Create a ritual to enjoy healthy food

The way we enjoy foods can affect how we savor them. Robin Miller, MD, describes the importance of small food rituals in weight loss and preventing weight gain.

Transcript

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Hi. I'm Dr. Miller. Are you trying to eat better these days?

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Smart food choices are a good start, but here's a little trick that can make it easier. Create little rituals around eating.

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Studies suggest rituals, even mundane ones, help enhance your enjoyment of food. I'm talking about little things, like how

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you add milk to your coffee or top your morning oatmeal with chopped walnuts before you dig in. Researchers tested this by giving a group of volunteers

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detailed instructions to carefully unwrap and eat a bar of chocolate. The volunteers who followed the instructions

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savored and enjoyed their chocolate a lot more than volunteers who just gobbled it down. Think of rituals as a simple but powerful form

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of mindful eating, which can help you eat better and feel satisfied while eating less. That's important, because inattentive, mindless eating

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can make you gobble more than you should, and that can make you gain weight.