60 Healthy Diet Tips

There are many healthy diet tips that can help you to be a success at weight control and weight loss. No one is the same! We all have different areas of struggle in weight control. Search through the list of healthy tips and highlight those that are problem areas for you!

Choose three habits to change each month. It takes around a month to incorporate a new habit into your life. If you can make three healthy diet habit changes per month that will add up to 36 habits that you have changed this year! Slow and steady does win the race!

Healthy Diet Tips

1. Decrease the amount of processed foods that you consume. Look for foods that contain less than five ingredients and do not need a bar code or food label. Processed foods are mostly empty calories and spike your blood sugar and increase your hunger. They are high in salt.
2. Avoid eating in front of the television. This is mindless eating and often leads to gross overeating without ever tasting the actual food! Enjoy your food and savor it by itself!
3. Replace older cookbooks that do not have nutritional statistics with newer lighter cookbooks! Develop great kitchen strategies!
4. Deal with your reasons for gaining weight in the first place and practice kindness with yourself. Understand your personal history with food!
5. Practice food journaling! Discover your problem areas, times, habits and triggers. People who journal usually lose twice the amount of weight. You can devise lifestyle solutions, if you understand your eating patterns. This is the diet tip that will lead to great success!
6. Make a restaurant/fast food guide for restaurants that you frequent. Carry this in your car with lists of restaurant substitutions and fast food substitutions that you can eat at each place. A strong predictor of obesity is that you often grab fried foods from fast food restaurants. The average person eats out several times a week and the average person is overweight. Many restaurant items have more calories than your entire daily calorie allotment.
7. Clean out your cupboards and get rid of booby traps and hidden stashes. Have a friend do this, if you can't do it on your own. Do not be a sneak eater!
8. Be mindful of plate size. Brains are visual and smaller full plates signal satisfaction, versus large half full plates, which signal deprivation. The average plate of the 70's had a 6 inch center and the plates of today average 8 to 10 inches. Use those smaller plates. Read Brian Wansink's book called Mindless Eating. 
9. Serve portioned meals rather than eating family style. If extra food is on the table you will eat it. Serve up your meal and put the leftovers up for the next meal, or in lunch size servings. Try to do this before you begin your meal is the best diet tip.
10. Practice the half plate rule. Visualize your plate and fill it half full of fruits and vegetables. Fill it ¼ full of a grain choice and ¼ full of a protein choice. Simple to do!
11. Don't drink calories and don't forget to factor drinks into your calorie count. Many shakes and fancy coffee drinks are more than half of your daily calories. The average person drinks 450 calories per day.
12. Do not over eat healthy foods! Not all healthy foods are low calorie. Trail mix is 700 calories/cup, raisins 520 calories/cup and granola 500 calories/cup.
13. Do not be a Yo-Yo dieter. Diets do not work permanently, but lifestyle changes are forever. Diets are a temporary fix. Most people gain the weight back within 18 months. Learn to practice healthy eating! Even a 10% weight loss can add years to your life!
14. Increase exercising and weight training. You will feel better and add more muscle, which burns more calories than fat, and stimulates your fat releasing hormones. Dieting increases your fat storing hormones and may reduce the fat releasing hormones, so it becomes more difficult to lose weight if you do not exercise.
15. Avoid eating food from the bag. Know your portion sizes and practice portion control. Buy the 100 calorie bags or divide out a proper portion.
16. Do not deprive yourself of the foods that you love, but eat them in moderation. You might find some foods are trigger foods. They do not work for you. Make a grown up decision to avoid them and do not call it denial. You may be able to allow yourself your trigger food out, but not at home. We are all different. This diet tip will save you many a binge!
17. Do not under eat as this allows your fat cells to become super efficient by lowering your metabolism. The average American weighs 6 pounds more than they did in the 1970's.
18. Avoid making your meal plan complicated. Simple lifestyle solutions and diet tips work. If you would adopt three simple changes like ditching processed flour and sugar, eating breakfast, and stopping night time nibbling, you might be surprised at your weight loss success.
19. Be in tune with physical hunger. Learn to use the hunger chart and eat in the middle of the chart, rather than becoming starved, which can lead to overeating later on.
20. Be mindful of Portion Distortion! The average person underestimates potion sizes by 40% when they eyeball them.
21. Eat a healthy breakfast every day and avoid skipping breakfast. Breakfast revs up your metabolism. People who practice this diet tip eat less all day.
22. Count condiments. Many sandwich shops use condiments that add hundreds of calories to your sandwich.
23. Avoid skipping meals. This leads to over eating later in the day when your metabolism is slower. Going without food for long periods of time will cause your blood to drop and this can lead to cravings and binges.
24. Eat smaller meals and one to two snacks daily. Fill out a meal planning chart and plan how you desire to spend your daily calorie allotment! This chart is my favorite diet tip!
25. Become an avid food label reader to compare calories and portion sizes. Would you eat that piece of Costco cake, if you knew it had 1000 calories, when you really wanted the cheesecake that only had 400 calories? You could have saved 600 calories by using this diet tip!
26. Avoid restaurants or fast food establishments that do not offer nutritional information. Be educated and make informed choices. There are many healthy items at most restaurants that are wonderful choices.
27. Fill up on fiber, which helps you feel full and helps balance your blood sugar. It slows digestion so you feel full longer. Try apples, pears, spinach, almonds, and high fiber cereals. Aim for 25 to 35 grams of fiber daily, but increase your amount slowly.
28. Expect to lose weight slowly and keep it off long term. The weight went on slow and healthy diet tips will help it come off slowly and stay off. Quit beating yourself up.
29. Eat your meals leisurely and observe the twenty minute rule. Your brain needs 20 minutes to get the signal that your body is full. It is amazing how much food you ingest in that time before you realize that you're stuffed. Slow down.
30. Look at your personal history and develop lifestyle solutions for success. Maybe you need to avoid the break room at work and stock healthy snacks in your desk, or plan a new route home to avoid the ice cream store or fast food that you love. Know what triggers you to eat and avoid those triggers.
31. Avoid thinking that salads are low calorie. Dressings and fancy toppings are very fattening and make some salads diet bombs. There are many lower calorie dressing choices!
32. Understand grains! Try to decrease processed carbohydrates like white bread, white rice, sugar, white flour, and most other processed foods. Try eating grains like brown rice, whole grains, sprouted grains, quinoa and other unprocessed grains that do not spike your blood sugar. Until you get your grains under control, following other diet tips may be futile!
33. Become a learner. Read articles about nutrition. If you are educated and know insider information, you can chow down. Try new recipes and practice scratch cooking. Try new items at the market that are healthy substitutions.
34. Refuse to buy the junk food that you love. Why torture yourself! If you buy it, you will eat it. Your family does not need the junk food either! Many teens today are developing diabetes or a metabolic syndrome associated with 40 to 50 year olds. Be an example for your family.
35. Form a support network. Often family and friends don't really want you to be successful and will tempt you, so form some new friends for encouragement in the area of weight control and weight loss.
36. Join http://www.hungry-girl.com. They offer tons of great lower calorie recipes, substitutions, diet tips, restaurant helps, and lifestyle solutions. Many of their food recommendations are processed foods with lower calories, and are a great step in the process of developing healthier habits!
37. Keep healthy snacks on hand. Trader Joes has many great ideas. Be creative and develop your own snack ideas between 100 and 200 calories.
38. Quit being a perfectionist. Flexibility is the key to healthy eating. You can't control all of your eating situations. Be a more go with the flow person and eat well most of the time. Try to eat well 80% of the time and sane 100% of the time.
39. Avoid eating food products made with genetically modified foods. Up to 80% of processed foods contain GMO's! They could be linked to weight gain.
40. Stop night time eating of comfort foods when your metabolism is lower. Those night time snacks really do go straight to your thighs, butt and tummy.
41. Check out new products at the markets constantly and develop your own grocery substitution shopping list. Light butters, low-calorie syrups, and lower calorie 100% whole wheat bread, could save you hundreds of calories per year and add up to weight loss. Such an easy diet tip to incorporate!
42. Check out your nearest Farmer's Market for the freshest produce.
43. Try shopping at Trader Joe's if there is one in your area. They offer many low cost fun foods. Be open to trying some new foods from other countries.
44. Try to increase fruits and vegetables in your diet. They are healthy choices, full of fiber, and keep you full. Search out diet tips to add more produce to your diet!
45. Try to completely ditch the whole dieting mentality of denial and deprivation. Eat for your health and notice how well you will begin to feel when cravings decrease.
46. Get enough sleep because studies show that lack of sleep can actually cause you to gain weight, due to an imbalance in your hormones. Your appetite will increase and you will be hungrier! Aim for 7 to 8 hours of sleep.
47. It is important to have a goal to be healthy, rather than thin. You will feel better physically!
48. Decrease the varieties of snacks in your home. The greater the variety, the greater your appetite. Less variety brings more satisfaction and less temptation.
49. Flip your calories and become a daytime eater. The average American eats 70% of their calories after 7pm, and the average American is overweight. Try to eat most of your calories before this time, or as early as you can manage, depending on your schedule.
50. Use the 3 to 1 fat guide. For every food eaten that is over 20% of fat, eat 3 foods that are under 20% of fat. Fat has 9 calories per gram and carbohydrates and protein have only 4 calories per gram.
51. Know your eating personality. What kind of a person are you? What makes you eat? Are you a clueless, mindless, emotional, bored or sneaky eater or just a slouch? What are your triggers to eat, high risk situations, risk times and foods? Choose diet tips for your personality!
52. Avoid the Costco Food Court and bakery is not a popular diet tip. The healthy whole wheat havarti turkey wrap packs a whopping 890 calories. The giant muffins really do have between 700 and almost 1000 calories.
53. Find new recipe substitutions for your baking or try to lighten your existing recipes. You can use whole wheat pastry flour in place of white flour. Try substituting half of the fat with buttermilk, and decrease sugar by 1/3 or use stevia. There are many new recipes on-line.
54. Avoid eating movie snacks. A large popcorn and coke can be over your daily allotment of calories, especially when you can pump your own butter! A weekly movie could add 30 pounds of weight gain per year!
55. Add more vegetables to your diet. They are the best deal for your calorie buck going! Try to add a soup meal full of vegetables, a chili meal full of vegetables, follow Meatless Monday, and a few new salads per week to your meals. Soups make great lunch leftovers.
56. Try to exercise each day, even if it is just walking. Walk in 3, ten minute blocks of time, if that works for you. Any activity adds up. Consider wearing a pedometer to increase your steps per day.
57. Avoid weekend overeating. Practice eating healthy 80% of the time and sane all of the time. Many people eating healthy on the weekdays and completely out of control on the weekends!
58. Healthy diet tips should be mostly practiced on vacations too. Many people gain several pounds each year on vacations and this greatly sets them back.
59. Follow a Weekly Menu Plan, so you will not be wondering what is for dinner each day and be tempted to eat at fast food!
60. Eat real foods as much as possible. Real foods are those that your grandparents would recognize as foods and do not come in a bag or carton, need a food label, contain tons of ingredients or contain junk!
61. (one extra!) Learn to be a great scratch cook!

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Have fun on your journey to change, using these healthy diet tips, which lead to lifestyle solutions, rather than dieting!