Eat right and stay in shape! Keeping Hunger in check : )

You can learn how to control the urge to eat. Just follow these simple tips to keep your appetite under control:

• Feed it protein for breakfast. You'll be less hungry later on and end up eating 267 fewer calories during the day. At least that's what happened on days when St. Louis University researchers gave overweight women two scrambled eggs and two slices of jelly-topped toast for breakfast rather than about half that protein.

• Make it climb a flight of stairs. At home, store the most tempting foods way out of reach. For instance, keep your favorite soda in a basement fridge. Honestly, half the time you'll be too lazy to run down there to get it, so you will drink the water in the kitchen.
• Sleep on it. People who don't get their 8 hours of ZZZs experience hormonal fluctuations that increase appetite, report researchers. Learn more about how sleep affects your diet.

• Give it something else to think about. When scientists scanned the brains of people eating different foods, they found that the brain reacts to fat in the mouth in much the same way that it responds to a pleasant aroma. So if you feel a craving coming on, apply your favorite scent.
• Never let it see a heaping plate. The more food that's in front of you, the more you'll eat. So at a restaurant, ask your waiter to pack up half of your meal before serving it to you, then eat the extras for lunch the next day. You are a single eater, unless you are pregnant, so eat a single layer of food!
• Put it under the lights. You consume fewer calories at a well-lit restaurant table than you do dining in a dark corner. In full light, you're more self-conscious and worry that other people are watching what you eat.

• Talk it down. Entertaining friends with a great story doesn't give you much time to eat up, so you'll probably still have food on your plate when they're done. Once they're finished, call it quits, too. This is why eating alone is a sure fire way to eat too much!
• Offer it a seat. If you sit down to snack -- and use utensils and a plate -- you'll eat fewer calories at subsequent meals.
• Satisfy it with soup. Start lunch with about 130 calories worth of vegetable soup and you'll eat 20% fewer calories overall during lunch, say Penn State experts.

• Give it little choice. Packages that contain assorted varieties of cookies, candy, dips, cheese, etc., make you want to try all the flavors. The effect is so powerful, says Wansink, that when people are given 10 colors of M&Ms to munch on, not 7, they eat 30% more!
• Slow down! It is not a race to see who eats the most or fastest! If you savor your food, taste and concentrate on picking apart the flavors while it is in your mouth, you will enjoy the experience and give your stomach time to tell your brain it is satisfied! To Stop eating! 
• Always leave a little on your plate: Plan on putting a portion of something back for a future meal. Even if its a large spoonful of mashed potatoes, put it in a small plastic or glass container for another meal. 
• If at all possible, buy only a weeks worth of groceries at a time:  If you have a lot of food in the fridge you will subconsciously be worried about getting it all eaten before it goes "bad", or will be tempted to load up the sandwich with a little more < > because you have plenty left...  If you shop per week, you will conserve the food to make it last, thus eat less so that you do not have to run to the store before the week is out.