92% of all North Americans don’t practice healthy lifestyle habits. The risks of heart disease and diabetes from poor nutritional choices affect a large number of the middle-aged population. Your commitment to improved health starts today with a pledge to embrace good nutrition. Adopt the following keys to eating healthy and crest the wave of fitness with optimum dietary practices:
Tips to Increase Nutritional Value of Natural Foods
Salad dressing. Cut out the mayonnaise and ladle the olive oil as salad dressing. Or squeeze in lemon juice instead. Low fat alternatives to dressing your salad are perfect for lowering your calories.
Grilling meat. Quit frying and start grilling your beef, chicken and pork ribs. You’ll melt the natural animal fat and cook the meat without coating it in saturated fats from cooking oil. There’s less opportunity for trans-fatty acids to clog your arteries in the long run.
Using herbs. Add herbs to reduce the sodium in your soups and salads. You’ll be cutting back on the hypertension and blood pressure risks associated with elevated intakes of sodium.
Fresh fruit juices. Slice apples or watermelons and juice them in a mixer for a nutrient rich beverage. Skip the sodas and Diet Cokes – and the beers too. Your date with diabetes won’t be anytime soon.
Muesli and cereals. Whole grains pack a lot of fiber in a single spoonful. Great for eliminating waste, fiber aids your intestines in running smoothly. Less chances of constipation or irritable bowels affecting you.
Carrots and leafy greens. Lightly sauté vegetables in water to preserve their nutritional value. There’s plenty of Vitamin A and C in vegetables to keep your eyes and skin glowing. Turn back the clock of time with three servings of vegetables a day.
Eat Meat and Dairy Products Sparingly
Red meats like beef and lamb are rich in fatty tissue and cholesterol, the number one cause of heart disease. Choose white meats such as chicken and duck as alternatives. Cultivate a taste in grilled fish. Pick low fat cheese and skimmed milk off the shelves at the store. Avoid butter or lard as far as possible.
The keys to good nutrition will guarantee your body flourishes with energy and vitality. You have a continuous responsibility for nurturing your health. Adopt proper nutritional practices in your diet from today. Make sure your daily meals are always primed for nourishment. And you’ll be singing in the rain for many years to come!
So you think you want to eat healthier? Let’s discuss a little more about what that means.
It is one thing to say, eat healthier and another altogether to do it. What constitutes eating healthier? It begs to have a beginning point from which you can measure what is healthier eating.
Where are you now in some kind of measurement of how healthy you are eating? What measurement tool are we using? A caloric measurement? A measure of number of nutrients we take in? Or, are we asking a person to follow guidelines for healthy eating set forth by the USDA?
Healthy eating defined may be different to different individuals. According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, healthy eating is defined as “eating the recommended types and amounts of foods, nutrients and calories that are recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, while limiting low-nutrient, high-fat and high-sugar foods and beverages that will promote health and achieve and maintain an optimum body weight and energy balance.” Now, that’s a mouthful!
In simple layman’s terms, the benefits of eating healthier are: improving your overall health and improving your well-being. You will feel better and have more energy. A healthier diet helps you to stay fit and active and can also help to fight stress in your life.
Healthier eating includes eating smarter. Here are a few ways to eat smarter:
Take smaller bites of food and chew the food for longer time periods. As we chew food, saliva mixes in which is the first step in digestion. Chewing our food slower and for longer periods of time not only is better for digestion, but we also taste it longer allowing us to enjoy the food more.
Stress can compromise digestion so avoid all stress while you are eating. This includes not rushing through your meal, avoid confrontations, do not partake in serious discussions at the dinner table, and relax if you are stressed out before you sit down to the table. Set a relaxed mood with music or candles and create a soothing atmosphere in which to eat such as a pretty tablecloth, nice dinnerware, and colorful serving dishes.
Healthy eating also means to stop when you are full. Eat slowly so that you can pay better attention to the signals that your body is giving you regarding when it is full. If you eat only enough food to satisfy your hunger and no more, you are more likely to get to or maintain the proper weight.
Eating more food earlier in the day gives your body more time to digest, so your biggest meal should be at the start of your day, a modest meal at noon and a smaller sized meal at night. Eating frequent smaller meals throughout the day is actually good for your metabolism.
You can also eat healthier by eating a well-balanced diet. Each day your meals should center on the six basic food groups – whole grains, vegetables, fruits, milk and other dairy, protein and oils. Remember to consume at least 7 servings of fresh whole foods (preferably raw). Whole food nutrition is the best way to get the nutrients you need to keep your body healthy.
All six-food groups are necessary for optimum health. Your body receives nutrients such as vitamins and minerals from all food groups when you ignore a group you are not getting the nutrients from that group in your diet and therefore will not be as healthy as you could be.
Have you started hearing about the Raw Food Diet? It’s gaining popularity and buzz, not just as a diet to lose weight, but a diet for a long and healthy life. We eat so much in the way of processed food that we don’t even stop to think about what we’re putting into our bodies, and how far we’ve come nutritionally from our ancestral, agrarian roots.
A raw food diet means consuming food in its natural, unprocessed form. There are several common-sense rationales for why this is a good idea. Processing and cooking food can take so much of the basic nutritional value away. Think of some of the conventional wisdom you’ve heard about for years, such as: If you cook pasta just to the al dente (or medium) stage, it will have more calories, yes, but it will have more the nutritional value in it than if you cooked it to a well-done stage. Or you probably remember hearing not to peel carrots or potatoes too deeply, because most of the nutrients and values are just under the surface.
of heart disease and diabetes from poor nutritional choices affect a large number of the middle-aged population. Your commitment to improved health starts today with a pledge to embrace good nutrition. Adopt the following keys to eating healthy and crest the wave of fitness with optimum dietary practices: