually cause you to both gain weight and increase your risk of diabetes over 10 years,

Researchers asked over 7,000 people about their eating habits, including the number of different foods they eat in a week, the amount of calories in each food, and how similar the foods were to each other, nutritionally. Those who ate the widest variety of foods had a 120 percent greater increase in waist size and were more likely to gain weight than those who stuck to the few foods they knew and loved—even if those foods weren't very healthy. (Psst: We love these 10 Savory Avocado Recipes (That Aren't Guacamole).)
Whoa.
All that tasting, it turns out, may lead you to ignore hunger signals and eat more because of it. In the study, people were simply adding healthy foods on top of everything else they were eating. That means any benefits of eating produce and whole grains were overshadowed by the fat, sugar, and preservatives in foods like sausage, soft drinks, and candy, explains Marcia C. de Oliveira Otto, Ph.D., the lead study author.
So does this really mean that you'll be healthier channeling your inner preschooler and dining exclusively on mac 'n' cheese and chicken nuggets? Not so fast, Otto says. (Learn to Indulge Like a Nutritionist!)
Previous research has found that people open to eating "weird" health foods weighed less than their pickier counterparts, and Otto says their study agrees. What they really found was that diet quality was more important than anything else. People who ate the healthiest fare overall—even if it was just a few staple dishes—had a 25 percent lower risk of disease after 10 years.
"Eating a range of quality foods may be more effective in promoting health than the old advice of 'eating everything in moderation,'" Otto says. (Stock up on The 8 Healthy Foods You Should Eat Every Day.)
Bottom line: No one is saying you can't have the occassional piece of cake or bar of chocolate, but research suggests it's better to eat just a few healthy items than to "moderately" indulge in many treats.