Simple Ways To Eating Healthy}

Simple Ways to Eating Healthy

by

Gen WrightEating healthy does not mean having to eat the foods you hate or giving up some of your beloved foods. It does not mean having to spend a fortune on specialty organic foods either. In fact, everyone can learn to eat healthier by making small simple modifications to their current eating habits.

Healthy eating should be looked at like a lifestyle modification and not a short term diet. Rather you want to eat healthy in order to lose weight or just improve your health these quick and easy tips will get you started.

Eating Healthy Tip #1 Reduce Sugar Intake

Refined sugar is a processed item that gives you little or no nutritional benefit. These empty calories can add up fast and can risk you go over your total daily calorie intake maximum. Too many calories will lead to weight gain. Try to minimize sweets high in sugar or look for the sugar free versions of your favorite sweets.

Be careful of the sugars in your beverages as well. A sweetened soda has up to or exceeds 100 calories and 10 teaspoons of sugar. Drink diet pop, or better yet, water. Statistics show that people who changed to diet cola and water instead of regular flavored drinks lost up to 20 pounds in the first year with just this alteration in their lifestyle. Fruit drinks can also be high in sugars and calories so minimize these to just one eight ounce glass a day.

Eating Healthy Tip #2 Protein with Every Meal

Include protein with every meal. Protein requires more energy to digest which means you can burn more calories to process your meal. Protein can come from eggs, beans, lean cuts of meats, fish and even tofu.

Eating protein not only aids in burning calories but aids in building lean muscle mass. The more lean muscles you have the faster your basal metabolic rate. This is the rate at which your body burns calories all day long including sleeping. Your metabolic rate is responsible for 60% to 70% of the total calories you burn in a day.

Eating Healthy Tip #3 Natural is Best

Consuming foods in their most natural state gives you the most nutritional value. Meaning you will the most nutritional value from the foods in their natural state. When foods are processed they lose much of their nutritional value and often increase the fat and/or calorie content.

As an example, a large apple has 110 calories, 0 fat grams, 29 carbohydrates, 5 grams dietary fiber and 1 gram of protein. However a large glass of apple juice has about 150 calories, 0 fat grams, 36 grams of carbohydrates and 0 grams of dietary fiber and protein. So you can see that the processed drink there are more calories and carbs and less dietary fiber and protein.

Eating Healthy Tip #4 Select Whole Foods

While eating foods in their natural form is the best, there are times when you will need processed foods. Breads and pastas are good examples of foods that cannot come in a natural state as they don’t grow on trees or in the ground. When buying these processed foods you should look for whole grain versions.

When foods are processed with 100% whole wheat you are getting more vitamins and minerals than foods made with processed flour. Wheat in its natural, unrefined state has a lot of vitamins and other valuable nutrients including dietary fiber and is a great plus for your healthy eating habits.

Eating Healthy Eating Tip #5 Variety is the Key

Have a variety of foods with lots of nutrition. There are more than 40 nutrients that you should consume each day. No individual food item can give you all of these nutrients, so make your meals varied and rich with nutrients. Be sure to eat the vegetables and fruits with each meal. You need to get protein with every meal. Protein requires more energy to burn than fat so items high in protein are also great fat burners.

Make sure to get your calcium needs also with milk, cheese and other dairy products. Just select fat free or reduced fat products like skim milk or fat free yogurt. Studies have shown that dieters who get 3 to 4 servings in a day of low fat dairy products lost more weight than those who did not include dairy in their meal plan.

These are just a handful of tips to help you make small changes to your lifestyle. By including these easy alterations you are on the road to eating healthy for life and losing weight.

For more healthy ways to lose weight, check out these

quick weight loss tipsJulie is the author and creator of Exercise 4 Weight Loss

where you will find lots of tips and information on exercise and weight loss.

Article Source:

eArticlesOnline.com}