If I was to run a 'How to lose weight' class..

Instead I'll just write a blogpost. 'Cos that's what you do these days.

It would go like this...

1. Learn a fundamental physics law  ie the law of energy conservation. Bastardised into popular parlance that's 'energy in equals energy out'. After all the airy fairy pouncing around some of the eyeroll exercise inducing things I've read, let's start and finish with that.

2. Learn basic self awareness and philosophical obviousness. ie ask yourself a very basic question 'Am I hungry?'

Ok the second one could be teased out a bit but pretty much anyone can do this for themselves - it does not require a shrink degree, just some acceptance of responsibility for self.

So like, you're standing in front of the refrigerator, with the refrigerator door open, looking at the refrigerator contents.

Why?

Here is THE question that matters:

Are you hungry?

Maybe it's just me, but a lot of the time I find myself doing this because, I'm bored, or I just happened to be over there, or I know there is something particularly yummy in there, or actually I haven't really thought about it at all. But if I were to ACTUALLY ASK THAT QUESTION... the answer would be...

No.

Ok... so this is step one for taking responsibility for my actions. ***realising that I am doing this***. It is a **super** useful question. Because, and actually it's another physics thing (cause and effect)... if I eat something at this time, most likely I do not actually need to eat. And if I'm eating something that I don't need to eat, then number 1 comes into play - I will not by living burn off the energy I have consumed.

The other part of when to ask this question is half way through eating stuff. So that is, portion sizes. I would suggest that for a lot of us in the Western world our portion sizes are between 2x to 4x what we need. And we eat too fast.