One of my biggest issues with eating is that I tend to eat for other reasons that being hungry. Sometimes it’s emotional, other times it’s that I’m tired and food acts as a quick pick-me-up. At other times, I eat because my friends or family is eating and I want be part of the group.

Diet Blog has a good post on Indicators of Emotional Eating. Many times, I can check off 4-5 from that list.

As I’ve been dieting, getting enough water has been top on my health agenda. Drinking more water make you feel more full and satiated, but it also replaces some of the water you normally would get from eating food. It also is beneficial to your kidneys which is battling all the waste produced from burning fat.

How much you should drink has always been a question for me. My typical answer is to just check my urine color and try to make it as clear as possible. Diet blog has a better answer to that question.

Small Bites posted their take on diet soda and it’s well worth a look.

As a long time diet soda drinker, I’ve been cutting back quite a bit and shifting to water during the work day. I stopped using products with aspartame for a couple months to see if it made me feel any different, but in my case, I couldn’t feel any noticeable differences in my body, so I started adding a bit back (mostly via sugarfree chewing gum and toothpaste) over time.

My new hobby is making my own sodas with a home soda machine from Soda-Club Home Soda Makers, which is a lot of fun. It doesn’t really save you much money, but it uses a lot less resources on the environment as far as waste products, and it’s fun to be able to tweak the recipes to your liking. My family uses the pre-made diet mixes, but we also just carbonate some water and throw in some sliced fruit to get a Calistoga Water style drink which is also very tasty. The additional benefit for me is that their diet soda mixes use Splenda as opposed to aspartame, which I prefer.

Really Useful Fitness has a nice post about oatmeal, one of my favorite foods. The bonus is the recipe for pumpkin oatmeal which I can’t wait to try out next time I stop at the store and get the ingredients.

The Diet Blog has an interesting post about a study done at the University of Pennsylvania. They split dieters into two groups; one was told to increase the amount of fruits and vegetables in their diet while the other was told just to reduce the total calories they ate every day. The result was that the first group lost 13 lbs in in 6 months while the other only lost 5 lbs.

To me it’s common sense; it’s easier to stay on a diet if you don’t feel hungry and by eating foods low in calories that still satiate you, the more easily you can stick to it. From my personal experience, I would add that foods with a low glycemic index tend to stay in your stomach longer and make you feel full longer as well.