Healthy Eating As Part of a Weight Loss Program
Healthy eating is actually very easy if you just know the basics. Starchy foods like potatoes, rice, bread and pasta are the ideal base. Add plenty of fruit and fresh vegetables and you will have all you need nutritionally without excess fat or too much salt and sugar. If you prepare your own meals from fresh ingredients then you will know exactly what is going into your meal.
It is very easy to use ready meals, prepared sauces and canned food, but they often contain high levels of:
fat
sugar
salt
flavour enhancers
preservatives
artificial sweeteners
They also tend to be low in:
fibre
vitamins
minerals
Eating these foods will lead to your taste buds expecting this artificially enhanced taste or sweetness. Fresh food then doesn’t taste quite as good as the processed food, and you end up losing your enthusiasm for healthy eating or find it an uphill struggle to convince the rest of the family. If you stick with the healthy options, and throw the processed food in the bin, then you will soon begin to appreciate the taste of real food.
Once you are eating more healthy food then weight loss should come a lot easier. You do need to get a balance of foods from the five food groups:
Starchy food
Fruit and vegetables
Milk and dairy
Meat
Fats and sugars
Starchy foods and fruit and vegetables should each provide about a third of your diet. The rest can come from meat (including fish, eggs and beans) and dairy products such as cheese, milk and yoghurt. Foods high in fats and sugars should form a small part of your diet.
If you are not eating healthily at the moment then why not take some positive action now. Make a note of what you usually have for breakfast, at work for breaks and lunch, at home on the weekends in the day, and the range of evening meals you eat.
Think of easy ways that you can change some of the processed foods or those high in fats and sugar. Could you swap the white bread toast with butter and jam to some chopped banana and apple with low fat yoghurt? Or maybe some oat cookies with a fruit juice for break rather than the coffee and chocolate bar? Could you drop the frozen pizza with oven chips for some grilled chicken and salad?
At first you may find it hard to give up the processed and flavour enhanced foods. But once you start to really taste fresh food and, more importantly, start to feel better and look slimmer, then you won’t miss them.
