10 Ways to Tame Your Appetite

Eat less, lose weight-sounds simple enough. But what do you do when your stomach is grumbling and your hanger levels are peaking? You enlist these smart satiety strategies to ensure that you're refuelling the right way, every time.

- By Adam Campbell, David Schipper

Researchers at Cornell University in New York recently asked a group of people an elementary question. "How do you know when you've eaten enough?" The answer might seem obvious. Doesn't everyone push the plate away when they feel full? Well, no. The leanest people do, scientists say, but those who struggle with their weight often rely more on external cues, such as a clean plate or whenever everyone else is finished.

Unfortunately, these cues have nothing to do with how we feel physically. "People's brains are often out of touch with their bodies," says Peter C. Herman, a University of Toronto expert on appetite control. "And when eating becomes mindless, overeating becomes routine," he adds.

The key player in all of this appears to be a region of your brain called the left posterior amygdala (LPA). This area monitors the volume of food in your stomach during a meal. Fill your gut to a comfortable level and the LPA tells your brain to drop the fork. But the trouble is, "many men consume calories faster than their bodies can tell them to stop", explains Herman. "So they look to external cues to guide their consumption." Fortunately, we've scoured the science and recruited the top experts in the industry to create these 10 simple strategies to help you fill up without filling out. Let's get started.

01 Install Food Regulators