Start with seeing what are you eating now. There are a lot of different options you can measure.

What are you eating now? Take an inventory even if you aren’t tracking calories. How many fruits and vegetables do you eat a day? On weekends? How much water do you drink? How much do you eat out? Do you eat mostly simple carbohydrates or complex? Do you eat balanced meals? You might consider some of these options to track.

A first step is considering the basic nutrition recommendations. Choose My Plate, www.choosemyplate.gov, replaced the food pyramid from years ago. It includes balanced meals and eating half the plate vegetables, some fruit, but mostly vegetables. The other half of the plate is one quarter carbohydrate and one quarter protein. It isn’t a diet but most of us would be doing better if we started with half the plate vegetables. It really sets up the rest of the plate to be manageable without hunger.

You can also get portion size information on Choose My Plate and information about including fats and dairy or vegetarian diets. Tracking any portion of protein, fiber, and fat could be an option to start with.

Getting more color with fruits and vegetables means getting more variety of nutrition. That can be something to start looking at during or after balanced meals are a routine. That could be a first step if you don’t want to tackle the whole plate, just focus on counting vegetable and fruit servings.

Staying hydrated with pure water. This helps to stay hydrated, so many benefits and also just avoiding hunger/thirst confusion. Not drinking your calories can make a big difference if you have a big appetite, as they don’t help to feel full. Protein and carbohydrates help to feel full.

Practicing eating on time, enough food, but not too much can be a helpful area to work on if you don’t want to track calories or go on a diet. We feel full after about 20 minutes of eating, it is a hormone reaction so it takes time. Another thing that affects fullness is when enough food hits your gut and stretches the receptors there and protein and carbohydrates are key for that.

Get enough fiber. Focusing on this one thing will force a change in your diet. Plus, you get to focus on eating more instead of eating ‘less.’ In order to get the recommendation of fiber, you would have to get about 25 grams for women and up, 35 grams for men. You would have to eat vegetables first and ramp up high fiber foods including Whole Foods. This will help you stay regular! (With more fiber you must increase water.)

More on the sensory neurons in the gut, fiber recommendation, and www.choosemyplate.gov

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/fiber

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4930427/