Five easy ways to lose weight without changing what you eat

You can make significant improvements to your health by changing your mealtime habits

Frustratingly, a study in 2020 found that most diets don’t work for the vast majority of people and even if they do, after a year or so the benefits are largely gone. But building healthy habits will, slowly but surely, get you slimmer and healthier. With some tiny tweaks to your mealtime rituals you can improve your health and gradually lose weight. 
If your goal is to become a bit healthier, then you would be well-advised to cut out alcohol entirely. It is sugar-filled and can harm your liver if consumed too regularly. But if dinner doesn’t feel the same without a glass of wine, then try to make sure you’re drinking after or during your meal, rather than before. 
We know from studies (and possibly from personal experience) that alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream more quickly – hence getting you drunk faster – if you’re drinking on an empty stomach. That’s a problem. 
Many studies have shown that we eat more food – and more unhealthy food – if we’re dining after having alcohol compared with when we’re sober. Alcohol subtly alters the type of food we reach for, says Jenna Hope, nutritionist and author of How To Stay Healthy (£12.99, Piatkus). “If your liver is busy processing alcohol, it becomes less effective at releasing glycogen to keep blood glucose levels stabilised,” she explains.
Recommended
There are plenty of people for whom a sweet tooth is a way of life and for those people, the idea of giving up sugar entirely would be like being asked to lose a limb. However, if you want to consume sugar more healthily, it’s best to save it until after dinner. 
“Firstly, if you’ve consumed a meal prior to having something sugary as your dessert you’re less likely to overeat,” says Hope. 
But having sugar after you’ve eaten a proper meal (preferably one full of protein and complex carbohydrates like vegetables and wholegrains) can also help you avoid the dreaded “blood sugar rollercoaster”. 
“When you eat something on an empty stomach that’s high in sugar, the sugar is released into the bloodstream within 30-60 minutes,” explains Hope. “This will increase your blood sugar levels and you’ll feel like you have loads of energy – great. But as quickly as your blood sugar levels have gone up, they come back down and then fall below the normal range. 
“At that point you’ll start craving high-sugar food because your brain is asking you to give it more sugar to replenish that energy, so then you eat something sugary to get that fix and the cycle continues.”
However, as Hope notes, the aforementioned protein and complex carbohydrates “will slow down the release of sugar over a prolonged period of time so you don’t get spikes and crashes and you’re less likely to crave more sugar later on”.
Another solution is to go for a short walk after dinner. “Walking after a meal can help to lower blood sugar levels,” Hope adds. “Even just 10-15 minutes can induce an effect, so take advantage of nice summer evenings to enjoy a stroll in the sun.”
Recommended
A concept increasingly discussed on social media is “nutrition sequencing”, which is the idea that the order in which you eat food groups can change the way your body processes them. 
“Vegetables first, proteins and fats second, and starches and sugars last,” Jessie Inchauspé, a French biochemist and author of The Glucose Goddess Method, explained in a viral Instagram video. The ultimate goal of eating foods in this order is, says Inchauspé, that you will “feel more satiated, will avoid the post-meal energy crash (which can be a side effect of a glucose spike and then a dip), and you’ll significantly reduce sugar cravings too”.
According to Inchauspé, eating fibre-filled vegetables first creates a kind of “mesh” in the upper part of your intestine. “This mesh then slows down the absorption of the rest of the food during the meal, slowing down the speed at which sugar molecules from the carbs you might eat afterwards will reach your bloodstream,” she says. “The result? Steadier blood sugar levels, even though you ate the exact same meal.”
Protein also takes longer to digest than carbs, so it should be eaten next, followed by the carbohydrates. 
“If you eat a slice of white bread, your glucose levels rise,” says Dr Federica Amati, the author of Every Body Should Know This and the head nutritionist at the science and nutrition company ZOE. “But if you eat fibre-rich fruit or veg before the bread, it will be a smaller rise.”
Nutrition sequencing then, like having a dessert after your main course, should help you get off the blood sugar rollercoaster and stop you from overeating later on. 
Popular but unproven assertions are that water dilutes the strength of stomach acid, making it more difficult to digest food, or that drinking water while eating reduces the amount that foods are in contact with digestive fluids (“the evidence is not conclusive on this and more research is needed,” says Hope). In fact, drinking water before a meal actually aids digestion. 
Liquids help break down large chunks of solid food and help them pass through the gut more smoothly, which reduces constipation and gas build-up. 
“Consuming water before a meal also ensures you’re adequately hydrated, which means you’re less likely to misinterpret thirst for hunger and overeat as a result,” says Hope. 
One study published in the Journal of Obesity (Silver Spring) found that consuming 500ml of water before a meal over 12 weeks helped people lose 2kg more than people who didn’t consume any. It was thought to be because drinking water slowed down their eating, giving the gut more time to send signals to the brain to say the person was full.
Fifty years ago, the average plate size being sold was 22cm. In 2024, it has ballooned to 28cm, according to the British Dietetic Association. 
This combines with unhelpful messaging around food and not leaving anything on our plates. Consequently, we all tend to eat more food than we really need to. 
“We’ve got a cohort of adults that have grown up with the message ‘you’ve got to finish what’s on your plate’, and we’re now telling that to children. That’s really unhelpful,” says Dr Frankie Phillips, a registered dietitian and spokesman for the British Dietetic Association. “It can then mean you’re not responding to hunger, you’re just responding to something by seeing that there’s food there and not wanting to waste it.”
To help realign your portion sizes, you can buy special plates which show you exactly how much space each type of food – vegetables, carbs and protein – should take up. But as a simpler rule of thumb: red meat portions should be about the size of your palm; poultry or fish should be the size of your hand with outstretched fingers; vegetables should be a cupped handful; and carbohydrates should be a handful, as should fruit. 
Recommended