Fiber, an indigestible substance found mainly in the outer layers of plants, is a carbohydrate that passes through the digestive system virtually without being broken down into nutrients. Like other carbohydrates, fiber is key in providing energy for all bodily functions. Additionally, fiber can help lower your risk of diabetes and heart disease.

There are two kinds of fiber: soluble -- found in oat bran, barley, nuts, seeds, beans, lentils, peas and some fruits and vegetables -- and insoluble (often called dietary fiber), wheat bran, vegetables and whole grains. Dietary fiber -- or the kind of fiber that isn't digested by your body, or is insoluble, promotes the movement of material through your digestive system and can help prevent or relieve constipation. Soluble fiber, which can dissolve in water, helps lower cholesterol.

So how much fiber should you be consuming each day?

The National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine recommends the following fiber servings per day: 25 grams of fiber per day for women age 50 and younger and 21 grams of fiber for women 51 and older. Men should get 38 grams of fiber if they are younger than 50 and 30 grams of fiber if they're older than 51. And a nutrition-information savvy tip from the American Dietetic Association tells us that a "high fiber" food label means there are 5 or more grams of fiber per serving.

Increase your fiber intake by choosing high-fiber foods like grains, fruits, vegetables, beans, legumes, nuts and seeds.

If you're looking for ways to sneak fiber in gradually, which will decrease the amount of gas and bloating you experience are you begin to eat more fiber, you could choose to start your day with a high-fiber breakfast cereal. During lunch, add a can of beans to your favorite soup. Over dinner pick whole-wheat breads and pasta.

Learn More About Fiber:

Carb-Resistant Starch: Fiber for Weight Loss
High-Fiber Cereals
High-Fiber Fast Food
High-Fiber Foods
Splenda With Fiber

That's Fit wants you to get healthy, be strong and live well, which is why we've got great fitness tips in addition to excellent nutrition advice.

It's not always possible to measure our food into precise little containers prior to eating to ensure we're getting a properly-sized portion. That's what we have hands for. And thumbs. And palms. Yep, everything you need to know about how much you need to eat is in your hands, says Makeover Momma, who writes for the new-mom set but has tips that can transfer to all of us. Check these out.

• A protein serving should be size of your fist. Makeover Momma suggests you focus on proteins like lean chicken or fish, an egg white omelet, or a serving of quinoa.
  
• Grains or carbohydrates should fill one cupped palm. Think one slice of bread, a cup of brown rice, or a moderately-sized whole grain bagel.
• Two tablespoons of anything is equivalent to the size of both of your thumbs. Use this guide for the peanut butter you spread on that whole-wheat bagel, fresh tomato sauce you pour over pasta, or the dressing you choose for your salads.
  
  

Two other tips from this wise Momma: Keep your servings to a variety of unprocessed foods whenever possible and eat only when you're hungry. Want more from this gal, who happens to think it's entirely possible to be fit, fashionable, and fabulous after kids? Click right here.

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How much you eat is just as important as what you eat, says the man narrating this Cleveland Clinic video. True. I'm thinking cashews right now -- good for me but not if I throw them back mindlessly.

Ah, portion control. A wise concept. Not always easy to manage, though. Back to the video -- it's a great one for helping to visualize appropriate serving sizes, like the following.

A serving size of cheese is equal to four dice. A baked potato: the size of a computer mouse. Meat, the palm of your hand. Peanut butter, the tip of your thumb. Veggies -- think one fist. Starches and fruits -- half a fist or a cupped hand.

Want a actual look at these suggestions. Click here. In a mere four minutes, you'll be educated on serving sizes, portion control, and you'll walk away with a few great tips for slimming down on snacking -- hint: don't eat from the bag, serve up a small portion in a bowl.

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When it comes to using dishes, I've always been a bit, um, frugal. I don't like doing 'em, so I do what I can to use a few dishes as possible. This mean eating from the bag, box or whatever. When I'm grabbing some crackers, chips or even dried cereal, I grab the bag and munch away.

Correction -- that's what I did do. I saw this great tip on Fitsugar a while ago and it makes a lot of sense. Instead of eating from the bag, put a serving into a dish, then seal the bag and put it away. Out of sight, out of mind -- this simple step will keep you from mindlessly eating the whole bag. You're able to snack away while controlling how many calories you consumer -- now, is that a perfect solution or what?

You've heard it before and you'll hear it again: Read the labels at the supermarket. But unless you're well-versed in all things healthy, it can be hard to know what to look for. So next time you're shopping around, take a quick glance and look for these five things:

1. Bad fats. If it has any trans fat or over a few grams of saturated fat per serving, skip it.
   
2. Sugar. Has it got more than 10 g of sugar per serving? If the answer's yes, skip it.
   
3. Fiber. Fiber is good for curbing hunger, among many other things. Particularly when choosing breads and cereals, look for items that are high in fiber -- think 4 g or more.
   
4. Ingredients. Does it have a list of ingredients as big as the dictionary?Are most of them unpronounceable? Think: Do you want to put all those chemicals in your body? Yeah, didn't think so.
   
5. Servings size. Pay attention to just what constitutes a serving. For instance, you might think 5 g of sugar isn't that bad, but if there's 5g of sugar in a two tablespoon serving? That's a lot.
   

Much like the "friendly bacteria" trend, there's a growing fare of healthy snacks claiming to provide as much nutritional benefits as their fruit and vegetable counterparts. But don't play the unwitting consumer! There isn't a perfect substitute for good 'ol fashioned apples or carrots or other produce.

Ever seen the label for Jell-O Fruit Passions? According to this article, it claims to have a full serving a fruit per cup. I've seen similar claims on other products as well. But don't be fooled: manufacturers have had to condense the fruits and veggies into powdered form, which doesn't qualify it to be what it originally was anymore! Sure, some products actually put fruit, for example, in the product (like yogurt).

But how gullible do they think we are to blindly accept chips with a hint of apple as a proper substitute? Now, these products are not all smoke and mirrors. Given the other chips on the market (for example), I'll take veggie-infused baked alternatives any day. In fact, they are a very good snack to cure the munchies! But anyone health-conscious should be consuming produce in its raw form daily -- not a snack version of broccoli in a bag.

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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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Portions are important when it comes to matters of health and weight management. But it's hard to control our portions when measuring cups, spoons, and scales aren't readily available. Since guesswork can sometimes be dangerous, we need some sort of guide when estimating our serving sizes.

Try this on for size -- Well & Fit magazine, published by the Publix grocery chain, offers these tips for estimating serving sizes at a glance.

1 cup = a small fist
1 ounce of cheese = an index finger
1/2 cup of rice or oatmeal = a light bulb
3-ounce serving of fish or meat = a deck of cards
1 serving of fruit = a tennis ball

OK, now I've got a few visuals. How about you?

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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!

When we're picking out foods for out kids, we tend to choose things that have the word 'fruit' somewhere on the label; After all, fruit is healthy and we're always trying to get our kids to eat more of it. But how many items actually contain fruit? How about that fruity cereal? How about that fruit-flavoured yogurt? What about fruit leather? What about licorice?

If you're wondering the same thing, take this quiz from CNN. I think you'll be surprised with some of the answers -- I know I was. And while I know that kids can be picky eaters, let's remember that nothing compares to eating fruit in it's natural form.

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While many generations before us have struggled with famine, one of the biggest problems that plagues our generation is over-indulgence. We're a culture that can get too much of a good thing -- we overeat on a regular basis. Blogsoop has uncovered the top reasons why we overeat:

• We let visual cues tell us how much to eat
  
• Proximity and visibility of food doesn't help either; it's always there, tempting us.
• We're affected by the volume of food -- if our food had more air in it, it might make a big difference in how much we actually eat
• We accept that the serving size that something comes in is the optimal amount
• We ignore the influence that outside influences have on how much we eat

For more helpful information, including studies to back up these claims, check out the full article.

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Hi, my name's Martha and I'm a carboholic. There, I've said it. So when I saw this headline on Prevention promising to tell me what the healthiest carb is, I couldn't resist. Turns out it's one of my favourites -- whole wheat pasta. Some think it tastes like cardboard but I love it -- more than white pasta, even.

Now that whole grains are all the rage, manufacturers are always trying to find ways to improve the taste of whole wheat pasta, and they're doing so by adding healthy things like flax and legumes. So eat up -- pasta's good for you! One thing to keep in mind, however, is the serving size for most pastas -- as I've learned the hard way, one serving is usually much less than a pasta lover would expect.

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Portion and serving sizes seem to come up all the time, but it's still easy to be confused or lose track of just how much a "serving size" of any particular food item is. Given I don't usually hear "fat" discussed in terms of servings or portions (usually it's just a percentage of your total diet), when I came across this article I was curious: just how big is one serving of fat, anyway?

Well the answer is: one serving of fat = one teaspoon of fat. But the only kinds of fats that can really be measured this way are things like cooking oil, butter, margarine, etc., so it doesn't help us out a whole heck of a lot. I guess that's why fat is rarely talked about in terms of "serving size."

Still, now you know!

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As do many people, I hate wasting food. So, although it's a poor excuse for overeating, the fact there's "just a little left in the pan and it won't really keep" is one of my most common pitfalls when it comes to portion control. Portion sizes in this country are out of control, there's no doubt about that, and could it be that one contributing reason is people's aversion to wasting food? It's a small reason probably, but I bet it's part of it.

Not to downplay the challenges of cooking for a large family, but having extra food sitting around isn't usually one of them. But for single people, or even some couples, it's another story altogether. Most recipes don't make just 1 or 2 servings, and most foods in the store don't come packaged in smaller more convenient amounts, or if they do they're much more expensive and hardly make sense.

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I'm not single but because of busy schedules, my partner and I rarely eat together during the week, and I spend most weeknights I preparing single-serving meals. Not having the stress of cooking for someone else is nice, but it's also a bit dangerous because everything these days seems to come in h8uge economy-sized packages meant for families of four rather than the solo eater.

eDiets has these suggestions for someone dining alone. If your eating for one, watch your servings, make healthy choices and take your time -- rushing through dinner just causes over-eating.

How do you make smart, solo choices?

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