Counting calories is a time-tested method for reducing food intake, which leads to weight loss and other health benefits. Counting calories can be part of making sure you eat a well-balanced diet as well. Eating out can be troublesome for the most committed dieter, but some helpful hints can steer you safely through even that dangerous landscape.

Whether you're trying to lose 15 pounds or 150 pounds, the only real solution to weight control is to eat right, exercise regularly, and stay away from fad diets. The journey to weight loss can be made easier by knowing standard portion sizes for various food groups, keeping your hunger level in check, and knowing weight-loss facts versus myths.

One way to keep track of how much food you’re eating is to focus on portion sizes, rather than on individual calorie counts. Here’s a quick-reference guide to standard portion sizes of different foods within each food group that provide approximately the same number of calories. Keep in mind that these guidelines are general; calories actually vary within each food group, depending not only on the food itself, but also how it’s prepared.

You may encounter more weight-loss misinformation floating around than reliable advice. If you're new to the weight-loss game — and it is something of a game — you're going to hear and read all types of tips and advice on how to do it, what foods to eat and not eat, and what works and what doesn't. Here are six popular diet myths, debunked: Eating in-between meals makes you fat.

What happens when you don’t eat? You set yourself up for a binge in the not-so-distant future. Food deprivation never helped anyone lose weight in the long run. The trick is to figure out if you’re really hungry, and to eat just enough to satisfy your hunger. One way to know if what you’re feeling is true physical hunger, and not emotional hunger, is that when you’re truly hungry, you’ll feel better by eating just about any type of food.