How to Decorate Your Kitchen to Lose Weight
A recent article in Prevention magazine asked the question: Is your house making you fat? The fact is that many subtle changes to your house, especially your kitchen, can actually help you lose weight or prevent weight gain. This is particularly important for people who spend most of their days at home, like stay-at-home mothers and freelance writers. Here is a guide on how to decorate your kitchen in order to lose weight.
Step into your kitchen, where most of your eating and snacking is done (or at least initiated). The first mission here involves color. So, which colors are prevalent in your kitchen? If your answer included yellow, orange, or red, the color of your kitchen may be contributing to weight gain. In fact, studies have shown that these colors actually stimulate your appetite by affecting your autonomic nervous system. This is fairly well-known in the food industry. In fact, think of a few fast food restaurants – McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, KFC. Which color is prevalently featured in each of these fast food restaurants’ logos? Red. Because it stimulates the appetite.
So, which color should you display in your kitchen? Blue. The color blue is actually an appetite suppressant. People associate blue and purple foods with poisonous foods. In fact, it took me a while to eat my first piece of taro bread. If you don’t want blue walls in your kitchens, attempt something more subtle like blue plates, blue napkins, and blue place mats. Use blue plastic utensils, a blue tablecloth, or hang blue pictures on the wall.
Speaking of plates, check the size of yours. If they are ten inches or more, toss them aside in favor of plates in the seven to nine inch range. Since people are taught since childhood to eat whatever is on their plate, that is exactly what they do. So, a simple solution is to reduce the size of your plates. The same goes for your drinking glasses. Put away the twelve-ounce glasses and break out the eight-ounce juice glasses, the six-ounce coffee cups. And when dishing out your food, use a spoodle, which is a cross between a spoon and a ladle. You can find four-ounce spoodles at restaurant stores or online. Control your portions and you will better control your weight.
Make your kitchen bright. Eating in the light tends to make you more aware of just what you are eating. In the dark, people become less aware and less inhibited. People, especially dieters, tend to binge eat more in the darkness than they do in the light.
Place a mirror near the refrigerator or kitchen table. The mirror will not only serve as a reminder of your dietary goals, it will also cause you to think twice about what you are about to eat. The same goes for anywhere else in your house that you tend to eat or snack.
In addition to sight, sound also plays a role in how you eat. Soft music can help alleviate stress and thereby reduce stress-related eating. And just as faster music causes you to eat faster, slower music causes you to eat slower. Eating slowly helps to reduce the potential for overeating.
Stay clear of the kitchen as much as possible. (Even it is blue). Do not work in the kitchen. Do not talk on the telephone in the kitchen. When you are in the kitchen, where all the food is, you are much more likely to eat. Likewise, hide the food in your kitchen in closed cabinets. Do not leave it out or on an open shelf. Out of sight, out of mind.
To keep yourself occupied during this coolsculpting recovery time, try reading a few books and watch some youtube videos to get the jest of how to keep yourself disciplined.