Our culture has distorted the innate act of eating sensibly by its overwhelming abundance of food. Sure, the presence of a culture that is sufficient and advanced enough to feed all of its citizens three times what they actually need is comforting, but along with that comes obesity and disease. Read on to learn the tips and secrets to eating properly and maintaining a healthy body.

Steps  

   1. Know what being hungry feels like. This takes some practice. Know that being hungry is a feeling of needing food, any food, in the pit of your stomach. It is not your mind thinking about what it wishes you could eat. When you know you are truly hungry, recognize what this feels like and remember it so that you can recognize it in the future.

   2. When you're eating a meal, stop when you're satisfied, not when you're full. Don't you hate it when you feel as if your stomach is so gorged it's going to explode? This is a sign that you have made a mistake in how you just ate. After you're done eating, your stomach should feel good, not hurt or stressed.

   3. Eat only when you're actually hungry. Our culture seems to think that people get hungry at about 9 AM, 12 noon, and again at 6 PM. While this may be a generally good schedule for eating, remember that (usually) you don't have to eat at meal time if you're not hungry yet. Also, if you are hungry between meals, go ahead and have a healthy snack. It's not good to starve yourself between meals; you'll just eat more when the meal comes and have slower metabolism. It's all about listening to your body. You cannot follow this suggestion, however, until you have mastered Step 1, knowing when you're hungry. Another thing to remember is that by eating whenever you're hungry throughout the day, you shouldn't be eating so much at meal times, because you won't be as hungry and because you haven't waited and starved yourself. If you follow the suggestion of eating between meals if you're hungry, but continue to eat the same amount at meal times, you'll only end up gaining weight.

   4. Realize that in general, your portion sizes are probably too big. Accepted portion sizes have practically doubled in the past 50 years. Remember that your stomach is about the size of your fist. Don't expect to stuff 10 times that amount of food into it without negative consequences. Also, your stomach will get bigger when you're used to eating a lot. If you only eat small amounts of food at a time, your stomach won't ever stretch out like it does when you gorge yourself on a big meal, and then, with a small stomach, it won't take as much to make you feel full. You can do this by only taking a little tiny bit of food onto your plate, and when you're done with that, sit back and feel whether or not you're still hungry. If you are, get a tiny bit more; however, you'll find that you're usually not still truly hungry.

   5. Have many small meals, rather than a few big ones. This goes along with Step 3. Nutritionists point out again and again that this is a better, healthier way to eat. In general, it is considered healthier to eat five meals a day than three. In fact, if you watch any makeover or weight loss reality TV shows, they are always eating about 5 to 8 meals a day (with small portions and healthy choices at each meal, of course). This is because it keeps your body in the digesting-food mode. In scientific terms, it keeps your metabolism up. Think about it, if you've eaten barely anything all day, your metabolism will be slowed way down, then when you finally do eat, your metabolism will be so slow that your body won't be using it and digesting it efficiently.

   6. Eat breakfast every day. This starts your metabolism going early in the morning (since it slows down at night because you haven't eaten anything for awhile). You can also focus better throughout the day!

   7. Exercise. This again raises your metabolism, not to mention burns calories. Exercise also increases the digestive process, speeding up digestion. To get all you can out of exercise, try to combine typical gym-related work such as running on the treadmill and lifting weights with "fun" work like biking, hiking, or playing soccer with your kids.

   8. Try "low fat" foods--but check the labels. Lots of low fat versions of foods are available, but make sure it's worth it. "Low fat" sometimes means extra sugar or other ingredients were added to preserve the taste and texture, tricking you into thinking you're eating something healthy when there is no real difference. Polyunsaturated fats (like vegetable oils, as in salad dressing) are actually good for you in moderation. Make sure the number of calories per serving is significantly lower than in the regular version.

   9. Keep in mind that sweets aren't the only things that taste good. Yes, everyone knows that cakes and cookies taste good to your taste buds. People living in the western world, however, have an over-abundance of fatty foods at their disposal and by no means should be eating it as much as some do today. But yes, it does taste so good. But remember, other things taste good, too. How about some nice spicy grilled chicken? Or a tropical banana smoothie (with low-fat yogurt)? And doesn't Marinara sauce on pasta taste good? These are all perfectly acceptable foods, eaten in moderation of course, as with everything else. And even foods that don't seem so appealing can taste good with a little preparation, such as adding some Cinnamon to applesauce, or cooking broccoli before eating it if you don't like the taste of raw broccoli.

  10. Don't fantasize about food. It is a proven fact that watching TV makes you want to eat more. It's because of all those mouth-watering commercials with close ups of perfectly prepared food. Don't watch these, it does nothing for your stomach to just think about food. Also, don't fantasize on your own time about just how great devouring an entire ice-cream cone would be. Just push it out of your mind and think of something else, then you won't want it as much. Or, think about how good those fresh strawberries you're going to have with lunch are going to taste.

  11. Don't waste calories on drinks. It is a good idea to drink water or flavored water whenever possible. It not only is great at hydrating you, but has no calories. A glass of most other drinks have 100-200 calories, and they don't make you feel any fuller. In essence, drinking something other than water does nothing for you except quench your thirst and add calories to your count for the day. Just think, if you normally have three drinks a day other than water, that is about 500 calories that you could cut out by having water instead.

  12. Eat slowly. Chew your food well. This means at least 10-20 chews per bite of food. And no, you can't just take bigger bites so that this is a reasonable amount of chews; take small bites also. Remember that it takes about 20 minutes for your full-feeling to get into your stomach, regardless of how much you eat. You could eat 10 plates full of food, and as long as you did it within a few minutes, you still wouldn't feel full. Likewise, you can eat just a small portion and feel full the same amount of time later. Eating slowly helps to keep the amount of food you're eating small until you feel the full feelings. It also prevents you from gorging yourself, and gives you more time to accurately reflect on whether your stomach feels full yet or not. If it takes 20 minutes for your stomach to send the message to the brain that you are full, you could be eating 20 minutes more than your body wants. Eating slowly makes this excess food amount lower and sometimes even nothing at all.

  13. Save your sweet-eating opportunities. You know that you're going to eat some sweets, like your neighbor's birthday cake, Christmas dessert at your grandma's house, the chocolate your boyfriend got you, or the cookies that your kid made you. The fact is that quite often people like to give you fatty foods as a thoughtful gift or work hard to make it for a special occasion and will be offended if you don't have some. And of course, everyone wants to indulge and splurge every once and a while. The key is to allow yourself sweets at only these special times. It's a mistake to eat sweets regularly so that when you do reach these must-eat sweet times you've over-indulged.

  14. Change from eating whenever you can and exercising only when you must' to 'eating only when you must and exercising whenever you can.' Most people like eating, and don't like exercising. The result is that they eat every chance they get and exercise only when they have to. You must change your thinking around, to exercising being the necessity and eating being the luxury, and work towards developing a lifestyle that reflects this.

  15. Choose an appetizer instead. While it's not recommended that you eat hot wings and potato skins for every meal, appetizers often have more reasonable portions than full meals.

  16. Drink lots of water every day, this is so important. You may think you are hungry and you are really just thirsty. It also makes your liver a lot happier.

Tips  

• Stick with it. This isn't a diet, or a fad, or something you will only do for a little while. It is a complete lifestyle that you must re-adjust yourself to until it becomes second nature.
• To help with eating slowly, make it a habit to put down the utensils every time you take a bite. Don't pick them up again until you've chewed and swallowed.
• Remember that there is a difference between being hungry, and having an appetite. Sometimes you can crave food just because you want the taste, but you don't really feel hungry (that is, your stomach isn't grumbling, and you don't feel pangs of hunger in your gut).
• If you feel hungry, often you are in fact thirsty. Forget about eating while you drink a glass of water or something. It's really hard to drink too much water.
• Also, the first sign of feeling content with the amount of food you have eaten, is feeling thirsty.
• A trick to help thwart (or postpone) a craving: when craving food (esp. junk food) shortly before a scheduled meal, use toothpaste to brush your tongue (brushing teeth too much can be bad for gums). This triggers an automatic aversion to eating anything for a short while because few flavors go well with toothpaste. This simple act can stop the craving for junk food in its tracks, or at the very least, hold it off long enough for you to prepare / arrive at a much healthier meal. Good breath is, of course, an added bonus.
• Don't eat less than two hours before you go to bed.
• Fruit eaten after meals will sit in your stomach for a lot longer than usual (losing nutrients while it waits) and can cause bloating. For this reason, it's best to eat fruit in the morning, before any other meal.
• Put an extra plate on the dinner table and put some of your meal on it for lunch tomorrow. After reading this article, you may see that your meal portion is too large. Normally you just work through it, but this time you'll offload enough for a second meal, and possibly avoid feeling bloated.
• Eat with chopsticks as often as possible to slow your eating down.
• Ask yourself, 'Am I really hungry, or am I bored?'
• Do not compare yourself to models and actors on TV. Most people will never look like them. Instead concentrate on healthy lifestyle.
• Research more resources on diet on the web and at your local library and doctor.

Warnings  

• Remember first and foremost that your lifestyle, including eating and exercising, is meant to take care of your body, not harm it.
• Read the label of any flavored water that you choose, as many of them have as many, or even more, calories than a soda.
• Beware of artificial sweetners, even if they are FDA approved. Aspartame, found in sugarless gums, diet sodas, NutraSweet and Equal has been known to cause blurred vision, speech problems, depression, headaches, shortness of breath and sore muscles.

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