Avoid eating snacks from a bag.  

Weight loss tip 129 – Don’t eat from the bag

Potato Chips

I remember a commercial from my childhood.  Lay’s produced the commercial with the slogan “Bet you can’t eat just one!”.  The slogan is much more than a catchy statement and the fact is there is a lot of science behind that statement[1].  This statement resonates as true to just about anyone who has set down with this bag in front of the television.  This challenge in the form of a slogan is nearly impossible to win if you indeed eat out of the bag.  

I personally have tried to avoid overeating and have found that it is near impossible to avoid eating if you sit down to eat with the whole bag.  This concept fits with the concept of mindless eating but goes further than this.  Whether the offending agent is a bag of chips, tortilla chips, or popcorn, you will eat more than you want if you sit down with the bag.  The problem is that our minds are notoriously bad at figuring serving sizes or registering how much you have eaten.   We are preordained to overeat when we are given large than a single serving.  I have found that dividing a bag of popcorn lease to me eating less and ending just as satisfied.  For this reason, I strongly recommend that always measure our single servings rather than sit with the entire bag.  

The bottom line: Avoid eating from the bag and portioning out your snack to avoid the feedbag effect.  Mindless eating is the enemy of limiting portions and eating out of the bag makes mindful eating impossible.