Your Health is Your Responsibility
Deciding to eat healthier and making wiser food choices is a personal choice you alone must make as no one else can make this decision for you.
Never before has America seen the level of obese people as there are in today’s society. If you are over 30 your ideal body weight you are considered obese, a hard word to admit. If you are over this 30, your weight you are considered to be “Morbidly Obese.” There are many reasons for our obesity problem, but the bottom line has to do with making the right food choices for the rest of your life, a lifestyle change.
To eat healthier means to eat all the food groups in appropriate amounts and leaving the table feeling sufficiently full, meaning you do not exit the table with a “stuffed” stomach.
- Eating healthy has absolutely nothing to do with any diet.
- Eating healthy is a healthy state of your mind.
- Eating healthy is a lifetime is your commitment for lifestyle changes
- Eating healthy never constitutes eating even healthy foods until your seams split in your clothes.
- Eating healthy means eating appropriate amounts of healthy foods.
- Eating healthy never ends as long as you live
Eating healthy means a better blood pressure, decreasing risks for heart disease and diabetes. You reduce the chance of other diseases due to obesity. You have better chances of keeping your weight within an appropriate range for your body type and age. Keep your weight healthy by eating properly size meals.
What Does Healthy Eating Constitute?
- Whole grains
- Fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables
- Fresh chicken, turkey, fish, eggs
- Eat less red meat, two to three times a week
- Dairy
- Fats
- Natural sugars
- Avoid eating white such as white flour, white sugar, and too much salt
Necessary Food Groups Every Day
Whole Grains
Whole wheat bread, pasta, and cereals without sugar content. Make sure the label reads, “Whole.”
Fruits and Vegetables
These foods add many vitamins, minerals, and fiber to your diet. Eating these groups is better than drinking 100% fruit juices
Proteins
Healthy proteins include limited red meat, chicken, turkey, fish, eggs, beans, nuts, soy
Dairy
Adds needed calcium to the body for healthy teeth, bones. Examples include low-fat yogurt, cheese, and milk
Fats
The body requires some fat each day. Avoid saturated fats and turn to unsaturated fatty foods, for example, oily fish, and avocados. Healthy fats are necessary for healthy joints, hair, and skin.
Sugars
Sugars are contained naturally in some foods like fruits. Avoid white sugar, high fructose corn syrup and anything that relates to sugar (read food labels.) Too much sugar will help you gain weight; increase the risk for heart disease and diabetes. Too much sugar puts you at risk for other diseases.
You Can Manage Your Food Groups
Control your meal portion sizes depending on your age, and activity levels.
Eat fresh or fresh frozen foods and avoid canned foods that contain hidden sugars, and hidden sodium.
Eat foods by baking, broiling, grilling, steaming.
Avoid
- Avoid processed foods
- Avoid frying foods
- Avoid overcooking foods
- Avoid candy, cookies, cakes, pies, ice cream
- Limit alcohol
- Stop smoking
- Avoid salt and replace with herbs and spices
It takes a bit of common sense to eat healthier. Eating healthy is not a complicated matter or restrictive. If you eat foods from mostly plant sources like fresh or frozen vegetables, fruits, whole grains and strictly limit your processed food choices, and red meats, you are feeding your body healthier.
Add to your healthy lifestyle, eating a doctor approved, daily exercise routine.