Last week’s record high temperatures forced me to abandon the layers of sweaters and loose tops hiding the extra winter pounds around my middle and break out my warm weather wardrobe. The tight waistbands made me uncomfortably aware of a need to take corrective action.

I’m no fan of crash diets—or, for that matter, of any overly rigid dietary regimen that eliminates whole categories of foods such as carbs, gluten, or dairy products. Unless there’s a medical reason for such restrictions (which often can lead to backlash bingeing), I think a more effective and sustainable approach to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight is to make gradual changes.

To that end I recommend picking one problem behavior to work on at a time. If you’re making unhealthy choices or consuming too many calories, eventually you’ll be able to adjust what you eat to boost weight loss. But you won’t have as much trouble sticking to a nutrition plan if you’ve already put better habits in place and started to eat more mindfully.

Mindful eating means paying full attention to your food and the process of ingesting it—to the smells and tastes and to how your body feels before, during, and after a meal. It means tuning into your hunger and noticing when you’re just full enough, stopping before you feel stuffed.

Grabbing food on the go and unconsciously nibbling can be major obstacles to mindful eating. It’s easy to consume an entire meal’s worth of calories without realizing it if you’re scarfing down your breakfast on the way out the door, tasting while you cook, popping handsful of M & Ms in your mouth as you pass the candy jar on your coworker’s desk, or polishing off your toddler’s mac and cheese as you carry the plate to the garbage disposal.

My solution to these mindless eating habits is to implement just one rule: eat only when you’re sitting down. When you remind yourself to sit before you take a bite of food, you may be surprised to discover how often you nosh, taste, and nibble without even knowing it.

Of course, if you’re prone to frequenting the MacDonald’s drive-thru, munching on a vat of buttered popcorn at the movies, or digging into a bag of chips while you watch TV, sitting down won’t eliminate all your mindless eating. But it will help you pay more attention to what you’re putting in your mouth. Later you can add the step of sitting at the table to enhance your mindfulness.

Take this first step and you may notice your waistbands feeling a little looser before bathing suit season (though with the crazy weather fluctuations we’re having in DC, that could be tomorrow, at which point nobody will be ready).