I’m about to dish out weight loss tips and if you do three of these a month, you can lose 30 pounds in a year. The fact is, most diets fail because you have to do too much to make them work. So here’s some advice from Women’s World Magazine, and the book Mindless Eating by Dr. Brian Wansink.

• First: always leave three bites behind. People have a natural tendency to eat what’s in front of them. In fact, when test subjects were served from soup bowls that were secretly being refilled, they ate 73% more! Leaving three bites behind is a painless way to knock hundreds of calories off your daily total. If you assume a bite of pasta or meat contains about 25 calories – that’s 75 calories per meal. And after a week, you’d leave behind enough calories to lose half a pound – without even trying.
• Next, skip sugary drinks. Liquid calories don’t activate the brain’s appetite-control center, so it’s easy to sip mindlessly and not feel full. So switch to low-cal options, like water or unsweetened iced tea. And avoid short, fat glasses. In a weight-loss camp study, kids poured 74% more liquid into short, wide glasses than tall slender ones. Why? Tall, skinny glasses naturally make it seem like you’re getting more, so you pour yourself less.
• Another effective weight loss tip: eat just two foods at a time. Why? Because the more variety there is, the more you eat. For example, people offered bowls of M&M’s in 10 different colors ate 40% more than those offered only 7 colors. Also, when flavors are mixed, we eat more. Test subjects ate twice as many jellybeans from a multi-flavored bowl than from a tray with two flavors of jellybeans. So put 2 items on your plate and eat those before you add a third item. That way you’ll be less likely to over-eat. 
• And lastly, wait to clean up. Visual evidence of what you gobbled helps you know when to stop eating because it shows how much you’ve already eaten. For example, students served chicken wings ate 28% less when bones were left on their tables.

So try three of these and you’ll lose 30 pounds in a year without even trying!