Top 10 ‘unusual’ tips for losing weight…

Sure – we know – you’ve probably tried every trick in the book when it comes to dieting and losing weight.  But take a look at this list.  We reckon these are 10 of the most unusual suggestions for losing weight. We can’t guarantee you’ll lose weight but they’re not completely crazy ideas either.  There is method in every one of them and we CAN guarantee you’ll be amazed…  Who knows, some of them just might work for you too! Here we go….

1. Sniff a banana, apple or peppermint. This might sound crazy, but apparently it works. Dr Alan Hirsch of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago tried this with 3,000 volunteers and found the more frequently people sniffed, the less hungry they were and the more weight they lost.  The volunteers lost an average of 13.5 kilograms each. One theory is that sniffing the food tricks the brain into thinking you’re actually eating it and this somehow satisfies your hunger.

2. Eat a bigger breakfast than dinner. It seems you can lose quite a bit of weight by simply switching to a large breakfast rather than a big dinner, according to a July 2013 study published in the journal Obesity. Turns out, this eating plan takes advantage of natural fluctuations in the body’s metabolic cycle and reduces carb cravings later in the day. The study recruited 74 overweight women and gave them different eating patterns. Those who ate the big breakfast of around 700 calories, then a lunch of 500 calories and a dinner of 200, lost the most weight. Other women in the study consumed the same calories at different times of the day and lost far less weight.

3. Light a vanilla-scented candle after dinner. The aroma has been shown to dampen dessert cravings. One group of 160 volunteers actually lost an average of two kilograms each by wearing vanilla-scented patches. See more here.

4. Turn the temperature down in your bedroom. Keeping your bedroom cooler will help you lose weight according to a recent study published in the journal Diabetes. Those in the study who slept in a 66-degree room burned more than seven per cent more calories than those who slept in a 75-degree room. It seems, colder temperatures helps you burn through the fat stored in your belly. So just sleep away that spare tyre!

5. Sleep in the dark. Exposure to light at night doesn’t just interrupt your chances of a great night’s sleep, it seems it can also help you gain weight according to a new study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Study subjects who slept in the darkest rooms were 21 per cent less likely to be obese than those sleeping in the lightest rooms.

6. Decorate your dining room in blue. Hey, it seems there’s a reason why McDonald’s and Hungry Jacks et al all tend to use a lot of red and yellow in their shops. These tones send us subliminal messages which help make us hungry. Whereas, if you surround yourself with a colour like blue, researchers have found that people eat 33 per cent less in a blue room. So try using these tones for your plates and your tablecloth, and it could help you lose weight.

7. Cook with tumeric. This spice is the key ingredient in most curries but you can use it on its own as well in a wide range of dishes. Tumeric contains a substance named curcumin, which according to a recent study from Tufts University in Boston, helps you burn your fat more easily. The study found rats fed a diet high in fat with small amounts of curcumin gained less weight than other rats given similar food but no curcumin. (And Don Burke recommends growing it!)

8. Watch less TV. The average adult can watch up to four hours of TV a day. This is a lot of time in a sedentary position. Researchers in the US found in a study when they forced people to watch 50 per cent less TV, the participants burned an average of 119 more calories per day.

 9. Eat with your other hand. A recent study from the University of Southern California has discovered that simply switching the hand you usually eat with can curb your calorie consumption. In other words, eat with your left hand (or right hand if you’re a lefty) and you’ll eat less. It’s as simple as that.

10. Take a vitamin. In a study published in the International Journal of Obesity, researchers assigned 96 obese women to take a multivitamin, calcium supplement, or placebo for 26 weeks. The vitamin group wound up with significantly less body fat than the others.