Want more crazy tricks to lose weight? Well you won't find them here.

Let this information help you listen to your body, and stop stressing over silliness.

1.   1. Restricting Calories Is Healthy:  Want to be active, and... well... pleasant to be around?  Eat!! In order to ensure that you eat enough/the right amount for you, I think counting calories every so often could be a good way to be stay aware, but eating intuitively is the best. It is unnecessary to consciously try to restrict your calories when you eat nutrient dense foods because your body gets naturally full on nutrient dense calories.  The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recommends staying away from empty calories that trick your body into craving more food.  Empty Calories are calories from solid fats and/or added sugars that contain few or no nutrients. Just to clarify solid fats (or saturated fats) are fats that are solid at room temperature, like butter, animal fat, and shortening.  Some solid fats are found naturally in foods but can also be added when foods are processed or prepared.  Most plant sources of fats are the healthy, unsaturated fats.  Added sugars are sugars and syrups that are added when foods or beverages are processed or prepared.  DON’T FORGET alcoholic beveragesprovide a lot of empty calories.

2.     2. Eating Time Rules:  When you are hungry, eat.  When you are not, don’t.  People tend to follow these silly rules, like “I must eat breakfast within an hour of waking up.” This is false.  What if you had a big dinner? Same with the before bed deal.  What if you had a light dinner at 6pm and by 9:30pm your stomach is growling.  Or maybe you’ve been doing more fitness lately.  That could cause some hunger pangs.  A midnight snack is fine! The thing with late night eating is usually people tend to reach for more unhealthy foods and they tend to overeat. 

3.   3. 3 Meals vs. 6 Small Meals:  It doesn’t matter.  Whatever works for you and your schedule. I recommend thinking of your hunger on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being extremely hungry, and 10 being extremely full.  If its between meal time and you’re at a 2-3 hunger wise, try drinking a cup of water, if you’re still hungry, have a snack. No biggie. 

4.  4. Skipping Meals Will Help You Lose Weight:  Reaching either end of the extreme of hunger and fullness is detrimental.  When you become ravenously hungry, a few things are likely to happen: you will be 'hangry' and everyone will hate you, you will eat too quickly, it will be hard to recognize when you are satisfied, you will crave something high in fat and refined sugars, your eyes will be bigger that your stomach, and you will give yourself a ridiculously large portion.  The hunger scale mentioned earlier will also help with this.

5.    5. Gluten Free:  Gluten has gotten a bad rep lately.  Obviously, if you stop eating processed cakes, cookies, and other packaged crap, you are probably going to feel better and maybe lose some weight.  However, buying gluten free cookies and breads isn’t necessarily healthier.  Usually, processed fats, modified food starches, or emulsifiers like eggs and egg yolks, are added to these food items to make their consistency similar to that of foods normally having gluten, so they could have more fat and cholesterol and actually be worse for you.  Oops!  So, unless you have a gluten allergy or are gluten intolerant, don’t be a worrywart about avoiding gluten.