Everyone knows that the basics of losing weight are eating less and exercising more. But for most of us, it’s a lot harder than it sounds. Here are a few tricks to help you lose weight by eating less, that are incredibly simple but effective.

Most of us have poor eating habits and these poor habits can make it hard to lose weight. But you can eat your way to weight loss if you retrain yourself in the art of eating healthy. Poor eating habits include overeating, eating the wrong foods such as those that are high in fat and sugar content. If losing weight is your goal than you need to pay attention to your eating patterns and the habits that you have developed over your lifetime. Look at what eating habits are problems for you, and how they might be contributing to your weight problems.

One good eating habit to help you lose weight is to eat slowly. Many of us eat rapidly so we can rush through the meal in order to go somewhere or do something else. Or sometimes we eat fast when we are ravenously hungry because we have waited too long in-between meals. No matter what the reason is for our eating too fast, we must learn how to eat slowly. Try slowing your meal by having pleasant conversation with other people, chewing more slowly, drinking water throughout the meal. And you should wait at least ten minutes after eating the meal before deciding on whether or not you will have dessert. This is because it takes at least ten minutes for the brain to receive the message that you are full.

Another trick to losing weight through better eating habits is by having all serving dishes away from the table, instead of placing them on the table. This way, in order to have seconds, you have to get up, leave the table and go to where the serving dishes are in order to have more than one serving of any food. By making it necessary to leave the table, you will give yourself time to think about whether or not you really need more food. Are you really still hungry or do you just desire to eat more than you should?

Eating at the table is a good habit to get into because when you eat in front of the computer or TV you are more likely to be oblivious of how much food you are consuming, especially if you are eating out of a bag or other container (another bad eating habit). When we eat more food than our bodies require, those excess calories turn to fat and losing weight just gets harder.

Probably the main reason we overeat is because of just plain bad habits we’ve fallen into over the years. And you won’t be able to lose weight unless you learn to break your bad habits. Weight loss doesn’t have to be painful if you start paying attention these habits and make a conscious effort to change them.