8 small changes in your kitchen to help you lose weight

When it comes to losing weight, you know the drill: Eat less, move more, repeat.

It’s a pretty miserable experience for most people, but what if you could also shed pounds by making small changes at home and in other places where you spend your day? That’s the message from Brian Wansink, author of the book “Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life.”

“If you look at most dieters, they try to become slim by will power. They try to resist every single thing. The problem of becoming slim by will power is it’s a 24/7 sort of job, it’s never ending,” Wansink, who is also the director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, told TODAY Health.

“What we find is that by simply changing our immediate environment … it ends up leading people to mindlessly eat less.”

It’s that mindless eating that both fascinates and frustrates Wansink, who says most people think they make just 30 or so decisions about food every day, when the number is actually closer to 200.

And because people are unaware of most their decisions, it’s very easy to let themselves be influenced by the things around them, like the distance of the food from their hands or the size of their bowl.

Here are eight changes to make in your kitchen that could lead you to eat less. Wansink believes making just one change and sticking with it for 25 days could help you lose about 2 pounds a month.