The wrong way to lose weight: A heaping portion may send the wrong signal.

Scientists are constantly searching for the best ways to help people lose weight. Ways that really work. This week, researchers from Cornell University divulged results from a clever and innovative project that may offer a new secret to successful weight loss.

A team of researchers from the Food and Brand Lab (following a study protocol designed by psychologists) found that inserting “stop signs” into food helped people avoid overeating.

How it worked: The researchers inserted brightly colored chip markers  into specially designed tubes of Lays Stackables potato chips at regular intervals to indicate portion sizes. Sure enough, the people who received those tubes, as opposed to conventional packages of chips, restricted the number of chips they ate at one sitting.

In the study, researchers divided 98 students into two groups. The students were given tubes of chips — some divided by red-dyed “stop sign” chips, others not — then settled down to watch movies. Interestingly, the chips were counted differently; in some tubes the marker chips were inserted after every 7 chips; in others after every 14 chips. The researchers, who were part of Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab, then counted the number of chips each student ate.

The first data results, published this month in Health Psychology, a journal of the American Psychological Association, found that the students given the tubes with the marked chips ate on average half the number of chips as the students  given the unmarked tubes. The students didn’t receive any explanation of why some of the tubes contained red chips. Even so, the students given the marked chips ate 20 and 24 chips on average (for the seven-chip and 14-chip tubes, respectively), compared with 45 chips in the control group.

In a second study, not yet published, the markers were inserted after every  five and 10 chips. In that study, the students whose tubes had markers after every 5 chips ate 14 chips, and those given tubes with markers every 10 chips ate 16 chips compared with 35 chips in the control group.

Most importantly, participants who got marked tubes were much better at estimating how many chips they’d actually eaten, getting it right within one chip.  Those eating out of unmarked tubes underestimated the number of chips they ate by an average of 13 chips – or two servings!

What I love about this study is that it not only addresses overeating in general, it highlights the issue of unconscious eating. (Particularly suggestive is the fact that even with the chip markers, the participants ate what amounted to three servings.)

Weight loss experts frequently explain that addressing the habit of unconscious eating is one of the best ways to lose weight without the sense of deprivation that so often makes diets backfire.

Here’s a step by step guide to overcoming unconscious eating.

1. Don’t wait until you’re starving. When you’re overly hungry, you eat too fast, outpacing your satiety cues. Therefore, you’re much less likely to notice when you’re full.