Your diet plays a huge role in your weight loss. It’s actually not enough to just engage in physical activity but to match that effort in the gym with reducing your food portions as well, especially if you’re going to see results quickly.

Some people can spend hours at the gym and burn a thousand calories but at the end of the day, they just eat it right back and are back to square one, so it’s important to watch what you eat and especially reduce your food portions too.

There is no “bad” food as it were but there are portions that are too much for anyone trying to lose weight. Infact, even good and calorie foods can be eaten too much. While watermelons or pineapples may be low in calories, even they can be eaten too much and those excess calories may be the reason your weight loss is actually stalling.

The question, therefore, becomes how can I eat less and still be full, or how can I eat the right foods in the right proportion. Well, here are a few tips to help you out.

1) Eat more protein: so the idea behind this is that it takes the body longer to digest protein due to the chemicals that make it up and as such, it tends to keep you full for longer. So if you want to eat less and still remain fuller for longer, your best bait is to increase your protein consumption. Make sure that your plate is well balanced for each meal and infact, contains more protein.

2) Drink more water: it’s not every time that you feel hungry that your body actually needs food. Sometimes, all you need is a drink of water to help you feel fuller. That’s why it’s always a good idea to drink at least a glass of water 30 minutes before your meal so that you’re actually forced to eat less due to being full from the water you drank.

3) Use smaller plates: at the end of the day, we are very visual beings and the way we see or perceive things affects how we receive them. If your brain sees a smaller portion of food in a big plate, it automatically feels that the food is too small for you. In contrast, when your brain sees a small plate bursting with food, it makes you feel you’re even eating too much. So take advantage of that psychology and make use of smaller plates when eating.

4) Snack on fruits: for the moments when you feel peckish and just want to eat, remember that fruits are your best bait. Since most fruits have a high water content in them, they keep you very full for longer and for a fraction of the calories.

So enjoy your watermelons, pineapples, apples, cucumbers, berries and other fruit as you drastically reduce your portions.