3 Simple Ways to Lose Weight By Maximizing Your Meal Portion Sizes

The dishes you place your food on play a powerful role in how satisfying (and slimming) a meal is. These research-proven plating optical illusions ‘trick’ the brain into seeing more food, so you feel full on less to maximize weight loss!

Consider dish color.

Avoid eating matchy-matchy meals like white mashed potatoes in a white bowl. Instead, increase the contrast between the color of your food and its dish, say, by eating yellow eggs on a red plate. Cornell researchers find we tend to eat nearly 20 percent more when the colors blend after plating food.

Layer your plates.

We perceive food portions as larger when they are served in a circle, with a larger circle around it, like when using a plate set on top of a charger, thanks to a phenomenon called the Delboeuf illusion bias. To get the slimming perks, try stacking a medium plate on a large one.

Use skinny glasses.

Folks tend to overestimate their portion size when pouring liquid into a tall, narrow glass and underestimate, or over-pour, when using a short, wide glass. To drink less of high-calorie beverages, simply opt for more vertical vessels.

This article originally appeared on our sister site, First for Women.