Here are some healthy tips and guidelines that you should practice when making meals.

Experimenting and trying new things in the kitchen is important. Experimenting in the kitchen with different foods and different approaches to healthy diets will build your knowledge in the kitchen.  This way you can prepare yourself to know how your body will react to specific foods, a variety of portion sizes, and the timing of your meals. 

Change up your foods. Putting a variety of foods in your body can provide it with vitamins and minerals that are essential for good health.  But more than that, you need diversity in your meals. Not everything needs to be of a certain food category and specific type of “diet”.

When we add variety, we supply our bodies with other vitamins and nutrients that we may not be getting if we stick to our staple meats, grains, and veggies like chicken, rice, spinach, broccoli, and asparagus.

Eat regularly and consistently. Don’t try to avoid meals in hopes of losing weight.  Starving your body will ultimately lead to overeating and even unhealthy food choices.  Eating constantly will help with performance and focus, as well as help maintain high energy throughout the day.

I recommend portion control and calorie counting so that you can become familiar with serving sizes.  This will help you in the future to be able to measure portions without kitchen tools, which is important when you are not eating at home or a meal that you prepped yourself.

To determine what you should be eating in a day, use online tools such as ChooseMyPlate.gov (http://www.choosemyplate.gov) This page will help you calculate daily calories and recommended servings and portions for meals – http://www.choosemyplate.gov/myplate/index.aspx