There is no calorie-counting. You're not changing your diet. Nothing complicated. No strain. You won't even realize you're eating less. Yet it is tremendously effective.

A Powerful, Scientifically Proven Method Anyone Can Do

Based on scientific studies, using the Pre-Fill strategy alone you could lose up to a half a pound a week or more. Real-world clients love this method and have found it among the easiest and most effective lifestyle-change tactics.

Really, anyone can do this. You can do it under a wide range of circumstances. There are multiple ways to put it into practice.

The key is DOING IT. Give it a chance to work by trying it out for at least a week or two, and ideally making it a habit. It's easy. Once you try it, you'll be a believer.

How to Pre-Fill

The Pre-Fill technique primes your system to eat less. It takes advantage of your body's natural appetite suppressors. It's all about timing -- the order in which you eat and drink. The idea is to prepare your stomach and your body for satisfaction before you sit down to eat, automatically inducing satisfaction and fewer calories consumed.

Do either — or both — of the following:

Eat highly filling, low-calorie foods FIRST at a meal. We call these Pre-Fill foods. This leaves less room for the remaining higher-calorie foods.
To boost your results with this technique, wait for a brief period of time before eating again. We'll talk more about timing below.

One more rule: At a meal, sure to stop eating when you are no longer hungry. It's okay to leave food on your plate! Your Pre-Fill strategy won't do any good if you ignore your fullness signals. See Fullness Signals for more info.

Pre-Fill Foods

To "pre-fill", choose one (or more) of the following items:

Water
Supplement
Protein drink
Vegetable or Piece of Fruit
Soup
Salad

The first 3 are very easy, simple ways to do the Pre-Fill technique. There's no complicated preparation. This is very helpful because with the Pre-Fill method, it's not difficult: it's just a matter of getting into the habit. Do whatever you need to do to eliminate excuses, procrastination and avoid thinking "it's too much trouble".

Pre-Fill foods are what we might call "weight-loss appetizers". An appetizer has traditionally been used to prime your appetite to eat more, because they are typically high-fat and calorie dense which means they don't fill you up and encourage passive overconsumption (eating more without realizing it).

But Pre-Fill foods do the opposite! These low-calorie, low-calorie-dense foods end up blunting your appetite, helping you to eat less.

And yes, you really can have a large portion size that actually fills you up, yet calories will remain super low (around 100 to 150 calories). This is possible because we are using the Calorie Density Strategy to the max -- basically, we are leveraging water and fiber.

Water

Water costs nothing, is always available and is an excellent satiety substance. Simply drinking one or two glasses of water before a meal will cause your stomach to fill up sooner and activate your stomach's satiety sensors before you have a chance to overeat.

Tip: Drink water no matter what other Pre-Fill items you choose.

Scientific Studies:

One scientific study proved that dieters who simply drank two glasses of water before each meal lost 5 pounds more over three months than dieters who didn't drink water--that adds up to 0.4 pounds per week.
Another study had almost identical results--it showed that people who drank water before breakfast had a 13% reduction in calorie intake. For a 500-calorie meal, that would be 65 calories. If you did that for every meal, you could cut out 1,365 calories over the course of a week. Since it takes 3,000 calories to get rid of one pound of weight, you could lose up to half a pound a week.

See Drink Water for more information on the power of water.

Supplements

There are certain supplements designed to be taken before meals as an appetite controller or suppressant. For example, any supplement containing glucomannan or other fiber. Fiber slows digestion which keeps you fuller longer.

Protein Drink

Protein is the most filling nutrient according to studies. Being able to drink protein makes it a very convenient option. As with a supplement capsule, it's a double bonus because you get both water and the protein with the drink. Whey protein or casein protein are both great options.

Whey protein initiates a flood of amino acids to your system and activates satiety hormones that increase satisfaction with your meal. Just be certain the protein drink isn't loaded with carbs and sugar or it will sabotage your efforts. It MUST be a low-calorie version, ideally sweetened with a zero-calorie sweetener such that it has less than 4 or 5 grams of carbs, and 20 or more grams of protein per serving.

Piece of Fruit or Veggie

The idea here is to keep it simple. An orange, an apple, a handful of baby carrots, whatever you prefer. That's it. Choose veggies that are portable so they're readily available without any fuss.

Because these are such high satiety, filling foods that really you can eat as much of them as you want before your main meal if they are eaten whole; of course that makes it more like a first course ... which we'll talk about next.

There are a variety of dips and salsas you can use in combination with veggies to make a low-calorie appetizer or "first course". Just go easy on the toppings/dip or whatever goes with it.

Scientific Study

A study published in Appetite showed that people ate up to 223 less calories at a meal when they ate an apple or a pear at the beginning of a meal.

Soup

Evidence indicates that by eating soup as an "appetizer" you may reduce total caloric intake at a meal by up to 20%. See Soup for complete details.

Salad

Certain studies have shown that people who ate a 3-cup 100 calorie salad appetizer ate 100 fewer calories from the main course. See Leafy Greens for complete details.

Recommended Results Booster: A Short Break After Pre-Filling

To boost your results with this technique, wait for a brief period of time after consuming your Pre-Fill item(s) before eating more. The ideal wait time is around 20 minutes because that's how long it takes for all your fullness sensors to kick in. (See Satiety Signals for more).

This break can be taken no matter what Pre-Fill items you've consumed, whether it's a simple item like water, on up to a first course salad or soup.

Yes — even after eating a regular meal-type food like soup or salad, you can wait for a short time before eating the rest of the main course. That might seem unusual but it's very effective. (Also, as mentioned earlier, some supplements work better when given some time to absorb on an empty stomach.)

You can arrange the wait-time in one of two ways, depending on your circumstances:

If you have a specific, scheduled time for eating, set a Pre-Fill alarm or some kind of reminder 15 - 30 minutes ahead.
One of the best tricks is to Pre-Fill the instant you feel the first signs of hunger or that slight drop in blood sugar. Then, wait until you get hungry again.

Side note regarding that second tactic: Your hunger cue -- the awareness that it's getting close to time to eat is a valuable skill to have all by itself. See Fullness Signals. Don't worry about your hunger cue being totally correct: it doesn't really matter if you would have normally have eaten 10 minutes or an hour after your hunger signal. Because all you did was eat a zero calorie or low calorie high satiety food so that when you do eat, you're primed to eat less naturally, without expending any will-power to do so.

You can't mess this up!

The Complete Technique (There's an Order To Eating)

The Pre-Fill tactic is really following one simple core principle: "Eat Filling Foods First". This means you eat foods that are the lowest-calorie, highest satiety before other higher calorie foods. And to allow a little time between your first pre-fill items and you main meal if you can.

In other words, there's an order to eating that helps you lose weight with very little effort.

So whether you spread it out by taking a Pre-Fill break, or whether you eat everything in one sitting -- try to do things in a certain order for maximum effectiveness.

The following "order of eating" will allow you to extract every bit of benefit from the Pre-Fill technique:

Before the meal (Pre-Fill):

Something simple 15 - 30 minutes beforehand
Like soup, salad or veggie appetizer

At the meal, eat in this order if possible:

Vegetables
Protein
Carbs and fats
Sweets

So at a meal, eat vegetables first. Why? Because the fiber content requires more chewing -- which automatically slows down your eating, giving your brain more time to register that it is full.

Then eat protein. Why? Because it is considered the nutrient that keeps you the most full over a longer time period, but it also happens to fill you up quickly during a meal as well. And, like vegetables, it takes more chewing time to eat.

Eat carbohydrates, fats and sweets last if you can. By the time you get to it, you're much likely to overeat.

Ultra-Simple Instructions

If you're still thinking this sounds complicated, then we didn't do a good job of explaining how simple this technique is!

Here is how simple it can be:

Pick one or more simple Pre-Fill items.
Eat the item(s) before each of your meals (either immediately before the meal OR, if you can, ~20 minutes earlier).
Drink a glass of water along with it.
Do that for two weeks and you should lose at least a pound or two. Keep doing it and your weight will trend downward over time.

Make it a Habit

Like other weight loss tactics, this one requires making it a habit. But it's pretty easily done, compared to other things.

And, like other tactics, it isn't an "all or nothing" idea. If you can only do this for ONE meal a day, it's better than nothing! That one meal could mean the difference between maintaining weight or slowly gaining.

Or, consider this: What is your biggest meal of the day? When do you tend to eat the most? Put this technique into action, consistently, for that ONE meal or that time period -- and it could have a dramatic impact. You never know unless you try it consistently.