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Weight Loss Using Small Items

Wielding inconvenience as a weapon against fat.

Contents

• Considerations
• Method
• Issues
• See Also

Considerations

This approach has a few considerations:

• Grocery shopping is done at the minimum frequency that still allows "enough" food to be eaten (trainees should know what this is). This is likely 1-2 times per week, depending on their needs and shopping inconvience methods listed below.
• When going out to eat, the trainee should either bring their personal miniature utensils or exercise restraint.
• Initial cost is high, but the investment is recouped quickly through both food savings and health improvements.

Readers will correctly note that there's no section about me actually testing this method out. While I strongly believe in authors testing their own proposed methods—especially when they are as outlandish and potentially idiotic as this one—I am not in the weight loss market and rely too much on food for sustaining my strenuous training, so I will not partake.

However, I am willing to fund this experiment up to an agreed-upon amount if you, the reader, are interested in trying it. Please contact me to negotiate terms and conditions.

Method

The inconvenience approach is two-fold, focusing on shopping and meal preparation.

Shopping

For shopping, only miniature carts or shopping bags can be used. This means if it doesn't fit in the cart or bag of choice, it can't be bought. And yes, this may require personally purchasing the shopping cart (or similar) and hauling it to and from the store. The trainee can decide whether to allow items to go over the brim of the cart or bags or if it must be under the top-most threshold.

The purpose here is to physically limit the number of calories that can be bought while shopping. Sure, the cart can be loaded up with calorically-dense foods, but these are often at odds with the health-conscious food choices one should be making while trying to lose weight. So while muffins can be added, they are probably added after the main meal ingredients. Further, most less-healthy foods' packaging will waste valuable caloric real estate (see the joke about air bags being partially filled with chips), while healthy foods are often just the foods themselves with minimal or no packaging. To get more food, embrace the real and avoid the fake.

Meal Preparation

For preparing meals, only miniature cookware, dishware, and utensils can be used. This approach offers three distinct advantages:

• Cookware: Trainees cannot accidentally cook more than they need, only intentionally. The long cooking times dissaude trainees from multiple rounds, resulting in less food being eaten as a result of cooking.
• Dishware: The classic trick for making meals look bigger applies here: the fuller a plate looks, the more food one thinks is there.
• Utensils: Trainees' food throughput is rate limited by the utensil instead of how fast they can chew. This gives more time for the satiety signal to be recognized.

Issues

There are obvious social ramifications that will result if this program is strictly adhered to: looking silly at the grocery store, not being able to cook for others, explaining to others what is going on and why, etc. Mitigation options include grocery shopping at non-peak hours, not cooking for others, and not caring what others think.

Most other potential issues are by design.

See Also