It should be fairly obvious to anyone that eating less food will result in weight loss. It is after all the basis of most weight loss diets.

What’s not obvious is that many of us eat too much simply because we’re given (or take) large portions and not just because we’re greedy but sometimes just because that looks like the right sized portion for the plate we’re eating off. In other words we over serve ourselves when we use larger plates and, according to the experts we tend to eat 92% of what we serve ourselves.

The solution? Use a smaller plate. It almost sounds too simple, but one study claims that 70% of people felt more satisfied with a smaller portion when it was served on a smaller plate. One study found that a reduction in plate size from 12″ to 10″ would reduce calorific intake by 22%. In real terms that translates to around 9Kg per year of weight loss.

You can find more information (and some of the scientific evidence) on the Small Plate Movement website.

On the 3rd November 2008 I decided to lose weight. I’d spent too long focus on business and not enough time taking care of my health. That had to change. So I decided I need to lose weight and to make sure that I was going to stick to any weight loss scheme it had to work quickly.

So I set about exploring ways to lose weight as quickly as possible. As I’ve never believed in fad diets, or in the idea of “dieting” in general so I wasn’t prepared to “go on a diet”. Besides I already ate fairly healthily getting in a good selection of fruit and vegetables every day and as I love cooking most food is freshly prepared at home.

That said I did believe there was room for improvement in my normal diet and I recognised a few bad habits that I’d picked up:

• Using a large plate – my wife and I had been given some very large plates as wedding presents and fell in to the habbit of using them.
• Crisps – although I typically ate relatively healthy lunch (brown bread sandwiches with lots of salad) I’d picked up the habit of eating a large number of crisps with lunch.
• Chocolate – although I’ve never really been a big chocolate person, I’d taken to eating some most evenings when my wife had some (my fault not hers).

The first step towards weight loss was clearly to break these habits.

Welcome to How To Lose Weight Quick.

The about page explains why I’ve started this blog. This first post explains a little bit more about me.

My name is John. At the time of writing I’m 32 years old. I began my weight loss journey on November the 3rd 2008 when I weighted in at 114Kg, shockingly high for someone who is only 5′7″ tall!

I’m now just under 100Kg and I’ll use the first few posts to document my weight loss journey since last November.