When people talk about the calories in food, what do they mean? A calorie is a unit of measurement — but it doesn’t measure weight or length. A calorie is a unit of energy. When you hear something contains 100 calories, it’s a way of describing how much energy your body could get from eating or drinking it.

Most foods and drinks contain calories. Some foods, such as lettuce, contain few calories. (A cup of shredded lettuce has less than 10 calories.) Other foods, like peanuts, contain a lot of calories. (A half of a cup of peanuts has 427 calories.)

You can find out how many calories are in a food by looking at the nutrition facts label. The label also will describe the components of the food — how many grams of carbohydrate, protein, and fat it contains. Here’s how many calories are in 1 gram of each:

* carbohydrate — 4 calories
* protein — 4 calories
* fat — 9 calories

That means if you know how many grams of each one are in a food, you can calculate the total calories. You would multiply the number of grams by the number of calories in a gram of that food component. For example, if a serving of potato chips (about 20 chips) has 10 grams of fat, 90 calories are from fat. That’s 10 grams X 9 calories per gram.

Some people watch their calories if they are trying to lose weight. Most kids don’t need to do this, but all kids can benefit from eating a healthy, balanced diet that includes the right number of calories — not too many, not too few. But how do you know how many calories you need?

Low calorie diets work on the simple principle that calories give us fuel for all the activities and functions our bodies undertake. Therefore, if you reduce calories to less than the body requires, it will burn fat to replace them.

How to Start a Low Calorie Diet

* Equip yourself with a calorie counter
Nowadays there are many books and publications with information on the calories contained in all kinds of food, both natural and ready meals. There is also extensive information online.
* Work out how many calories you are going to eat each day.
Usually this is around 1500 to 1800 for a woman per day with a sedentary lifestyle, a similarly inactive man would probably need around 2000-2200. If you are a very active person, though, you would need to increase your calorie intake by as much as 600 to 800 calories per day.
* Get into the habit of reading the labels on food
Many include the number of calories. Check whether the figure quoted is per pack, or by weight, or per portion.
* Work out which foods you can enjoy on your diet
Read your calorie counter and and stay within your calorie limits. It might help to work out a menu for the first week or two.
* Keep a food diary
It is so easy to say “Low calorie diets don’t work for me” or “I can’t lose weight, it must be my metabolism (or glands)” when the simple truth is that you forget to count the doughnut you had for elevenses or the icecream you ate to cool down and maybe the bar of chocolate you had because you were feeling a bit depressed. Take your food diary around with you and write down every single thing you eat, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. Then, at the end of the first week, examine it carefully. Remember YOU are the one who wants or needs to lose weight so, if you cheat, you are only cheating yourself.
* Use a smaller plate than usual
It will make you feel less deprived and stop you putting too much food on your plate when serving out meals.
* Don’t feel guilty if you don’t ‘clean your plate’
There are worse crimes than not eating everything you are served.

Need to burn some calories? Sports are the way to do it. When one is in the midst of competition the focus is more on winning and playing than how heavy the breathing or burning of the muscles. Therefore you’ll have an easier and exciting time getting physical. It can be an individual based sport like jogging or team sports which are great for the social atmosphere at the same time providing exercise. Team leagues and facilities for all sports can be found year around - Indoor hockey arenas provide play in the hottest cities such as Las Vegas during their 110 degree summers, and one can swim indoor in the coldest winters.

All sports aren’t created equal. Different rules apply on how to play, therefore different muscles and amount of exertion are involved, obviously.

Bouncing to fitness. Find out how many calories the following sport’sDiet Bites - fun diet plan & weight loss program! activities will help you burn while dieting.

SPORTS ACTIVITY FOR CALORIES BURNED HOURLY

Be sure to take it slow when starting on any weight loss regime or fitness program. And as we all know, it’s best to get the thumb’s up from our doctor before beginning.

Anyone who’s ever tried to lose weight knows it takes work. But it may not require as much as you think. Throwing everything at the problem might, in fact, be exactly why you fail at the latest plan you’ve

sworn you’ll stick to. “You have to start small,” says Holly Wyatt, MD, a clinical researcher at the Center for Human Nutrition in Denver. “People tend to launch on a weight-loss program and try to change

everything in their lives all at once.”

Therein lies the problem, experts say. Such drastic attempts rarely ever work. The simple solution? Make incremental adjustments to your eating and exercise habits that can shave calories here and

there for maximum impact.

For example, consuming just 100 fewer calories each day is enough to avert the 1 to 2 pounds the average person gains each year, says Wyatt, who co-authored a study in the journal Science on

battling obesity. To lose weight, you have to go a step further, she says, downsizing by 500 calories a day. But you don’t have to slash them all from your plate. “You can eat 250 calories less and then

burn 250 by walking for 30 to 45 minutes. Over a week, that will produce about a pound of weight loss,” Wyatt says. You won’t see dramatic changes immediately, but small tweaks like these can, and will,

pay off over time.

Counting calories can be tedious and time-consuming. A less demanding approach is to find low-calorie substitutes for foods you eat every day.
If you do the math you’ll see simple changes in daily habits add up to significant reductions in the number of calories you consume.
“Eating 100 [fewer] calories each day can help you lose 10 pounds in a year,”
“It can be done by making small changes in what you eat.”

The trick is to eliminate something you typically consume on a daily basis. By taking that approach, it’s easy to remember. You’re basically forming a new routine, replacing a high-calorie habit with one

that is lower in calories.

The following scenarios demonstrate the impact of small changes. Make just a couple of these adjustments and you can easily cut 100 to 200—or more—calories a day.

Breakfast

Instead of two pieces of wheat toast with margarine, have 1 piece of toast. Instead of regular fruit-flavored yogurt switch to light or fat-free yogurt.

Coffee break

Switch from whole milk to non-fat milk in your latte. Replace the apple Danish with an oat bran bagel.

Lunch

Put 1 tablespoon of light mayonnaise on your sandwich instead of 1 tablespoon of regular mayonnaise, and make it turkey instead of salami. Replace cream-based soups with broth-based soups.

Afternoon snack

Replace a small bag of chips with a cup or two of light popcorn. Replace an ice cream sandwich with a low-cal frozen fudge bar.

Cocktail hour

Have two light beers rather than two regular beers. Drink a glass of wine instead of a margarita.

Dinner

Have a green salad with light dressing instead of a baked potato with butter or sour cream. Choose a “light” frozen entrée rather than regular.

Change your eating style

Avoiding specific foods will drop calories from your diet. But so can changing your style of eating.

You know when you eat food and drink drinks? Well, every one of those foods and every one of those drinks contain calories. Say it with me… calories. The reason I’m mentioning calories to you as though you are 5 years old is because the answer to the almighty “how to lose weight” question all revolves around calories. Not only does everything you eat and drink contain calories, but everything you do burns calories. Literally every step you take and every move you make burns calories. In fact, your body actually burns hundreds and even thousands of calories each day on its own just functioning. You could sit still all day and your body would still burn calories.

So now you may be wondering, if everything you eat contains calories, and everything you do burns calories, shouldn’t they just cancel each other out? Yes, they should… and they do. If you consume the exact same number of calories that your body burns each day, your weight would stay exactly the same. If your body naturally burns 3000 calories a day, and you happen to eat 3000 calories a day, your weight would not change. In this example, 3000 calories is what’s known as a calorie maintenance level. It’s the number of calories required for the body to maintain it’s current weight.

I should probably have you repeat “calorie maintenance level” with me, because if there’s one thing more important than calories when it comes to losing weight… it’s your calorie maintenance level.

Your calorie maintenance level is pretty useful to know. Think of it like it’s your body’s weight loss password, and knowing it will get you into your own private weight loss system. Once you’re in, you’ll be able to control your weight with ease. In fact, for anyone wondering how to lose weight, this is the number at the heart of that answer. The best way I can explain why is by telling you the big secret…

Like I said, every person’s body needs a certain number of calories each day in order for them to maintain their current weight. This is your maintenance level. If your diet plan is made up of the SAME number of calories as this maintenance level, your weight will stay the same. However, if your diet is made up of MORE calories than your maintenance level, you will GAIN weight. But… get this… if your diet is made up of LESS calories than your maintenance level…

You just learned the one simple fact that The Lose Weight Diet is based on. Pretty cool huh? I told you, weight loss is all about calories. More specifically, it’s about creating a calorie deficit. You need to end up burning more calories than you consume. If your daily calorie maintenance level is 3000 calories, you will lose weight if you started eating 2500 calories a day. You would gain weight if you ate 3500 calories a day. I realize I was only supposed to explain how to lose weight, but you’ve also just learned how to gain weight.

Did you ever wonder how you gained weight? Now you know. You ate more than your maintenance level. To lose weight, you just need to reverse that. Simple, isn’t it? You may have noticed that in the example above I subtracted 500 calories from the maintenance level. Subtracting 500 calories from your maintenance level is the magic weight loss number here. The reason for that is because there are about 3500 calories in 1 pound of fat. So, if you ate 500 less calories each day for 7 days, it would equal the 3500 less calories required to lose 1 pound. (500 x 7 = 3500)

Coincidentally, there are 7 days in a week. So, by eating 500 calories below your daily maintenance level, you would lose about 1 pound per week. Now would be a good time to mention that the healthy, safe, good, smart, and all around right amount of weight to lose for most people is 1 or 2 pounds a week. That is the widely agreed upon correct weight loss speed. I am bringing this up now because some people may be thinking, “If my maintenance level was 3000 calories, why shouldn’t I just go straight to eating 1000 calories a day instead of only 2500?” Here’s why…

Reducing your calorie intake by so much so fast is wrong, unsafe, unhealthy, bad, unsafe, bad, wrong, unhealthy, stupid, unsafe, wrong, unhealthy, stupid, bad and wrong. Got that? You’d end up losing muscle instead of fat. Your body would go into a state where it actually KEEPS fat. Blah blah blah, blah blah. It would just be the complete opposite of the right thing to do. Remove this idea from your mind.

Fad and crash diets, are not only unhealthy but they also cause rebound

weight gain. Also most diets, even though diet gurus write them, cause

an initial weight loss but the ultimate result is that you gain all of the

weight back the minute you go off the plan. If you don’t gain it back

within a couple of diets, you are likely to gain it all back plus a bit more

within a year.

Crash diets dehydrate you, low calorie diets put your body into starvation

mode so you plateau so you can’t lose one more pound and high protein

diets stress your kidneys and clog your arteries.

Eating Less and Exercising More is the best way to have weight loss.

In order to lose weight quickly and safely and without putting yourself at

risk for such health hazards as dehydration, kidney failure, malnutrition,

exhaustion, nervous dysfunction, tooth loss, dull hair, wrinkles, cellulite,

sudden heart failure or stroke and lose the weight so that it stays off, you

should lose no more than approximately two pounds a week!

Although that might not sound like a large amount of weight to lose it

actually is! If you lose 2 pounds a week that means you can achieve a

weight loss of ten pounds a month! If you only have twenty pounds to

lose then your weight loss is not only quite rapid, but you have the extra

guarantee that it will stay off because you have followed a sensible

exercise plan that did not involve starving, exhausting or depriving

yourself. If you are willing to drop your impatience and desire for

immediate gratification and stick to an exercise plan and healthy eating

habits, then a Mediterranean Diet is for you. Remember being slim is

only good if you are able to enjoy it!

If you want to lose weight, you first need to assess whether you need to

actually lose weight or are simply a fashion victim. Unfortunately this

society is fascinated with fat – who has it and who doesn’t. As we are

persuaded by so many images in the media that persuade us to believe

that you can never be too thin, many of us are bad judges of our actual

body weight.

If you are obese and you know it, then you have to check with a

physician first to see how your health is before you embark on any

exercise program or plan. The same is also true if you have any kind of

medical condition but especially a thyroid condition or heart condition.

Some physicians may not recommend a weight loss program for those

who are over 40 as due to genetics and hormonal changes some people

naturally just round out or gain weight in a way that simply cannot be

changed. If your doctor tells you your spreading hips are due to

menopause or genetics, believe him! It is not clever to fool with Mother

Nature.

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Water help to loss weight - It may be surprising but water makes up 2/3 of your body mass. You need water to maintain an optimum level of hydration, flush away harmful toxins, cleanse the body, cool off, help joints work and to aid food digestion. You need 2 liters of water daily for all these bodily functions.

Wow, isn’t that a whole mouthful? But wait, water is also important in helping you lose weight .

Yes, drinking sufficient water can actually help you lose weight. On the contrary, not drinking enough water can make you put on weight, besides putting your health at risk.

But how does water help to lose weight? Here’s how and why:-

1. Your body’s metabolism depends on water to continue functioning properly. Not having enought water will significantly slow down the process of breaking food down and converting it into energy. This will lead to unnecessary weight gain for you.

So, if you’re dieting and you seem to have hit the dreaded plateau, then you are probably not drinking enough water. Drink more water to correct the situaion.

2. Your body’s process of digestion and elimination of residues is also dependent on water. Not drinking enough water? Get ready for an uncomfortable case of constipation and a host of other problems in the intestines.

How many of you have ever decided to go for a diet? I bet there are a lot. We, women especially, always think we need to lose some extra pounds - for the summer, for some new dress, for some special occasion. And motivated from this one reason we go for a diet. There are plenty of diets all around us - in the magazines, on the TV shows, on the websites. But how many of them truly work? And how often we have started a diet and then ended up demotivated, gaining back the lost pounds or even more? I know, how you all feel, because I’ve felt that way too. And now, I already was able to reach my dream-weight. I was able to reduce my clothes-size with 3 numbers and now I feel just perfect. The self confidence and self esteem I gained, makes the people around me like me. And this is just great. How did I do this? In only three steps:

1. Started eating the right food to lose weight healthy

It is always easy to tell someone who wants to lose weight “start eating the right food”. But what does this mean? And how do we make the difference? How do we pick up the food that won’t damage our metabolism and health?

This is achieved by reading a lot about it, comparing sources, making sure, that this would be the right choice.

Going on a low-carbohydrate diet is in the most cases the right choice. But this does not mean our body does not need carbohydrates. Just on the contrary - it does, but it does need the correct types of them.

2. Excercising to lose weight healthy

Go for sports. Sport is healthy, sport gives you energy and self confidence even before you see the first results. For me personally the perfect combination is fitness and swimming, but each one of them as well could give you the perfect results. What workouts should you choose? Such, which include more cardio trainings. Increasing your pulse helps the body start burning calories faster than you imagine.

3. Picking up right diet pills, or fat binding pills to lose weight healthy.

A low calorie diet can be the simplest form of dieting, nothing more than reducing the number of calories you consume. You could diet on cheesecake, and lose weight! But beware the pitfalls.

A diet based on simply eating smaller amounts of the same highly processed, calorie-rich foods typically results in hunger, poor nutrition, and only temporary weight loss. Eating tiny portions of concentrated, processed calories does not satisfy our hunger. We go off our diets and regain the weight we lost. When we do this again and again, it is harmful to both our health and our self-esteem.

Conversely, by eating foods that are higher in nutrients and fiber and lower in calories, we become satisfied eating fewer calories. We can lose weight even though we are eating more food.

People who are interested in going on a very low-calorie diet (VLCD) should first consult a physician. A very low-calorie diet is any diet plan
that allows 800 calories or less in a day; and the diet is overseen by a physician. The length of such a diet is relatively short, usually between 3 and 6 months. Any longer and serious health complications may arise.
Top 3 Diet Plans (based on Diet Channel visitor activity):

Mediterranean Diet - “Ideal for people who like to cook and enjoy great cuisine.” Learn More…

South Beach Diet - “This hugely popular diet promises diligent followers an initial weight loss of 8-13 pounds in the first two weeks.” Learn More…
Low-calorie diets and very low-calorie diets

As you can see, a VLCD is different from what a person might casually call a “low-calorie diet,” which would commonly consist of 1500 to 1800 calories per day. If you’re interested in something less aggressive, there are plenty of diet plans that will allow for more moderate calorie restriction.
Consult a Physician before trying a very low calorie diet

People who usually go on a very low-calorie diet are seriously overweight or suffer from severe obesity, often defined as a Body Mass Index (BMI) over 30. Children, adolescents, and pregnant women should not go on this diet. Participants usually lose 3-5 pounds per week or a total of about 50 pounds in 12 weeks. The specifics of the diet are hard to describe as the diet should be formulated by your physician to address your individual needs. Often regular food is eliminated from the diet in favor of meal replacement supplements prescribed by your doctor. You and your doctor will map out what to eat and when, as well as an overall strategy. As part of a very low-calorie diet, a physician will often prescribe behavioral therapy and physical activity.
Side Effects of the low-calorie diet

Dieters may in fact experience a number of side effects including fatigue, nausea, diarrhea, and constipation. However, the side effects do tend to disappear over time. There are also more severe complications that may arise such as gallstones if you lose weight too rapidly, so be sure to consult your doctor for an appropriate plan.

Energy in, energy out. The body normally burns a mix of carbohydrate, as glucose, and fat for fuel. How much of either depends on your physical activity and if, or what you have eaten recently. When you use more energy than you take in from food and drink, the body burns stored fat and carbohydrates, and then even protein, to fuel your everyday activities even if you are not exercising

That’s what happens when people starve of course; the body starts to eat itself. Depending on your family history — your genetics — and the way you eat and exercise to create this energy deficit, your body may decide to get conservative and drop your metabolic rate to try to hold onto body weight. Some of us seem to have inherited this tendency more than others, the origins of which may be in the early periods of human evolution where ‘feast or famine’ was more or less the norm.

Glucose, fat and protein. Even so, starvation always works eventually and the body starts to break down its own tissue for fuel. Stored carbohydrate called glycogen is quickly used up, then goes the fat stored under the skin and around the internal organs. Protein in muscle is then broken down to create glucose to keep the brain working and you conscious.

Fat and glucose are the body’s two main energy sources. Fat you know well, glucose comes mainly from carbohydrate foods like rice and bread and potatoes and protein is supplied mainly by meat and beans and dairy products. The amino acid building blocks of protein foods can be converted to glucose in emergencies. Your body always burns a mix of fat and glucose except at very high intensities, and the ratio of the fat and glucose in ‘the burn’ varies with intensity and time of exercise.

Fat burning zone. You may have noticed that some bikes and treadmills at the gym have a setting that says “fat burning zone”, which implies a setting for intensity or speed. The reason for this is that the body burns a greater percentage of fat at a slow pace (or after about 90 minutes of exercise). The fat burning zone, a low intensity speed zone is mainly a gimmick, and here is the reason.

Even though you burn more fat going slowly, you still burn a percentage of fat at much faster speeds or intensity. It all boils down to how much energy you expend in totality. For example, if you compare exercising at a slow rate that burns 60 percent fat and 40 percent glucose and a higher intensity or duration that burns only 30 percent fat and 70 percent glucose, you may still burn more fat at the higher intensity.

A typical example. Exercise (1) is the slower 60/40 mix and exercise (2) is the faster, 30/70 mix of fat and glucose fuel.

1. Walking on a treadmill for 30 minutes — 180 calories used — 108 calories of fat burned
2. Running on a treadmill for 30 minutes — 400 calories used — 120 calories of fat burned

You can see from this example that the bottom line really is how much energy you expend — and that is the ultimate fat burning measure. The theoretical fat burning zone is mostly a convenient myth.
Weight Training Does it Better — Or Does It?

Muscle burns more fat. Weight training is increasingly recommended as a fat-busting tool because some experts say extra muscle burns more energy than body fat at rest, so if you develop more muscle and have a higher muscle to fat ratio than before, you must burn extra energy and more stored fat as a result. This is true and has been shown in metabolic studies. However, the differences are not that dramatic; perhaps less than a few tens of calories per day for each pound of muscle increased, for most people.

Does that mean you shouldn’t worry about weight training? Certainly not, because weight training has many other benefits for health and performance, not the least of which is extra muscle. It’s just that this advantage has been somewhat overstated and we need to get this fat burning thing right in order to develop the best weight loss and performance programs.

Getting the afterburn. Okay, so extra muscle does not provide that much advantage, but what about the afterburn? The ‘afterburn’, or the amount of energy you use after you stop exercising, has been promoted as an important slimming idea. If you can get afterburn, which is really another way of saying your metabolism increases for several hours or longer after a particular exercise, then that’s a bonus because you burn fat during the exercise and after you cease as well. Will the fun ever stop!

However, this idea has recently been reconsidered as well. An article in the Journal of Sports Science reported that despite some promising early studies of this effect, the idea has not proven to be as useful as first thought.

Exercise scientists call this afterburn effect EPOC, which stands for Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption. The authors of that study say that the high intensities required — greater than about 75 percent of maximum heart rate — are probably beyond what most people wanting to lose weight can cope with in sustained exercise. So the afterburn advantage from lifting weights or running fast is there, but you need to be able to sustain that intensity, which means a lot of hard work. No secrets there, I’m sure.

We also need to consider how fuel is used preferentially according to how your body stores are maintained. After you do a vigorous or long workout, your blood and muscle glucose will be much lower than before you started. Low glucose stores signal the body to burn fat preferentially. So after hard exercise that uses a lot of glucose, the body switches to burning fat. That’s why all energy expenditure is important, not just fat burning during exercise.

Are you ready to diet? Again? Diets entice us with promises of quick weight loss. But the people we know who eat well and look healthy aren’t dieting at all. They have simply adopted good eating habits.

Diets can be so restrictive that they set you up for failure. Some are so low in caloric intake that you literally don’t have the energy to continue with them. And while most diets produce quick weight loss at the outset, they often cause your metabolism to slow.

The result is that you have to eat less and less to keep losing weight. You quickly become discouraged, give up, and start eating like you used to. But now, with a slower metabolism, you regain all the weight you lost, and more.
Many Diet Plans Are Designed for Temporary Use and Lead to Temporary Weight Loss

You do not need to join a commercial diet program, purchase special foods or dietary supplements, or use diet pills to succeed at weight loss. In fact, the best thing that you could do would be to start eating healthy right now and continue to do so for the rest of your life.

Of course very few people could do such a thing, so think of a diet or the use of diet aids as tools to help you get started. A good diet plan can teach you how to eat well and give you a jump-start toward meeting your goals.

But whatever path you choose to follow now, your goal should be to make it on your own at some point down the road. Many diet plans are designed for temporary use during weight loss, but only sound knowledge put to practice will provide a permanent solution.

A good diet plan will be healthy from the start, and will be based on principles that you can follow for a lifetime. In fact, if you have found the right diet plan, it will be one that you will want to follow for a lifetime.
Most All Diet Plans Work

Follow almost any diet plan and you will lose weight. This is because whether you are counting calories, fat, or carbohydrates, or restricting certain types of food, you are ultimately restricting the number of calories you consume. The formula for losing weight is very simple: Consume fewer calories than you burn.

So, what should you eat? You would likely do well to eat mostly fruit, vegetables, whole grains, legumes (lentils, dry beans and peas), and limited amounts of lean animal protein (reduced-fat dairy, fish, chicken, and lean cuts of other meats). Also choose whole and natural foods over processed foods whenever possible. Foods with good nutritional value are not only healthy, they help you lose weight.

The above paragraph describes a commonly accepted, healthy way of eating that for most people will result in weight loss and improved health. But there are many diet plans to choose from.
Finding the Right Diet Plan

After learning the fundamentals of diet and weight loss you will be able to choose the diet plan, or simply a healthier way to eat, that is right for you. You will be able to steer clear of marketing gimmicks and promises of short term results, and find a solution based on sound, realistic and healthy principles.

While diet trends come and go, the most basic form of dieting, the low calorie diet, will always be popular. It is based on simply reducing the number of calories you consume. Recent diet trends include the low fat diet and, most recently, the low carb diet. Following this topic you will find:

* The Low Calorie Diet
* The Low Fat Diet
* The Low Carb Diet

Take It Easy

Unless you are excited to be following a very specific diet and exercise plan, do not try and change too much too fast. If you have been eating poorly and not exercising, both your body and your mind will have a lot of adjusting to do.

All the sugar and fat were actually quite enjoyable, and sitting on the couch didn’t feel too bad, either. If you try and change everything too quickly the odds are greater that you will feel bad, get discouraged, and give up. So be patient.

A time will come when a healthy snack will taste as good as the junk food you felt bad about eating, and you will look forward to your regular exercise.

Reduce Fat and Cholesterol

• Use skim or low-fat milk and cheese made from skim or low-fat milk
• Cut back on the amount of fat you use in cooking
• Use water-packed tuna instead of oil-packed
• Choose lean cuts of meat
• Trim visible fat from meat
• Roast, bake, broil, or simmer meats and drain fat after cooking. Don’t fry
• Remove the skin of cooked poultry
• Use smaller amounts of meat and stretch it by serving in casseroles with grains and vegetables
• In a dip or sandwich filling, replace all or part of the mayonnaise with yogurt
• Serve Canadian bacon instead of regular bacon
• Use vegetable or peanut oils instead of solid shortening and use margarine instead of butter or lard
• Try substituting egg whites in recipes calling for whole eggs

Control Calories

• Avoid overeating. Eat only when hungry and just until you’re full.
• Moderation! Eat a variety of foods that you enjoy, but watch serving sizes.
• Eat slowly and chew your food well. This allows you to realize you are full before you overeat.
• Don’t automatically have second helpings, unless it’s a low-calorie vegetable or fruit.
• Decrease your fat and sugar intake and your caloric intake will likely decrease.
• Eat in a relaxed environment. It takes about 20 minutes after you begin eating for your mind to realize that you are full.

Reduce Sugar

• Avoid high sugar foods - read labels for words like high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, sucrose
• Use unsweetened canned fruit or fruit canned in its own juice.
• Try using less sugar in your favorite recipes

Reduce Sodium

• Decrease the amount of salt used while cooking
• Taste foods before you add salt
• Avoid high sodium foods - read sodium content on the labels
• Drain and rinse canned vegetables

Increase Fiber

• Eat whole grain breads, cereals, and pastas
• Eat more raw fruits and vegetables
• Nuts and seeds add fiber, but be aware of the additional calories
• Add bran (1 to 3 tablespoons) into your daily diet. Mix it with cereals, casseroles, tuna salad, and muffins

Increase Calcium

• Eat two or more servings of calcium-rich foods every day.
• Examples: milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream, cottage cheese, sardines or salmon (canned with bones), dried beans, tofu, broccoli