Make a New Years Resolution to Eat More

Every New Years Day, millions make the resolution to “eat less and lose weight.” Within a three days, growling stomachs and headaches lead a lot of these people to fall off the weight-loss wagon.

We did a study on habits that investigated people who wanted to make it a habit of eating more of something. This could have been more vegetables for dinner, more whole grains at lunch, more fruit as snacks, more hot (versus cold breakfasts), and so on. People who made it a happen to eat more of healthy foods (instead of eating less of unhealthy foods), reported losing a little over 1 extra pound a month.

What is the one way you could “Eat More,” in order to eat better?

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Source: Presented at the Experimental Biology Conference in Anaheim, CA in April 25. The forthcoming abstract will be published as: Patterson, Richard Wells, Collin R. Payne, and Brian Wansink (2011), “Tracking the Effectiveness of Various Combinations of Diet Tips: Results of the National Mindless Eating Challenge,” FASEB Journal, 2:878.7, forthcoming.