Begin With a Vegetable Soup or Salad

Starting your meal with a soup or salad will help you eat less at the meal. For five weeks, participants in one research ate lunch in a lab once a week. When they were served soup before the main meal, they consumed 20% fewer calories throughout the course of the meal than when they were served the main meal alone.

When the same researcher served salad before a spaghetti meal. People ate 7% fewer calories during their meal when they ate a small salad before their pasta than when they headed directly to the pasta. They ate 12% fewer calories when they ate a large salad. Light vegetable soups and salads have one thing in common, they're both high in water, packed with fiber-rich vegetables, and low in calories. This high-fiber, high-water combo appears to be an effective way to limit subsequent caloric intake.