Why is healthy eating important? What we eat has a direct impact on our overall health, especially over the long term. A balanced diet is simply one that includes the foods we need to maintain good health over the course of a lifetime. Here are some of my favorite tips for getting good nutrition and a balanced diet. I know they’ve worked well for me, my family and friends. I hope you find them helpful. Take good care of yourself…you’re worth it!
Don’t Skip Meals. Did you know that when we skip meals our metabolism slows down and we can actually gain weight even though we’re consuming fewer calories? When we get really hungry we tend to make poor food choices, grabbing whatever is most convenient to satisfy our hunger. Eat three meals a day plus a small snack in the morning and afternoon. People who eat breakfast weigh less on average than people who skip breakfast. Try to include protein, carbohydrate and fat in each meal.
Plan What To Eat. If we wait to decide what to have for dinner until we get home after a tiring day at work, we’re more likely to eat something convenient rather than nutritious. Since we’ll always have to make decisions about meals, we might as well do it in a way that works to our benefit. By planning menus in advance, you’re simply reorganizing an activity that you have to do anyway and making the process more efficient. Take a few minutes on the weekend to plan the week’s menus. They don’t have to be anything fancy or formal. Make your grocery list from your menu plan. Having this list with you when you go shopping will save you time and money.
Practice Smart Grocery Shopping. The most nutritious and least processed foods are located around the perimeter of the grocery store. The inside aisles are loaded with tasty and attractive food choices but many of them have been so processed in order to make them quick and convenient to use that much of the nutritional value has been removed. As a result we’re often eating calories with little corresponding nutrition. When choosing your foods emphasize plants. It would be difficult to get too many vegetables except for starchy ones like potatoes. Eat whole fruits rather than just drinking fruit juice. Go for bright or dark colors when choosing fruits and vegetables. The colors in these foods are an indication of the presence of valuable nutrients. Eat as big a variety of plant-based foods as you can. Cut back on some of the foods that are a big part of American culture, such as red meat, processed meat (hot dogs, sausage, bacon, cold cuts), refined grains, sweetened beverages and salty snacks. Most processed meats contain nitrites or nitrates (this will be listed on the Ingredients label), which have been linked to a significantly increased risk of cancer. If possible, avoid doing the grocery shopping when you’re hungry.
Check Food Labels. The Nutrition Facts and Ingredients labels on foods are a gold mine of valuable information. They help get us past the advertising on the package and see what we’re really buying. A food is low in a nutrient, such as fat, if it has less than 5% of the Daily Value per serving on the Nutrition Facts label. It’s high in a nutrient if it has 20% or more of the daily value per serving. Note how serving size is defined on the label. For example, if you eat an amount equal to two servings, you’re getting double the calories, fat and so on. The Ingredients label can tell you a lot, too. Ingredients are listed in order of amount with the most listed first. If you want to buy whole grain bread but the first ingredient listed is enriched wheat flour, the product is not really whole grain. For whole wheat bread, for example, the first ingredient listed should be whole wheat flour. Try to avoid ingredients like hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils. These are trans fats. Watch out for added sugars such as high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, dextrose, fructose, and maltose. An ingredients label that reads like an inventory from a chemistry lab is a sure sign that the product has been highly processed. My personal rule is that the more ingredients on the label I can’t pronounce, the less desirable the product. Food labels help us make the best choice from among a group of similar products. Natural unprocessed foods give us the best nutritional value for the calories consumed. If you want to know the nutritional content of a food item that doesn’t have a label, such as an apple or a pear, you can find out by using the US Department of Agriculture’s National Nutrient Database. It’s free and easy to use.
Watch Your Portion Sizes. Restaurants today serve huge portions and we’ve become accustomed to eating far too much at one sitting. A serving of meat, fish or poultry should be about the size of a deck of cards. A serving of cooked vegetables or cut up fruit is about half a cup. A serving of raw leafy vegetables such as spinach or lettuce is 1 cup. One piece of whole fruit like an apple,banana or peach is a serving.
Break Bad Food Habits. We all have bad habits and they can be hard to break. Dining frequently at fast food restaurants, eating a lot of highly processed foods, and drinking sweetened beverages such as soda, sports drinks and energy drinks are bad food habits. I know that if I have chips and sweets in my house I’ll eat them so I don’t buy them. There’s nothing wrong with indulging in these foods occasionally, but a steady diet of them can be harmful to our health. If you want to wean yourself off soda or some other food or beverage try this “one quarter” technique from the ancient Indian Ayurvedic medicine tradition. If you want to give up soda, for example, reduce the amount you drink by one fourth until you’re comfortable with that new level. Then reduce your consumption by another one fourth, and so on. This gradual approach will get you where you want to be with a minimum of stress, and you can still have some soda as an occasional treat without remorse.
Take A Multivitamin. Include a high-quality multivitamin in your daily eating program. If you take medication you may want to check with your doctor. He or she can recommend the best choice for you.
Images by Grant Cochrane.
