Stop Counting Calories To Lose Weight And Try This Instead!

If you are tired of counting calories there is a new diet trend you may want to consider! Counting calories can sometimes make you feel like you need an advanced calculus degree to figure it all out. But this new method is not only effective, it is a whole lot easier.

A new study has found that people who counted their bites over the course of one month lost around four pounds. Participants in the pilot test counted the number of bites they took each day and committed to taking 20 to 30 percent fewer bites over the course of the four weeks.

The participants who managed to stick to the plan saw weight loss without having to change anything else about their diet. Lead study author, Dr. Josh West, from Brigham Young University, said: “This study confirms what we already knew, consuming less food makes a difference. We’re not advocating people starve themselves, what we’re talking about is people eating less than they’re currently eating.”

Dr. West believes that people who are overweight need to be placing a greater emphasis on the quantity of food instead of the quality of it.

The 61 people who participated in the study recorded the number of times they lifted food to their mouths and the number of gulps of liquids (other than water) they took each day and then texted or emailed the totals to the researchers. The 41 people who finished the study showed encouraging results.

“We felt pretty good about how much weight they lost given the relatively short span of the study,” says study co-author Dr Ben Crookston. “Now we need to follow up to see if they keep it off, or if they lose more weight.”

The people who failed to finish the study dropped out because they had a difficult time keeping up with counting bites. So, as a solution, researchers in the BYU computer science department, created an algorithm that can do the counting for people! This technology has now been licensed to local startup company SmartBites, whose team is refining it as an app for wearable devices such as Android Wear and WatchOS devices.

The researchers believe that counting bites is a cost-effective and totally do-able way to combat obesity. “We’re consuming considerably more calories than we did a generation ago or two generations ago; at the same time we’re much less active. The good news is that you don’t have to be extreme calorie cutting,” says Dr Crookston. “Even a 20 per cent reduction in bites makes a difference.”

Makes sense, right? If you are eating less food, you should lose weight.

What do you think of this idea? Will you give it a try or wait for more research?

Source: Daily Mail

 

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