What is so hard about losing weight? It all has to do with just eating less and exercising more, right? Well, yes, but losing weight is often riddled with many landmines. One of these culprits is often outside of our control-portion control. Diet research has shown that if you learn to control your portions, you can also control your weight. Here are some tips for finding the right kind of balance for maintaining a healthy weight.

When You Can't Control Your Portions - Tips on Eating Out

One of the hardest parts of figuring out portion control has to do with eating out. Dining out is one of the biggest challenges that any person will face in the battle of the bulge. Studies have shown that portions have grown tremendously in recent years. Portions are bigger than ever. One idea is to order an appetizer rather than a main dish. Appetizers are almost always hearty enough to be satisfying, but are not as big in portion. They can also help save you money. Another idea is to simply draw an invisible line down the middle of your plate, and then only eat half of your portion. Or better yet, make a real line down the center of your plate using your knife and physically create two portions out of your original single portion. This is an easy way to insure that you don't overindulge, just because portion sizes have grown too big in recent years. If possible, ask for a box in order to save half of your portion for later.

Eat Smaller Meals Throughout the Day

Instead of eating three shrunken down meals a day, choose to eat many smaller meals throughout your day. That way you won't feel hungry unsatisfied or simply bored with dieting. Many dieticians now recommend five small meals throughout the day. Focus on whole grains, fruits and vegetables. Eat what your body craves. Head over the fruit and vegetable section and pick out a variety of different colors and textures. The greater diversity, the easier it will be to satisfy your body throughout the day with just the right snack. The best way to eat for healthy portion control is to eat your larger meals early in the day, and then allow them to diminish in size as the day progresses.

Make the Measuring Cup Your Best Friend

Do you know what a cup looks like? Do you know how big an ounce really is? Do you know how big one serving size is? Most of us scarf down two or more servings every time that we snack. This happens often, sabotaging diets left and right. And we wonder why we never lose weight! Fortunately, there are many ways to make sure that your portions are under control. Don't be afraid of enlisting a variety of different kitchen measurement tools. Make the measuring cup; spoons and weight scale your best friends. These are valuable tools that can help you train your eye to what exactly a cup looks like, how heavy an ounce is, and so on.

Buy Pre-Measured Compartment Dishes

If you find yourself constantly overeating, or simply can't get a hold of healthy portion sizes, there is a tool made just for you. For the dieter who has trouble with healthy portion sizes, a pre-measured compartment plate can be very helpful. You can find these portion control dishes on the World Wide Web, or at specialty kitchen supply stores. If you have never seen a pre-measured compartment plate, these dishes basically create a layout that automatically measure the amount of vegetables, proteins and fats that you should be eating in a meal.

One of the hardest things to do is to stay true to your diet when your life is on the go. Whether you are a frequent business traveler, a busy student or an overwhelmed stay at home mom-everyone has those days where it simply seems impossible to sit down and have a proper, healthy meal. Here are some ways to incorporate healthy habits when your life is on the go.

Keep Your Secret Healthy Food Stash

One of the best ways to incorporate healthy habits into your life is to plan ahead for those days when you know that you will not be able to sit down and have a healthy meal. Fortunately, there are now so many different foods that are available to people on the go. Can't sit down for a healthy breakfast? Keep your kitchen fully stocked with cereal bars. Although these should not be regularly substituted for a full breakfast, these can help you stay nourished and sustained during a busy day. Keeping a pre-packaged healthy food stash in your kitchen can save you from crashing on those days where you are too busy to sit down for a proper meal.

Try Not to Skip Breakfast

Even if your kitchen is well stocked with on-the-go breakfast items, there is no substitute for a real, sit-down breakfast. Try to make eating a full breakfast your daily habit. We all have days when this is not possible, but for the most part, you should try to eat a full breakfast. Why is this bit of common wisdom so darn persistent? The truth is that after hours of not eating, your body truly needs nutrients to keep you fueled and full of energy for the day ahead. Recent research studies have also shown that individuals who eat breakfast tend to consume about 100 calories less than those who do not eat a full breakfast. If you are serious about losing weight, you have to become serious about eating breakfast.

Keep Your Water Bottle Close at All Times

In order to perform at its best at all times, it helps to stay well hydrated. Water is also important in order to process food nutrients. Drinking water can help you feel and stay full, so that you won't be tempted to turn to unhealthy snacking as a recourse. In general, it is good to drink about 8 glasses of water each day. If you are in a warm environment, or if you are experiencing more physical exertion than normal, you will want to drink more. Here is another helpful tip. If you are trying to lose weight, it will be helpful to add ice to each glass of water. What does ice do for you? Recent studies have shown that you can actually help speed up your metabolism simply by drinking your water with ice each day.

And Don't Skip Lunch Either

You have heard how important breakfast is, but if there were another meal that is nearly as important and which should never be skipped, it would have to be lunch. Many dieters are often tempted to skip lunch. They think that skipping lunch is an easy way to avoid consuming calories. But take a close look at what happens to your body when you do not eat lunch: your blood sugar levels drop, your metabolism becomes languid, and you will probably be tempted to overcompensate come dinner time. Packing a light sandwich can save your body and your diet.

Don't Avoid Snacks - Just Choose Healthier Ones

We all know that snacks can often be the bane of the willful dieter's existence. The trick is in choosing the right kind of snacks-low fat yogurt, an apple, orange, trail mix, wheat crackers with cheese, celery and peanut butter-rather than a stale candy bar from the vending machine.

There are many emotional eating triggers that can lead you to eat when you are not truly hungry. Eating for all the wrong reasons is very common. Most of us who are overweight have experience with emotional eating. What is emotional eating, and what can you do to recognize and transform these behaviors into more positive, health-affirming eating behaviors? Here are some guidelines to how you can lose weight by recognizing your own emotional eating triggers.

Eating for All the Wrong Reasons

Have you ever noticed that you find yourself eating simply because you can? Many of us tend to eat when we are not hungry. We eat for all the wrong reasons-because we are bored, lonely, depressed, stressed, anxious, or merely because we can. These are all examples of emotional eating. Think of the anxious individual who can't stop worrying over a major life decision. Instead of sitting down and making a definite decision, this person might just sit and stew in there own juices. As they stew, they may reach for the box of cookies, the ice cream, the salted pretzels, etc. Some of us eat just to eat. Have you ever sat at a bar or a restaurant and feasted on that free plate of pretzels or tortilla chips? Chances are, you are not really that hungry, but you eat because food is in front of you. Clearly, you are probably not as hungry as you think. What can you do to stave off these unhealthy eating behaviors?

Step 1: Why Are You Eating?

The first step to dealing with emotional eating issues is to ask yourself: why are you eating? The next time you start to feel a pang of guilt because you are eating something that you know is not great for you, stop and ask yourself why you are eating. Are you really hungry? Are you bored? Are you nervous? Are you depressed? Are you eating just because you have access to food? Becoming aware of emotional eating patterns is all you need in order to help stop these patterns.

Step 2: Devising a Plan of Attack

Emotional eating patterns are some of the most difficult habits to break, simply because they become so ingrained into our lives. Most of us who are guilty of emotional eating may not even recognize the behavior at first. Indeed, emotional eating is a type of seemingly non-behavior because we don't even recognize that we are doing it most of the time. Most of the time we continue to snack indiscriminately and wonder why we continue to gain weight. So the most important thing you can do is to devise a plan of attack. Make a conscious decision that you will become more aware of when and why you eat.

Step 3: Create a Food Journal

Perhaps the easiest way to become more aware of what and why you are eating is to create a food journal. This does not have to be a difficult or time-consuming process. Simply take a few moments at the end of the day to write down what you ate, when you ate it, and why you think you ate it. This can help you become more conscious about your eating habits. After two weeks or so of keeping a food journal, spend a good deal of time looking over it. What sort of patterns do you recognize? Do you tend to overeat in the afternoon? Do you tend to overindulge the night of a big exam/meeting?

Step 4: Take Active Steps to Avoid Emotional Eating

Once you notice the patterns of your eating, it becomes possible to avoid emotional eating. Take active steps to schedule your day so that you will not be tempted to eat for emotional reasons.

People try all kinds of complex and complicated diet plans to try and get their weight under control, but the reason they usually fail is pretty simple - they just get hungry. If you are going to stick to a diet, no matter what it is, you have to become comfortable with a little bit of portion control. And of course, if you are going to stick to portion control in the long term, you can't be hungry. You have to get to the point where you aren't eating "portion controlled" foods but rather are eating portions that are reasonable and satisfying. To tide you over until you get to that point, it helps to have some ways to control your appetite. Conquer your appetite and you will conquer your overeating battles.

There are two main approaches to controlling your appetite. One involves taking your mind off of eating altogether, and the other involves eating certain things, in a certain way, so that you still full longer. Combining the approaches is the key to achieving successful appetite control.

One thing you can do to keep your appetite in check is eat! Sure, it sounds obvious, but eating small things often will keep you blood sugar on an even keel. When you blood sugar is stable, you will feel less hungry and you will encourage your metabolism to keep burning instead of storing calories as fat for later. Shoot for eating a little something every three hours to get the maximum benefit of blood sugar control, and therefore, appetite control.

When you do snack, foods that have a lot of fiber, a lot of water, or preferably both, are ideal. These foods keep you full, and they usually do it for a minimum amount of calories. Think fiber rich fruits and veggies, which are chock full of water (and that water will also keep you hydrated, a key component in weight management).

Next, when it comes time for meals, make sure they are balanced. The best meals have a combination of protein, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats. Any meal that is lacking in one of these components is destined to leave you feeling hungry later. This rule can be a good thing for dieters. For instance, dry lettuce leaves might be low in calories, but eating them alone is a big diet no-no. Add some salad dressing (fat), a little bit of chicken (protein) and some high fiber crackers, and suddenly those boring leaves becoming a meal that is diet friendly and pleasurable to eat.

If you still feel hungry after you eat, give yourself permission to eat more - after a little break. Your appetite takes about 20 minutes to get the message that you have had enough, so waiting that long before you eat some more will give you time to decode the real message. Knowing that you CAN eat some more if you are still hungry will take the pressure off, and 20 minutes later, you can evaluate how hungry you really are - chances are, you won't want to eat.

Mind over manner is a great technique to use when controlling your appetite, but you can give your will power a boost by avoiding tricky situations completely. Unless it is time to have a snack or a meal, stay away from food. If it is not right there, you won't eat it. Make reaching for food work, so you have to decide you really want to have it before you can eat it.

Last but not least, give yourself a break. Appetite control is hard work, and some days, you're going to fall off the wagon. Remember that this is a process, not something you do or don't do - take the long-term view, and you'll have much more success in the short term.