Want to know an easy way to eat well? Follow the food pyramid at every meal.

Eating healthy is only part of the weight loss equation -- keeping your portions in check is just as important. Too many whole grains, natural sugars and healthy fats can add extra weight onto your frame just as well as junk food.
Want some easy tricks to keep your portions reasonable? Here are some quick tips from Everyday Health:

• A serving of cereal or grains is the size of your fist.
  
• A serving of pasta, rice or potato is the size of a baseball, so a whole plate of spaghetti is three or four servings.
  
• A serving of fruit should be the size of a fist
• A serving of low far cheese is the size of for dices
• A serving of peanut butter is the size of a ping-pong ball.
  

Another easy tip? Use the smaller plates and bowls -- it's harder to go overboard with them, unless you go back for seconds and thirds.

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A quick trick to get past party season without packing on pounds is to place your meals on smaller plates. Duh? Sounds simple, but it really will help you cut back on calories. Psychologically, folks tend to want to fill up their plates. A full dessert plate probably only holds half of the calories as a dinner plate. Even if you're choosing the unhealthy options, a smaller plate simply holds less.

The only restraint you'll have to use with this method is not going back for seconds. There are very few perfect answers that work for everyone across the board. But, if you're dedicated to maintaining or improving your fitness level throughout the holidays........a few good rule of thumb type tricks will certainly help you along! Remember. You are in charge of you! You can do this!

According to Woman's World Magazine, the hottest diet gimmick out these these days is something you keep in the cupboard -- Portion-control plates which give you a visual guide to how much you should be eating of each food group. Here are some their picks:

• Portion Pals -- $18
• The Diet Plate and Bowl -- $64
• EZ Weight Plate -- $20
• Portion Doctor -- $10

Sounds like these companies are making money off a very simple concept. But if you want to save your cash, remember this rule of thumb -- Half of your plate should be fruits and veggies, a quarter should be protein, a quarter should be whole grains and if you didn't use fat in cooking, have a little dressing or sauce on the side.

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We do this at my house -- we serve our food from the stove. When we make turkey meatballs, for example, we scoop our servings right from the pan onto each of the four plates that sit at our dinner table each night. Then we dish veggies onto our plates right from the steamer. Then we sit, and eat, and rarely get up for more.

I never knew our practice was a healthy one -- until I came across this website and read the following note at the bottom:

Serve dinner from the stove, not family-style with bowls of food at the table. This discourages overeating and encourages controlled eating based on feelings of real hunger and satisfaction. This might clash with family tradition, but try it and see whether it doesn't help limit unconsciously eating second and third helpings.

Here we were operating from a less-dishes-to-wash standpoint. It was simply a matter of convenience for us to serve from the stove. Now that I know our dinner process is also good for our figures, I'll be sure to keep it up.

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Use smaller plates. This is a diet tip that has been floating around for years, and has probably be used about 100 million times. But you know why? Because it works. Using huge dinner plates is just an invitation to fill it with way more than you need. Using smaller plates forces you to take a more managable serving, and as long as you don't talk yourself into having seconds, you'll have instant portion control.

This doesn't mean you have to throw away your current plates and scour the nearest IKEA for smaller ones. Use the salad plates you have at home. Or a Bento box. Or a bowl. Or really, whatever keep you from packing away more than your share of food. Hint: this also works well at buffets!