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Avoid the “white stuff.”  Eat wheat bread instead of white bread. Trade in the white rice for brown rice. Sweet potatoes are a much better choice than white potatoes. Sugar? Learn to live without it.

Every time you eat, including planned snacks, make sure you have some protein.  Protein helps to keep blood sugar levels even, which prevents hunger and prevents excess fat storage.  Having a little low fat cheese with fruit is a good choice, or even better, have some nuts with your fruit, which gives you those amazing curative monunsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs).  Also, a plain boiled egg, spiced up with a little brown mustard, makes an easy, nutritious, and filling snack!

Eat More Often!  Eat six times a day, but each meal is just 200 - 240 calories. It will keep your metabolism high, and  helps to prevent a binge.

An easy way to save some major calories and to eat more healthily in general is to take the time to pack your own lunch before you head to work.  It takes some time to do this, so don’t wait until five minutes before you’re supposed to leave.  An easy way to have lunch items available is to package up leftovers from dinners you prepare (maybe even eat a little less dinner, so you’re sure to have some leftovers for lunches!).  Another good idea is to make a healthy homemade soup over the weekend when you have more time, and package appropriate lunch portions for the following week.  You can even freeze portions for weeks ahead.  Also, you can take time over the weekend to cut fresh veggies and store them in containers so that when you are ready to pack up a quick salad, most of the work is already done.  And be sure to keep plenty of fresh fruit on hand that is easy to pack into a lunch, such as apples or grapes or bananas.  Make sure the night before you have planned what you will take the next day.  If it’s already made up and easy to pack up, you are more likely to end up with a healthy soup and salad lunch or a nice lunch-size serving of stir fry with a piece of fresh fruit for dessert and less likely to grab a fat-filled fast food hamburger and French fries with a chocolate sundae for dessert.  Just think of all the additional nutrients you’ll be consuming and all the empty calories you won’t!

Having a bowl of broth based soup as an appetizer will cut your calorie intake by 20 percent, according to a new Penn State University study.