Healthy Eating
Easy Tips for Planning a Healthy Diet &
Sticking to It
Healthy eating is not about strict nutrition
philosophies, staying unrealistically thin, or depriving yourself of the foods
you love. Rather, it’s about feeling great, having more energy, stabilizing
your mood, and keeping yourself as healthy as possible—all of which can be
achieved by learning some nutrition basics and using them in a way that works
for you. You can expand your range of healthy food choices and learn how to
plan ahead to create and maintain a tasty, healthy diet.
Healthy eating tip 1: Set yourself up
for success
To
set yourself up for success, think about planning a healthy diet as a number of
small, manageable steps rather than one big drastic change. If you approach the
changes gradually and with commitment, you will have a healthy diet sooner than
you think.
§ Simplify. Instead of being overly concerned with counting
calories or measuring portion sizes, think of your diet in terms of color,
variety, and freshness. This way it should be easier to make healthy choices.
Focus on finding foods you love and easy recipes that incorporate a few fresh
ingredients. Gradually, your diet will become healthier and more delicious.
§ Start slow and make changes to your
eating habits over time. Trying
to make your diet healthy overnight isn’t realistic or smart. Changing
everything at once usually leads to cheating or giving up on your new eating
plan. Make small steps, like adding a salad (full of different color
vegetables) to your diet once a day or switching from butter to olive oil when
cooking. As your small changes become habit, you can continue to add more
healthy choices to your diet.
§ Every change you make to improve your
diet matters. You don’t have to be perfect and you
don’t have to completely eliminate foods you enjoy to have a healthy diet. The
long term goal is to feel good, have more energy, and reduce the risk of cancer
and disease. Don’t let your missteps derail you—every healthy food choice you
make counts.
Healthy eating
tip 2: Moderation is key
People
often think of healthy eating as an all or nothing proposition, but a key
foundation for any healthy diet is moderation. But what is moderation? How much
is a moderate amount? That really depends on you and your overall eating
habits. The goal of healthy eating is to develop a diet that you can maintain
for life, not just a few weeks or months, or until you've hit your ideal
weight. So try to think of moderation in terms of balance. Despite what certain
fad diets would have you believe, we all need a balance of carbohydrates,
protein, fat, fiber, vitamins, and minerals to sustain a healthy body.
For
most of us, moderation or balance means eating less than we do now. More
specifically, it means eating far less of the unhealthy stuff (refined sugar,
saturated fat, for example) and more of the healthy (such as fresh fruit and
vegetables). But it doesn't mean eliminating the foods you love. Eating bacon
for breakfast once a week, for example, could be considered moderation if you
follow it with a healthy lunch and dinner—but not if you follow it with a box
of donuts and a sausage pizza. If you eat 100 calories of chocolate one
afternoon, balance it out by deducting 100 calories from your evening meal. If
you're still hungry, fill up with an extra serving of fresh vegetables.
§ Try not to think of certain foods as
“off-limits.” When you ban certain foods or food groups, it is
natural to want those foods more, and then feel like a failure if you give in
to temptation. If you are drawn towards sweet, salty, or unhealthy foods, start
by reducing portion sizes and not eating them as often. Later you may find
yourself craving them less or thinking of them as only occasional indulgences.
§ Think smaller portions. Serving
sizes have ballooned recently, particularly in restaurants. When dining out,
choose a starter instead of an entree, split a dish with a friend, and don't
order supersized anything. At home, use smaller plates, think about serving
sizes in realistic terms, and start small. If you don't feel satisfied at the
end of a meal, try adding more leafy green vegetables or rounding off the meal
with fresh fruit. Visual cues can help with portion sizes–your serving of meat,
fish, or chicken should be the size of a deck of cards, a slice of bread should
be the size of a CD case, and half a cup of mashed potato, rice, or pasta is
about the size of a traditional light bulb.
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