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Far more important than learning how to follow a diet is the idea of learning to eat well in the real world. "Eating well" means:
 Satisfying the nutritional needs of your body.
 Eating foods you like.
 Fitting meals into your current lifestyle.
 Getting the results you want.
You probably don't have much trouble with the first three points. Most
Americans easily satisfy (and usually exceed) the nutritional needs of their bodies for energy, protein, vitamins, minerals, and water. You probably eat foods that you enjoy and the way you're eating probably fits comfortably into your current lifestyle; but what about the fourth point? Are you as thin and lean as you would like, do you feel as energetic as you could, is your cholesterol and blood pressure (sugar) where you want it, are you as healthy as you would like to be? If you can't answer yes to these questions, then it's time to examine your eating behaviors. How can you make small changes which will allow you to eat foods you like, will fit into your lifestyle, will meet your nutritional needs, and will get you the results you want?
There are five easy to follow rules to "eating well." You can use these rules at fast food restaurants, fine dining establishments or in your own kitchen. As long as you are following them the best you can, in each place, you will get the results you want.

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There are two parts to this rule; the first part is the PLAN . If you're like most of us in the U.S., you give very little conscious thought to eating well. You'll eat foods that are convenient (like donuts at the coffee station or drive-thru meals at McDonalds) or you may eat what you ALWAYS eat
(habit!). Even though you may like a wide variety of foods, you probably buy the same foods each week at the grocery store or order the same meals over and over when you go to restaurants. Try this; quickly try to remember what you had for dinner one week ago from today. Could you immediately recall what you had or was your first response to simply blank out. To eat better, you must start to think about what you're going to eat. With eating,
(as with most of life), if you fail to plan, plan to fail . The rest of the rules will teach you what to plan, but for now just realize that if you don't have a plan, you will fall into old habits.
The second part of this rule is THROUGHOUT THE DAY . It's really quite simple, eat the most when you are the most active and eat the least when you are the least active. For most of us, this means eating more on the days you are most active and less on the less active days. On a daily basis this means eating more, early in the day and less late in the day.
Unfortunately, the opposite is usually true. Your rationale is probably; if
I'm not hungry for breakfast, why eat? And if you're busy during lunch, why stop to eat? Research has proven that if you eat most of your calories late in the day, then there is a greater likelihood that more of those calories will turn into fat. There is a very appropriate name for this eating pattern. It's

called what I call "Sumo Wrestler Meal Planning." Sumo Wrestlers want to
3 be fat, so they eat very little during the day when they are training, and eat most of their food late at night. This way they are assured that those calories will turn into fat! Even though your food intake may resemble this pattern, it is just the opposite of what you want.
There are many research studies that prove this point. Individuals eating most of their calories early in the day, lost more weight than those who "saved" their calories for the end of the day. Here are the reasons why. First, if you remember from the nutrition chapter, when you don't give your body enough energy (blood sugar), it simply reacts by slowing your metabolism (using less energy) and getting tired so you do less physical activity. It's essentially saying, “you're not giving me enough energy, so I'd better learn to survive on less”. It's the same principle that prompts you to slow down your car and turn off your air conditioner if you find yourself very low on gas. You're attempting to conserve the gas you have by using less.
Your body is doing the same thing.
Second, when you do give your body food energy, it will try to make up for everything it didn't eat previously. In other words, once you start to eat, it is difficult to stop. When you don't eat, your body secretes hormones, which suppress hunger. That's why individuals who have been on fasting type diets say they are not hungry after a few days. When you do finally start to eat, your body secretes other hormones that will keep the appetite stimulated so you will continue to eat. Your body thinks it is being

starved and doesn't know when the next meal will be available, so it wants
4 to stock up! Hence it learns to STORE the energy and as FAT.
Eating a VARIETY OF FOODS at each meal will help you in two ways.
First, there are many nutrients and chemicals you need to be healthy.
Obviously all these nutrients can't be found in any one food. So just to meet your nutritional needs to stay healthy, you should eat a variety of foods.
Second, and perhaps even more important for some one attempting to lose weight, is the idea of deprivation. Eating small portions of many different foods is much more satisfying than eating a larger portion of one food. For example, if you were having broiled chicken for dinner, how much would you have to eat to feel satisfied? Well, have you just overeaten chicken? What if you had a garden salad, green beans, baked potato, and sliced fresh strawberries; now how much broiled chicken would you need to eat to feel satisfied? Get the point! There is no magical calorie intake or specific serving size that will guarantee that a person will lose weight (or gain) but common sense says that the meal with more variety is a more nutritious meal and that if I were trying to lose weight I could eat more salad or green beans or strawberries if I were still hungry. A general guideline on adding variety is to add foods with more color. If you observe most meals you’ll notice they are made up of foods that are predominately white and brown;
Brown chicken, white rice, brown steak, white potato, etc. Add color!

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When you ask the question "What's for dinner?", what do you expect to hear? Probably a meat (or protein), such as steak, chicken, fish, ham, or meatloaf. However, the CARBOHYDRATE FOODS are the foods that contain the most nutrition and the most usable energy, while providing the least amount of total calories. Carbohydrate foods are fruits, vegetables, breads, cereals, grains, pasta, and potatoes.... i.e., from the plant kingdom, or in other words, any real food that never had a mother . These are the foods that we now generally call the side dishes but for many years made up the balk of our diet. These foods contain no cholesterol and very little fat
(and the fats they do have are the better ones called unsaturated fat). They contribute most of the vitamins and minerals your body needs, and they are high in fiber and water (which make them very filling). They are generally the lowest calorie foods in our diet. The only question left is this, are there any of these foods that you like and would fit into your lifestyle? If so, plan
these foods first when putting a meal together. Consider this rule the important rule when you are trying to answer the question “what am I

supposed to eat"? Many of these foods like bread, potatoes, pasta, have
6 been labeled as the ones that make you fat, and perhaps if eaten in large amounts they may. Though I have never known anyone personally that has sat down to eat a meal of 8 baked potatoes, or 12 apples, or a dozen cups of cooked broccoli. I am sure that some one has actually eaten too much bread or pasta at one meal, and this is why we would include the rule to add plenty of variety to each meal. Important to this is to implement rules one and two before rule three. In terms of ‘other’ carbohydrate foods like soft drinks, pastries, candies, cookies, “Do these sound like real foods to you”? The problem that most people have is they prefer to eat the pastries or candy, and then when they want to lose weight they think first of giving up the bread and potato. This just doesn't make good sense. After you've put together a variety of carbohydrate foods, comes the important rule four.

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Rule 4:
After you've planned your meal and the carbohydrate foods are the main part of the meal, the first part of next rule, MINIMIZE FAT, becomes important as a way of controlling total calories. Dietary fat has no choice but to be stored as body fat, so when you are eating that pat of butter, the oily salad dressing, the cheese sauce, the fatty meat or dessert, you might as well be putting the fat right on your hips, thighs, stomach or buttocks. In fact you might as well just visualize all of your dietary fat going to your hips stomach and butt, directly, and cutting you out is the middleman in the process . It makes sense that reducing the amount of fat in your diet could make an impact on the amount of fat you store on your body.
Once the fat is stored on your body the only good way to get rid of it is to exercise. You do NOT get rid of fat by trying to under eat the next meal
(or day) as your body still has nutrient requirements (see previous section)).
It is not possible to eat a zero fat diet and that is not what is being suggested. It is important, however, to choose foods and ingredients that are as low in fat as possible. Low fat is not synonymous with low calories so use common sense when you use foods with this label.

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The second part of rule four is MINIMIZE SUGAR AND
ALCOHOL at any one time. Though sugar is not the worst thing you could eat, it's not the best thing either. The problem with sugar is you can take in a lot of calories with very little food. For example, you could have 16 jellybeans or a whole baked potato for the same number of calories. Which is more filling? Which is more nutritious? (I know, you want me to ask,” which taste the best”?). Another reason to minimize sugar is the company it keeps. With few exceptions (like the jellybeans), foods that are high in sugar are also high in fat, i.e., cookies, candy bars, donuts, cakes, brownies, ice cream, etc. (stop me when I get to your favorite).
All dietary fat must be stored as body fat, but some of the calories from sugar can be used before the storage process.
Therefore, if you must choose between the two, choose sugar. This is not to say that sugar is good for you it is simply to say that it is better for you than fat, and if used in a small amount your body may be able to use it. That's why the rule reads: Minimize fat all the time and sugar and at any one time. The same is true for alcohol. Alcohol is not a problem in small amounts (one alcoholic beverage per day).
There is even some research, which indicates this amount of alcohol, can have a positive effect on your HDL cholesterol levels (the "good" cholesterol). However, as you probably realize, alcohol has negative effects if consumed in larger quantities.

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Rule 5:
As you may recall, your body is very good at saving and reusing proteins; therefore, very little dietary protein is needed each day.
Protein is found in both carbohydrate foods (like vegetables and pasta, beans bread etc.) and animal products. One way of meeting your protein needs is to eat a variety of carbohydrate foods each day.
However, since most of us associate protein with meat and other animal products; it is possible to have a healthy diet that includes them. The problem with animal protein is that it is usually very high in fat and is the foods that contain dietary cholesterol. To minimize the fat, it is necessary to add protein to the diet LAST, LEAN, AND
LESS. If you de-emphasize or add meat last in the meal planning process you'll be off to a good start. Then try to add leaner proteins,( i.e., chicken, turkey, fish, and low fat dairy products) and simply use
less of them. Or not at all.

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Here is the Food Pyramid. This pyramid is a guide to what foods to eat and the quantity of foods of eat in order to eat healthier. Here are the examples of the amount of foods to eat.
Milk, Yogurt, and Cheese
1 cup of milk or yogurt 1 ½ ounces of natural cheese
2 ounces of process cheese
Meat, Poultry, Fish, Dry Beans, Eggs, and Nuts
2-3 ounces of cooked lean meat, poultry, or fish
½ cup of cooked dry beans, 1 egg, or 2 tablespoons of peanut butter count as 1 ounce of lean meat.
Vegetable
1 cup of raw leafy vegetables
½ cup of other vegetables, cooked or chopped raw
¾ cup of vegetable juice
Fruit
1 meduim apple, banana, orange
½ cup of chopped, cooked, or canned fruit
¾ cup of fruit juice
Bread, Cereal, Rice, and Pasta
1 slice of bread 1 ounce of ready-toeat cereal
½ cup of cooked cereal, rice or pasta

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Meal
Meal
This should give you a better picture of what to eat and how much to eat. However the tables below should give more of a planner of what to eat, and how many times a day. Remember the goal is to lose weight in a healthy manner. WE also aim to make our metabolism faster, and this requires a person to eat.
Let's practice. Write down meals that you like and might normally eat. Then write down a meal that you could eat at the same place,
BUT, use the 5 rules for meal planning to make it a lot healthier meal centered on the carbohydrate foods .
Healthier Version
Healthier Version

Meal
Meal
Meal
Meal
Healthier Version
Healthier Version
Healthier Version
Healthier Version
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