Eating healthy is not just a trend; it’s a lifestyle choice that can have a lasting impact on your overall well-being. But with so much conflicting information out there, it can be difficult to know where to start.
Eating is one of the biggest factors in being fit and healthy. This should be your priority if you are trying to lose weight.
Make your eating habits right before embarking any exercise regimen. In doing this, your brain is laser-focused on one particular goal.
Nevertheless, never sacrifice your health in lieu of losing weight. Balance fitness and nutrition. And here are some 15 consolidated tips in doing so.
1. Nutrition is the key factor to a healthy body system.
Nutrition keeps the body functioning at its optimum capabilities and also helps to maintain an overall health condition. Good nutrition is an important part of living a healthy lifestyle.
Food provides our bodies with the energy, protein, essential fats, vitamins, and minerals they need to live, grow, and function properly.
You need a wide variety of different foods to provide the right amounts of nutrients for good health.
2. Eat intelligently
As Julia Child says, “Eating is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.”
Don’t be persuaded easily by ads and commercialized diet foods and diet fads that are taking the market by storm.
You have the option to eat better food that is healthy and beneficial for your health and your soul, and that can be sumptuous and heavenly at the same time. Start with the basics of healthy eating.
Whether you’re trying to lose weight or just want to eat right, the smartest thing to do is create a healthy eating plan.
With these simple steps, you’ll be able to fit in nutritious meals and snacks, even when you’re squeezed for time.
Planning is the best weapon so that you can eat the right food with nutritional value intelligently.
3. Be mindful of the reasons that can trigger you to eat
There are some factors that can make you eat more food than you need. They might include stress, bad relationships, work conflict and many others.
It is best that you are aware of them. By doing that, you would be able to control your hunger pangs by preventing those that affect you.
4. Write down the reasons why you have to eat healthily
Different people have different reasons for going on a diet. Some people need to do it to improve their health conditions, while others just want to fit into their small clothing.
Remind yourself of whatever your reasons are so that you will become more motivated to go through eating healthy to lose weight.
5. Redefine your idea of dieting
Dieting is about changing your perspective on food and making choices that are sustainable for long term.
Come up with a solution to make it easier for you. For a start, make sure that your refrigerator only contains healthy food that you can eat. Start with healthier foods that you really like.
6. Keep a food diary or a healthy eating journal
Writing your thoughts and feelings helps you put things in perspective.
It can be a great way to track your progress if you are trying to lose weight.
Keep a record of how much weight you are able to shed off as the weeks go by so that you can see if there are certain adjustments you need to make.
It can also ensure that you are motivated to keep up with it.
Write down the foods that you have eaten for the day and the foods you are planning to eat for the following days.
You can prevent unconscious eating and be on your way to better health by doing that.
7. Stay focused on being healthy, not on becoming thin
You will become more successful at long-term weight loss when your motivation shifts from wanting to be thinner to wanting to be healthier.
Change your mindset and think about selecting foods that will help your health rather than worrying about foods that will affect your body’s weight.
Having a new eating style that promotes weight loss must include lowering your total calorie intake. But it does not mean giving up taste, satisfaction or even ease of meal preparation.
Eat more plant-based foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Variety in eating helps you achieve your goals without giving up taste or nutrition.
8. Don’t starve yourself to lose weight
Starving yourself impairs your glucose tolerance so you can’t use it as effectively. Your body slows down its metabolism in order to conserve energy and survive the perceived famine.
Where will your body get the fuel for basic bodily functions without food? Doing so can compromise your health. Aside from that, it would be difficult for you to sleep, exercise and think clearly.
There might be an immediate effect of missing meals but it will return once you start eating regular food again.
Gorging on a huge meal after your body is in starvation mode will cause the calories to be processed differently than normal.
9. Eat a variety of different colored food.
Different foods have different nutritional values. Food can be rich in antioxidants like Vitamin C. Try and see what different colored foods you can pick up.
There are greens, yellows, oranges, purples, and reds in the fruit and vegetable aisle.
When you pick out fruits, get some strawberries, oranges, pineapple, apples, blueberries, and bananas. You will notice a large color selection you have.
The same goes for vegetables. The more color these vegetables have, the better and healthier they are for you.
10. Avoid fad diets, particularly those with unrealistic promises.
Fad diets are not the best way to slim down and keep it off. They frequently promise speedy weight loss or tell you to cut particular foods out of your diet.
They might be unhealthy as they might not provide all the nutrients your body needs. Likewise, slimming down at a very rapid rate might increase your risk of developing gallstones.
Diets that supply less than 800 calories per day might result in cardiac rhythm abnormalities.
11. Think first before you eat.
Do not base your decisions on your instincts when it comes to choosing food items to eat. Your instinct may normally tell you to eat everything in sight, especially if you are hungry.
Think first before you put something on your plate. A study shows that the brain naturally craves the taste of food a split second before accounting for the health benefits.
Mindless eating can cause the calories to add up quickly. Check yourself to see if you are really hungry, the reason why you are eating, and how you feel afterward.
Of course, check what you are eating and where it came from.
12. Enjoy your meal.
Enjoying your meal means you savor it more and do not necessarily eat it as fast as you can. Have a more pleasant experience when eating.
Try to appreciate its looks, smell, taste, and texture. It can also make you eat slower. Enjoy the foods you love without compromising your weight while on an old diet plan.
13. Low-fat does not mean low calories.
The low-fat label doesn’t mean low calorie. There could be hidden ways that those calories are being returned to the foods you are choosing for low-fat status.
The terms “low fat,low calorie,” and “low sodium” do not necessarily mean these foods are healthier for you.
Calories are needed by the body for energy, and while there are also good fats that our body needs, it is important to be aware of serving sizes when eating these foods.
Consuming excess amounts of any food can lead to increased calorie intake and, over time, possible weight gain.
14. Have the right and best nutrition program.
Choose a healthy program that works for you and stick to it. Not all diet programs can work to everyone. Don’t force yourself into doing things that you don’t want.
If you can find a more personalized program that was just created for you, that is even better. Find some experts whom you can work with and assist in creating the program specifically for you.
15. Beware of “diet” foods – they make you fat.
Diet foods and drinks can just be as bad for you as their regular counterparts, even if the diet food industry hopes you think otherwise. Sugar-free and fat-free are the two main varieties of diet food.
Extra sugar and MSG enhance fat-free food, which makes the food taste better. But the bad part, they can raise the blood sugar to unhealthy levels.
The body processes the food without fat content very quickly, leaving you hungry again in a short time.
Healthy Eating
Healthy eating is difficult to achieve because there are so many health factors to consider and food choices to make.
You know antioxidants are good for you, so you want to eat lots of colorful fruits and vegetables because they contain phytochemicals like carotenoids and flavonoids, which neutralize the free radicals that cause age-related degenerative diseases.
You also know that you may not get all the antioxidants that you need in your food so you take supplements to ensure an adequate supply of antioxidants. But what about the actual food you eat.
One of the major problems with our modern diet is that the food you eat is a tasty combination of saturated fats and highly processed and quickly digested carbohydrates.
However, in the last several years, people have become so concerned about fats in their diet that they have substituted carbohydrates and avoided even the good unsaturated fats in lean meat, olive oil, and other plant oils.
Now, everybody seems to be eating a medium- to high-carbohydrate diet without giving proper attention to the type of carbs that they eat.
Not all carbohydrates behave the same in your body. You have been told for years to avoid simple carbs like honey and white bread and eat complex carbohydrates that your body doesn’t digest and turn to glucose as quickly.
However, determining whether a food containing carbohydrates is absorbed and raises the blood sugar quickly or slowly is not at all intuitive.
Scientists have done a lot of rigorous testing over the past several years and have found that white bread and baked potatoes raise the blood sugar level much faster than honey, jams, and chocolate bars.
These scientists developed a numerical index called the Glycemic Index, or GI, to compare the ability of different carbohydrate-containing foods to raise the body’s blood sugar levels—or, in other words, the speed of conversion to glucose.
GI values are determined by feeding human subjects who have fasted overnight a fixed amount of the food, and then measuring their blood glucose levels at fixed intervals of time.
Pure glucose is set at 100, and then other foods are compared to this profile. Testing is time-consuming, and the tests have to be averaged for a number of individuals.
However, these studies have yielded some surprising results, such as the fact that the starches in rice, bread, potatoes, and many types of cereals were absorbed and raised blood sugars very quickly, but the sugars in fruit, candy, chocolate, and ice cream did not result in prolonged rises in blood sugars.
In other words, many of the starchy foods had a much higher glycemic index than many of the sugary foods.
Needless to say, these results seem counter-intuitive and have caused a lot of controversy in the food industry.
The rate of absorption is very dependent on how the carbs are bound up with the food fiber and the particle size.
For example, less gelatinized products like al dente spaghetti and oatmeal have lower GI values, and stone ground flours have lower GI values than finely ground flours.
The fibrous coat surrounding beans and seeds stops enzymes from getting at the starchy carbs inside and will slow the digestion of grainy bread, legumes, and barley.
The acidity of foods also slows down digestion, and vinegar, lemon juice, pickles, and sourdough bread will result in lower GI meal values.
The Glycemic Index is important not only to diabetics but also to non-diabetics because you need to know what foods will keep your blood sugars on an even keel and not raise them too high and then have them plummet down again, causing hunger.
The slow digestion of low GI foods and the gradual rise and fall in blood glucose response help people with diabetes control their blood sugar levels and increase their sensitivity to insulin.
Low GI foods will help healthy people delay hunger pangs and promote weight loss in overweight individuals.
In addition, low GI carbohydrates can reduce blood cholesterol levels and also reduce our risk of heart disease.
High blood glucose spikes can result in oxidative stress, leading to the formation of plaque that can cause atherosclerosis and even blood clots.
So, keeping your blood sugar levels fairly low seems like what you should be trying to achieve through healthy eating. How do you go about achieving this?
The first step is to look at what carbohydrates you are consuming and the GI levels of the meals that you are eating.
Then, you should try and ensure you have at least one low GI food in each meal to keep the overall meal GI close to 50.
Most fats and proteins have no effect on the GI level of your meal because they don’t contain carbs. However, watch out for saturated fats and too many calories.
Let’s look at some meals and see what substitutions you could make. The GI values are shown in brackets.
Breakfast
Cut back on Corn Flakes (92), Rice Krispies (82) and substitute All-Bran (32) or switch to a cereal based on oats, barley or bran.
Stop eating white bagels (72), white bread (70), or whole-wheat bread (77), and switch to pumpernickel (50) or sourdough (55).
Fruits are mostly low-GI foods, and surprisingly, orange juice (46) is very good.
Lunch and Dinner
Eat your colored vegetables and make your salad dressings with olive oil and vinegar.
Avoid parsnips (97) and substitute pasta like al dente white spaghetti (38), linguini (46) or macaroni (47) for instant white rice (87), and potatoes—baked (85), peeled, and boiled (88).
Except for parsnips and potatoes, most vegetables have a low GI value.
Additional information on GI values can be found at the University of Sydney website, http://www.glycemicindex.com/
Guidelines on Eating Right Food to Keep You Fit
There are certain guidelines that help a person to follow a regime and have a healthy eating habit.
There is always a question of what kind of food is better than others or different than others?
Vitamins, minerals, fats, and soluble elements are all important and part of food.
There are four main food groups that you often hear a health expert or nutritionist talk about when they are talking about a balanced diet.
With the different groups of food, there are serving amounts for adult and for children as well.
With meat, fish, poultry, and beans, there should be 2-3 servings a day. This group falls under the category of protein, and it’s a great source for that.
Cooked beans are good for health because they are low in fat. Some of these foods can include hamburger, eggs, beans, chicken, fish and peanut butter.
Dairy is important for calcium and protein. You can choose the low-fat dairy from the store.
There should be at least around 2-4 servings of dairy, it should include, cheese, milk, yogurt, cottage cheese and anything that contains milk.
Fruits and Vegetables are so important and they are low in fat and calories.
They are not only a great source of vitamins, potassium, fiber, and carbohydrate energy, but they are also very nutritious for health.
Orange or yellow vegetables contain Vitamin A. All citrus fruits, including lemon, contain Vitamin C.
It is vital to have 2-4 servings of each. These include juices and all the vegetables and fruits, either cooked or raw.
Grains are known as complex carbohydrates; they provide vitamin B and fiber, which are great source of energy. You can have 6–8 servings of this; it includes pancakes and pasta, bread, rice, and cereals.
Fats and oils have to be used as little as possible. This includes oils, butter, sour cream, soda, candy and anything that has lots of calories.
Fats and oils have to be really balanced to give you a healthy diet. Most people go for fat and oils rather than other foods, which is equally important for the diet.
It is said that under the new food group, it should be any 2 fruits in a day, with 2 kinds of grains, 3 vegetables, and 4 legumes.
Legumes are beans, peas or lentils; these are really good for calcium, zinc, protein and B vitamins.
The new food group can be integrated with the total of 53 grams of fat in a day and total of 24 grams of sugar in a day that comes to eating 2 servings of meat, fish, and poultry.
By following these eating tips, you can improve your overall health and fitness levels. Remember, making small changes to your diet can have a big impact on your well-being. Prioritize your health by making nutritious food choices and fueling your body with the nutrients it needs to thrive.
These tips can be an amalgam of contrasts from the way of life, the modern shift of routines and viral media updates from time to time.
In the end, in choosing between being thin and healthy, diet and nutrition, your choice gives you freedom in achieving your goal. Of course, I urge you to choose both, right?
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