The race is on to be beach body ready and I don't know about you, but I am always willing to try something new to get in shape. I recently stumbled upon this study published on Science Direct that has me looking at dieting in a completely new light. The study was conducted out of China and the results were both shocking and common.
These scientists found that excessive consumption of food is closely related with weight gain, obesity and many chronic disorders. We've all heard about portion control and plate sizing as tools to help us lose weight, but do you remember the old diet fad of cutting your food into really tiny pieces? Well that was actually proven to be true. Well more specifically the scientists found cutting your food into tiny pieces and scattering the food across your plate will help you to lose weight.
The idea is that you lose weight by eating less, especially with portion control. So these scientists played around with our mental state and eating. The scientists found that people tend to eat to a particular portion size instead of eating until full. Here's the kicker, the scientist were in fact serving smaller portions to their study group, but by cutting the food into tiny pieces and spreading it around the plate the people from the study thought they were eating a larger portion.
The study even tested this with chocolate and people who got a smaller portion of chocolate felt satisfied and full, but because the smaller portion of chocolate was spread out, they felt they were getting a large portion.