8 small changes in your kitchen to help you lose weight

4. Put out a fruit bowl

Behold the power of fruit: The average person who has a fruit bowl in their house weighs 8 pounds less than their neighbor next door who doesn’t have one, Wansink said.

“Most of us don’t think on a daily basis, ‘Oh I better get a piece of fruit.’ But if you see it seven times during the day, (you may think), ‘Oh, an apple sounds pretty good,'” he noted.

The presence of a fruit bowl doesn’t seem to make a difference at first, but people do start taking fruit from it after two weeks or so, he added. For it to really be effective, it needs to be within two feet of a place where people sleep or walk, so a high-traffic area like the kitchen is ideal.

5. Wrap tempting left overs in the fridge in aluminum foil

“We’re very unlikely to unwrap things that are in aluminum foil, we’re kind of lazy,” Wansink noted. So hide anything fattening underneath aluminum, but keep covering healthy food in plastic wrap so you can actually see it and be more likely to reach for it.