Does Eating with Smaller Plates Help you Lose Weight?

If you’re trying to lose weight or you’ve ever tried it before, you’ve probably been overwhelmed by the amount of advice out there.

Whether it is ideas from well-meaning friends or the hundreds of thousands of products offered online, there are enough opinions to daze anyone trying to actually lose weight.

Thankfully, there are a few small things you can do that have huge benefits in your weight loss journey.

And, unlike all the unsolicited advice you’re sure to receive, this advice doesn’t cost money or take a lot of effort.

Most people will acknowledge that to lose weight in a healthy manner, a combination of diet and exercise need to be adopted by the person trying to drop the pounds.

While everyone will need to work with a food plan and exercise routine that works best for their lifestyle, one of the simplest ways to make sure you’re cutting down on what you eat is by using smaller plates.

This inexpensive adjustment to your daily routine will help you minimize how much you eat, even if you haven’t changed your other eating habits.

Eating with smaller plates may seem to be very simplistic, but the truth is it’s a different way of looking at one of the most tried and true methods of weight loss: Portion Control.

In the Western world, portion sizes have grown continuously over the past several decades, meaning people expect to eat more at each meal.

As these portions have increased, so have plate sizes. And, the bigger the plate, the more people eat.

Portion control is all about lowering the number of calories you eat per day. Ideally, you want the number of calories you burn to be greater or at least equal to the number of calories you eat every day.

In most diets, people adjust what they eat to take in fewer calories. They’ll increase the amount of vegetables they eat and avoid foods that are high in fat.

While this is definitely a great way to start losing weight, the amount you eat should also be taken into consideration. The body doesn’t need as much food as people think. And, by eating less and more controlled portions, you’ll soon begin to see the pounds coming off.

So How Does Eating with Smaller Plates Help you Lose Weight?

An extensive study was done in Australia looking at the effect plate sizes have on food intake.

Researchers examined different plate sizes and plate shapes to see if changes in sizes made a difference in how much a person ate.

The results found that increasing the plate size even slightly could result in a jump in calorie intake.

And this gets even worse if the plate is switched out for a bowl, which caused even more calorie dense foods to be consumed.

Of course, this all depended on the types of foods being eaten. A small plate of macaroni and cheese is going to contain more calories than a large plate of steamed vegetables. What you eat still matters, but dish size still plays a huge role.

As the study proves, plate size really does matter. And, on top of that, the type of dish you eat out of can also affect how much you eat.

If you’re trying to lose weight, consider switching to a smaller plate size for a month or so. If you don’t own smaller plates and you don’t want to spend money on a new dish set, grab a few snack size disposable plates.

Using a smaller plate, and avoiding bowls, will aid you in controlling the number of calories you consume. After a period of time, your body will adjust to smaller meals and will need less food to function properly and you will eventually start to lose weight.