1. Write everything down that you eat, keeping an ongoing total of your daily calories. Some days your calories will be a little higher than your maximum, and other days they will be lower, but try not to ever go below 1,200 calories.
2. If you're counting calories, don't count the calories in most fruit and vegetables, so you can eat as much of them as you want. (I love, love, love strawberries.)
3. Try and have 2-3 fat-free yogurts a day (not the layered kind), and at least one egg a day if not more.
4. Limit your breads and flour products, but when you do have bread or burrito shells, go for wholegrain ones. That also is true for pasta and rice.
5. Do have desserts, but get creative in cooking up healthy desserts, or buying low-cal versions of things you hate doing without.
6. If you're buying low fat products, check the ingredients. Sometimes "low fat" just means "high sugar."
7. Eating things like bacon, ham, beef, pork, chicken, turkey, lamb, etc is fine as long as you go with lean versions or extra lean versions.
8. As often as possible, cook your food from scratch. This way you know what's in your food. The more processed something is, the less healthy it probably is.
9. Don't obsess. There will be times when you eat something bad for you. Do not see yourself as a failure because of it and then go on to eat more junk. See those times as a momentary blip in your healthy eatng plan and go right back to eating healthy.
10. One of the best tips: Fill your plate 2/3 full with vegetables/fruit, then add your meat & whatever else to the space that's left. If you are really hungry and need seconds, that's okay, but do the same thing again (filling plate 2/3 with vegetables).
