When your tummy is grumbling while standing in front of a vending machine or bakery case full of delicious-looking frosted treats, mustering up any morsel of willpower might be a challenge. Whether it is breakfast, lunch or dinner, eating nutritiously is often an afterthought in our busy schedules. Still, getting back on track with a healthier diet can be done…with less planning and preparation than you might think.

When hunger strikes, here are a few tips to keep you on track.

Avoid the sugar roller coaster

If you’re starving two to three hours after you wake up, you either don’t eat breakfast (shame on you!) or eat too much sugar, probably in the form of simple carbohydrates. One of the best things you can do is simply read the ingredients. If a food’s carbohydrate grams contain more than half of its calories from sugar, you’ve gone overboard. The back of every nutrition label lists the total carbohydrates. Under the total carbohydrates is the listing for total grams of sugar. Watch out for less-than-healthy breakfast culprits, including sugary cereals, granola bars and single serving packages of nearly anything (from maple brown sugar oatmeal to cereal bars).

An all-too-common breakfast that catapults a body straight into sugar shock for the day is a cup of coffee and a muffin. Better breakfast options include:

• One (or two) hard-boiled egg and a whole or sprouted grain English muffin.
• A low-fat plain yogurt with walnuts and cinnamon.
• Old-fashioned oats w/ low-fat milk, ground flax seed and ½ banana.

The same rules apply to snacks and lunch. Watch out for salads, too! While green is definitely good, many prepared salads are loaded with unhealthy dressings, adding on hundreds of useless calories. It’s also a good idea to cut back on the bread as well. Too much starchy stuff will put you into a food coma before you know it!

Simple lunch suggestions include:

• Grilled chicken or salmon salad, extra veggies, a little cheese and dressing on the side.
• Any bean or lentil-based soup with extra veggies.
• Brown bag it! A home-based sandwich or leftovers from last night are almost always calorie-cutters.

Know Your Ingredients!

When it’s time to stock the shelves at home, nothing could do your body better than a shopping cart full of healthy labels. That said, it’s not always easy to know what’s good and what’s bad. Here’s a simple breakdown of the top three food ingredients to avoid:

High Fructose Corn Syrup: Sugar is bad enough, but this high-octane, synthetically created syrup has been shown to alter our hunger hormone, leptin—which can lead to a disaster for our waistlines.

Non-Nutritive Sweeteners: Aspartame, ACE-K, sucralose, Splenda, Sweet-n-Low, Equal … and this list goes on. If it tastes really sweet and contains no calories, it’s probably got one of these chemicals in it. As “natural” as they may be marketed, there is nothing pure about these harsh additives.

“Partially Hydrogenated” anything: If you see the word ‘partially’ next to the word ‘hydrogenated’ in an ingredient list, chances are you’ve got a product with trans fats in your hand. Put it down and keep looking for better foods.

Remember, food ingredients are listed from most to least. So if the first ingredient is high fructose corn syrup – or even simply “corn syrup,” your body is about to get a big dose of sugar.

Prettier Packaging is Not Necessarily Better

Food advertisers play on our emotions. It’s not a bad thing, it’s not a good thing, it’s just what they do to get us to buy their products. In fact, according to the Food Market Institute, women make up a whopping 70% percent of grocery store consumers. Within that segment, an overwhelming 96% of us say nutrition is important. Of course, we know it is, but food firms ambitiously use this information to tell us what’s good for our bodies, rather than letting us decide. Packages with words like “healthy,” “low fat” or “natural” fill every aisle. Remember that:

• Fat-free foods are not always healthy.
• Low-fat foods are often just as caloric as their full-fat counterparts.
• Foods labeled “healthy” or “natural” aren’t always good for you.

Watch Portion Sizes

A person can go crazy trying to size up what’s the right amount of food to eat. Before you give it too much thought, here are a few simple rules to follow when figuring out what to dish out:

Eat veggies with reckless abandon: The only real exception here applies to potatoes. Other than that, go ahead and eat as many veggies as you’d like. As a society, we don’t eat nearly enough anyway! Yes, this even applies to carbohydrate-rich carrots. FYI – most people would have to eat more than Peter Cottontail to really spike your blood sugar.

Soup spoon the starches: Pasta, rice, couscous, potatoes or any other starchy carbohydrate should be limited to about a big soup spoon. These calorie-dense foods contain nearly 100% carbohydrate and convert quickly to sugar in the body. Even though they may be good for us, too much can turn our metabolism down. The same rule applies to bread, but keep it to one slice.

Eat healthy fats: Under no circumstances should you avoid fats. Fats are essential to every part of our being and continue to be avoided by most. Don’t be afraid to add fats, such as grape seed, olive or coconut oil to every meal.

A healthy diet is more than just eating “low-fat” or “light.” It’s about balance, flavor and eating foods your body can use. Do the best to make the most out of the conveniences available, and take the time to prepare a good meal every now and then as well.