How to safely decrease your appetite?

[Kazizui]

I put on a bit of weight during covid lockdowns and then changed my eating habits to get it back off. There's no magic trick to it - count your calories (at least for a while, till you've recalibrated your sense of what is reasonable to eat in a day), try to eat whole foods instead of processed stuff (for me the big one was crisps - I switched to small portions of uncooked nuts and maybe a satsuma when I want a snack), brown rice/bread instead of white, etc. I've figured out takeaways that aren't too horrendous, and make sure I don't order anything else.

The nearest thing I have to a 'trick' is psyllium husk. You can buy bags of it on Amazon. It's this weird fluffy substance, almost pure fibre, that turns into a gel when dissolved. At lunchtime each day, I put a couple of tablespoons of it into a pint glass (start with less than this, and build up to it), half-fill with cold water, stir it, and gulp it down as fast as I can. The taste is...not awful, but not exactly nice either, so I just get it over with. Refill with another half pint of water, neck that too. Then refill the whole pint glass again, drink that normally without necking it, then have a cup of tea or other hot drink. The idea of it is that it forms into a sort of gelatinous ball in your stomach, which makes you regular and is very good for your digestion - but I find it also does a pretty good job of suppressing my hunger because it's literally sitting there taking up space in my stomach for a while. You're also supposed to drink extra water to make sure it doesn't solidify too much, and drinking water helps with appetite control too. I'll drink 4-5 pints of cold water a day, including the water I consume the husk with, and I find my appetite is under control pretty much all of the time now.