Spring figure

Get rid of excess kilos with little tricks

With small changes to your diet, the scales will soon be in your favor.

(Bild: stock.adobe.com)

Even minimal changes in everyday life bring us closer to our ideal weight. If you cut out just 100 calories a day, for example, you can lose five kilos in a year - without any really noticeable restrictions. After all, what is 100 calories?

You can actually eat very little for 100 calories: 30 grams of jelly babies, 15 grams of dark chocolate, 20 grams of chocolate lentils or 13 almonds. You can easily do without that. And those who do have a better chance of changing their figure. A simple calculation shows that giving up 100 calories a day will result in a loss of five kilos by the end of the year!

Maximum results with minimum effort
A minimal change to your diet therefore leads to maximum results. Just like this one: from now on, only use dessert plates to eat main courses. This is because a well-filled plate signals to the brain that there is plenty to eat - and we eat accordingly. It's good if there simply isn't enough food on the plate!

Red curbs the desire to eat
To reduce your appetite, you should also serve your meal on a red plate. According to a study by Oxford University (UK), participants drank less from a red cup than from a blue one. They also ate fewer snacks from a red plate than from a blue or white one. These results suggest that red acts as an unconscious stop signal.

Mix in more "filler"!
To keep your stomach full for longer, you can also trick your stomach by "stretching" the portions with low-calorie food. Therefore, try to add more vegetables to classic dishes. Finely chop carrots, zucchini, peppers, mushrooms or spinach and add them to sauces, soups, stews, chili or stir-fries.

Try topping your pizza with a variety of vegetables. You can use a spiral cutter to make vegetable noodles from zucchinis, carrots, turnips or sweet potatoes. Mix these into normal spaghetti and save half the noodles. The taste is hardly noticeable if seasoned accordingly. This trick is not only great for losing weight, but also provides a large portion of nutrients.

Pre-cooking is the trend
Meal prepping is also on trend. Anyone who comes home hungry after a long day at work usually gobbles down a lot of unhealthy food in a short space of time. It helps to have balanced meals cooked in advance and ready to go. That way you won't be tempted to stuff yourself with snacks.