Portion Controlled Entrees
We know that people CAN get healthy and lose weight if they improve their diet, eliminate the junk and reduce the overall calorie consumption, but frankly, that's a lot of work.
Even the most earnest among us make mistakes when measuring appropriate servings, eating too much of one food, not enough of another, or making inequivalent substations, say, ice cream instead of a cup of milk. It happens.
So how much effect does the fatigue factor--or the fudge factor--have? Researchers put two groups of women on nutritionally similar diets for eight weeks to find out.
One group had their meals all prepared in tidy, portion controlled entrees servings. The other group had to do their own measurements and preparation using the Food Guide Pyramid.
At the end of the study, the women who had the pre-packaged meals had lost 6.5 percent of their initial weight, compared to a 4.2 percent loss for the gals who had to do their own work.
Portion controlled entrees left less room for human error, and that made for a simpler path to success.