Scientist explains how you can lose weight without 'dieting'

Diets require serious willpower, and that makes them hard to stick with—but a Cornell psychologist says you can lose weight without having to work so hard. His plan sounds a lot like one of those online ads: Lose weight with this one trick.

The idea, as FoxNews reports, is to make some manageable changes to your surroundings rather than to yourself. "What we’ve found over and over is that making one small change, like eating off a smaller plate, leads to a small weight loss, and then that triggers making more changes. Within a year, a person’s lost 35 pounds without ever 'dieting,'" Dr. Brian Wansink tells Quartz. Choosing a smaller plate is just one of several options he puts forward in a new book, Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life.

You might also try getting rid of that bag of chips or box of cereal on your counter and replacing it with a fruit bowl, Quartz reports.

In Wansink's research, women who kept cereal on the counter weighed 21 pounds more than those who avoided doing so. Some other tips: Don't enter your home through the kitchen, and don't eat at your desk while at work.

And try chewing gum while food shopping; gum chewers bought 7% less junk food than others, another study suggested. (Failing all that, you could go for the rather disturbing "fat-shaming fork.")

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