Healthy Eating Tips...
Great Ideas to Help You Lose Weight!

This list of healthy eating tips provides some great ideas for helping you stay on track with your weight loss program. Use these healthy eating tips as a guide to make great choices in your daily routine.



Eat every 2–3 hours – Eating consistently will keep you feeling full and help you lose weight and establish a healthy lifestyle habit. By eating six small meals per day (every 2–3 hours), you won’t be as tempted to over-eat by getting ravenously hungry! These “meals” do not have to be extravagant. Think of three of these meals as healthy snacks between regular, healthy, smaller meals throughout the day. This will increase your energy, boost metabolism, and lessen cravings by keeping your blood sugar levels even during the day. Eating every 2-3 hours will likely have the biggest impact on your weight loss of any of these healthy eating tips!

Eat Mindfully – Slow down your speed of eating by pausing between bites, or by laying down your fork between bites. Spend at least 15 minutes eating each meal, even when it is just a modest snack. This is another way to keep from eating more than you need or intend to. Always be aware of what you put in your mouth!

Drink lots of fluids – Drink at least 8 cups (64 oz total) of water each day, as well as any calorie-free beverages such as unsweetened hot or iced tea, herbal teas, coffee, diet sodas, and sugar-free drink mixes. Skip the high-calorie sports drinks, unless you do strenuous aerobic exercise for at least 90 minutes. These beverages contain sugar or fruit juice and electrolytes (mainly sodium and potassium). For most of us, ordinary water is fine!

Limit caffeine – Limit coffee and other caffeinated beverages to 3 servings (or 300 milligrams total) each day. This includes caffeinated sodas!

Avoid alcohol – Alcohol adds calories and may increase your appetite. Restaurants suggest alcohol prior to your meal to decrease your defense mechanism and lower your resistance to eating healthy. Even one drink per day (including low-carb versions) can slow down your weight loss.

Watch the carbohydrates – The sugar in carbohydrates contributes to obesity, which is linked to many diseases and disorders, including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, gallbladder problems, and high cholesterol. Eating too many calories from any source will make you gain weight, whether the calories are from fats or carbohydrates. So, use these healthy eating tips to help you maintain a good balance of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats in your food choices.

Healthy snacking – Planning ahead and having healthy snacks available and ready will help you overcome cravings for those “less-healthy” higher-calorie temptations. For example, keep vegetables such as pre-packaged bags of small carrots or celery sticks stocked in the refrigerator for these moments. You can also turn to a variety of fruits or low-fat cheese for a healthy snack. It is important to have these healthy snack choices conveniently on hand. As with many other things in life, planning ahead will set you up for success!

Use a smaller dinner plate – Portion sizes of packaged foods and restaurant meals are 2-5 times larger than they were in the mid-1970s. Similarly, our dinner plates at home have increased in size. All of this makes portion control more difficult. An easy way to help control how much we eat at home is to use a smaller dinner plate. Your plate will look full, but with less food on it. This will help your mind be satisfied that you are eating a full-sized meal while reducing the calories you consume.

Advice on fats – With all the negative press fat has received, it's easy to forget that the body needs some fat to build healthy cells, cushion internal organs, keep skin and hair healthy and provide a layer of insulation beneath the skin. Here are some tips on choosing healthier fats:

• Choose high mono- and polyunsaturated oils and fats (such as olive oil)

• Switch to soft margarine from stick

• Limit fried foods

• Limit commercial baked goods

• Read and understand food labels, which indicate the amounts and types of fats in the foods you consume.

Read food labels – Pay attention to food labels when buying packaged foods. In addition to the fat content, look at the sugar content and calories per serving. Compare these values between brands for similar items. Often one type of cookie will have 8 grams of sugar per serving while another may have only 2 grams. And, pay attention to what the packages say are the recommended serving sizes as well. The calories, grams, and percentages listed are per serving. There is often more than one serving per package. So, read carefully!

Watch the sugar – Simple carbohydrates from candy, cake, table sugar, syrups, sweetened cereals and other sources of concentrated sugar contribute "empty calories" that provide energy, but no nutrients. Use unsweetened cereals instead of higher-calorie sweetened ones. Instead of Honey-Nut Cheerios, for example, eat plain Cheerios. Or, try regular Corn Flakes instead of Frosted Flakes. If you want to sweeten the deal, try adding a sliced banana or fresh berries.

Don’t skip meals – By eating more frequently, you will help your body more easily and efficiently metabolize the food you eat. Make sure you eat all six meals each day to keep your body well nourished and your metabolism active. Again, consider eating frequently to be one of the more important of these healthy eating tips.

Enjoy a variety – Be creative with your meal choices and keep an eye out for new eating ideas. If you unduly restrict your menu to lose weight, you may get bored and give in to those unhealthy eating temptations. As they say, “variety is the spice of life.” The same can be said for menu planning. If your meals are enjoyable and varied, meal boredom won’t set in and you will be more likely to stick to your weight loss program. These healthy eating tips are just a starting point. You can no doubt come up with more of your own! With time, your newly forming habits will become life-long behaviors.

These healthy eating tips offer some great ideas for helping you make great eating choices and to stay on track with your weight loss success. Just remember that yesterday doesn’t matter. If you “fall off the horse,” so to speak, and make a few poor eating choices, just get back on the horse! Use this list of healthy eating tips as a quick guide to your healthy food choices.


Additional Resources for Healthy Eating Tips
For additional nutrition ideas and healthy eating tips, see these resources:

Eating Healthy Means Healthy Snacking
Eating healthy snacks is just as important to your health and weight control as all the other food you eat. Obesity contributes to getting cancer and unhealthy snacking can torpedo a healthy eating plan.

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