Check the Calorie Count

• Check the calorie count on items that you are cooking. If you are cooking a prepared item, the calories will be listed on the box. This makes it very easy. You can also use a website that has nutritional information, such as the Calorie Counter Database. Add up these numbers and divide your dish by the number of servings to calculate your calories per serving. By using these suggestions, you can choose items to cook with that are low calorie. Some suggestions include vegetables, butter substitutes, such as "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter," and lower calorie meats, such as chicken and pork.
  
  

Determine Your Goal Caloric Intake on a Daily Basis

• Do not accept broad guidelines for how many calories each individual should consume on a daily basis. Everyone is different, and you should gear your cooking to meet your own body type and caloric requirements. The Homeopathy for Everyone website has a calculator that will give you your goal caloric daily intake based on your gender, height, weight, age, activity level, and if you want to gain, lose or maintain your weight. In general you should cook your largest meal to include half of your calories for the day, and the smaller two meals each having about one quarter of your daily caloric intake. Meal suggestion for low calorie larger meals include homemade soups, stews and grilled meats as the fat is burned off when grilling.
  
  

Calories Are Not the Be All and End All

• Caloric intake is a very good guideline to help you learn how to cook in a healthy manner, but there are other factors as well. Other items to be very observant of are fat content and sodium content. Both of these items can have significant negative effects on an individual's personal health. If you have a health condition in which you know that high sodium items will cause complications for you, be careful to avoid these even if it means the alternative you have has a higher calorie count. Good low fat items to cook include white meats, such as pork, chicken and fish. Grilling or baking are good alternatives to frying. If you should not consume a lot of sodium, cooking with pepper will add flavor to your meat and avoid issues related to sodium.
  
  

Eat In Moderation

• Three meals a day is something that many of us are raised on, but there is nothing written in stone that says you must eat three meals a day. Eating smaller meals during the day and having four or five meals is perfectly acceptable as well, and can also help you control your hunger in an effective manner. Ideas of smaller meals include slider sized sandwiches, small servings of soup, salads, fruit salad and boiled eggs.
  
  

Eating Late at Night

• You are unlikely to be active after your final meal of the day if you eat it late in the evening, when you are not planning on doing any physical activity afterward. This means the rate at which you burn your calories after this meal is likely to be slower than after other meals during the day. To help fight this, a healthy eating strategy can be to eat your larger meals earlier in the day, and your lighter meals later in the day if you must have a meal late at night. Suggestions for late night meals might be toast and a boiled egg, or a salad with a small serving of meat.