Healthy eating is not about following some dietary philosophy like following a script for life. It's all about choosing the foods you eat from those that are going to improve your health and keep you healthy. You need to avoid those foods that are known to increase the risks of heart disease, diabetes, cancer etc. It's not as if healthy food is yuk or tasteless or unpleasant. It's just that you have got into the bad habit of eating too much of the wrong foods (or too much of the right ones for that matter).
Here are some tips on choosing good healthy food to get you started on your new healthy died.
- Whether it's healthy foods or not, you still have to watch your calories. A good guide is that the average daily allowance is 2000 calories. But this will vary depending mainly on your height, age, sex, weight and activity level. Some people are lucky and have that metabolism where they can eat almost anything and not put on so much as an ounce and others just have to look at sugary or fatty food and they start to balloon. So use the 2000 calorie allowance as a guide and you will soon work out what is right for you.
- The thing with healthy food is that it's not just fruit or vegetables or whole grain products or even lean meat. A healthy diet is all these things, so eat a wide variety of foods but go for fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains rather than processed, lean meat and so on. You just have to use a bit of common sense to guide you.
- The big thing is to eat smaller portions. We are forever being bombarded with upsize offers when we dine out. Don't even think about upsizing. Restaurants seem to be serving larger portions these days, but many now give you a choice of main and entree sized serves on their menus. Why not choose a dish that comes in an entree size. Just avoid the high calorie dishes and if you do have to grab fast food now and again, never supersize it!
- What you might be starting to see here is that you don't have to give up your favorite foods to have a healthy diet. Use them as special treats for example, on your birthday or when you get that raise at work. Of course you still need to watch the calories, but there is no need to join the food police.
- Another big thing is to avoid processed or refined food. You need fiber in your diet and you won't find much of that in the processed foods. What you will find, however, is sugar and salt aplenty. So try and avoid these and in fact, avoid too much sugar and salt in general. Our foods have become so full of either sugar or salt or both as well as fat, we have become conditioned to accept them. Don't.
- And here's something I bet you didn't know. Most people go through their lives being dehydrated. It's true! We just don't drink enough water. Remember, our bodies are made up of about 75% water. We need water to live and we need it for a healthy diet. Water is something that is vital to the functioning of the body. It helps deliver nutrients to the cells through the blood, and it takes the waste products and toxins out of the body via the kidneys and the urinary tract. It's quite simple; we would die without water very quickly, a matter of days, so make lots of water part of your healthy diet.