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Listen to Your Body

What’s important is not only what you eat but also how

often and how much you eat. Many people eat three

large meals a day—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—but it’s

actually better to eat five smaller meals. If you eat a snack

in the morning, a snack in the afternoon, and reasonable

portions at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then you are

already doing it!

Don’t forget to pace yourself. Listen to your body, eating

when you are hungry and stopping when you are full.

If you eat extremely fast, you won’t always feel full until

you’ve already eaten too much food. But don’t go too

slowly either, or you won’t have time to finish lunch

at school!

Meal Skipping

Skipping meals typically isn’t a good idea. If you’re sick,

your body might not feel as if it wants solid food, so

drinking water, tea, juice, or soup is fine. But in general,

your body needs food regularly.

The saying “breakfast is the most important meal of the

day” is actually true! That’s because breakfast provides

the fuel to start your day—it gives your body and your

brain the energy to get going. Even if you don’t feel

hungry, it’s a bad idea to skip breakfast. If you do skip it,

you may not have the energy to do well in your early

classes and may be so hungry by lunchtime that you

make bad food choices.

The Real Thing

Is Best

A meal with whole foods is

the best way to get good

nutrition into your body—

this means eating unpro-

cessed foods, such as fresh

fruit instead of fruit gum-

mies, or cheese, yogurt,

meat, or beans instead of

a protein bar. You might

think you can just take a

vitamin to make your diet

a healthy one, but that

doesn’t work, because your

body absorbs nutrients

much better from whole

foods than from a pill.