Healthy eating for a healthy body
Zaak OConan

Healthy eating means many things to many people, and everyone has different goals for the perfect diet. The key to following a healthy diet is to find a diet you can stick with for the rest of your life. A diet should not be simply a temporary change in the way you life, eat and exercise. Rather, it should be a permanent change that you can live with day in and day out, year in and year out.

For some people, a healthy diet can be as simple as increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables in the daily diet. For others, a radical change, involving strict control of fat and cholesterol, may be required.

Of course what is needed will depend on the goal of each individual. The serious runner in search of greater conditioning will of course have different goals than the couch potato who is concerned about the possibility of heart disease.

Even though every person will different goals when it comes to healthy eating, the basic tenets of healthy eating are the same. The most important thing is to eat a good variety of foods, while eating less of the bad stuff and more of the good.

That may sound like an oversimplification, but it really is that easy. Putting that simple concept into proactive, however, is the hard part. Everyone wants to eat healthier, but there are so many temptations in today’s world that healthy eating can be very difficult. The key is to make healthy choices as appealing as unhealthy ones.

One way to make healthy foods appealing is buying a wide variety of exotic fruits at the local supermarket. There are probably varieties of fruits and vegetables at your local grocery store that you never even heard of before. Why not make your next trip to the grocery store an adventure by sampling these exotic offerings?

Experimenting with new recipes is another great way to bring excitement and adventure to healthy eating. A quick perusal of your favorite low fat or healthy eating cookbook will likely present you with many fun and exciting recipes to try. Often a new cookbook, or a couple of new recipes are all it takes to spur a healthier lifestyle.

It is also important to know that eating healthier does not necessarily mean making a radical change. There are very simple things you can do, such as cutting the skin off your chicken breast, or trimming the fat from your favorite steak, that can result in significant fat reductions and health improvements. Dieters should not overlook the importance of these small changes when seeking a healthier diet.

Other examples of small changes resulting in healthier eating include:

– Replacing whole milk with skim or 2%, both in recipes and for drinking
– Snacking on sorbet or low fat frozen yogurt instead of premium ice cream
– Spraying pans with nonfat cooking spray instead of using butter or margarine
– Replacing high fat cuts of meat with leaner ones
– Eating more low fat fish and less red meat
– Using egg substitutes, the kind made from egg whites, in recipes, meals and baking

There are probably hundreds of other such tips, and they can add up to significant health improvements, whether your goal is to get fit, lose weight or improve your level of health. No matter who you are or what your current level of fitness, eating a healthier diet and losing weight may be easier than you think.

In the end, eating a healthy diet, improving your level of fitness, and managing your consumption of fat and cholesterol boils down to common sense. Depriving yourself of your favorite foods can be counterproductive to a long term dietary change. Deprivation leads inevitably to cravings, and that can start a vicious cycle of dieting and splurging.

It is best to think of healthy eating as a marathon rather than a sprint. The goal of any healthy eating program should be to make easy, lifelong changes in the way you shop, cook and dine. Only by making changes that you can follow for a lifetime will you truly be able to enjoy a healthy diet.
About the Author

Zaak O’Conan discovers and presents useful information on how to enhance and/or repair your life, body and relationships. You’ll find his other articles on eating better and other ways how to improve your life at http://your-health-center.com

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Here are some ways to lose weight fast.

1 – Take everything one step at a time. Begin simply by paying more attention to what you are eating, slowly cutting back on the bad foods and implementing more healthy foods into your diet. Once you have this under control, the next step is to add exercise to your plan. If you do not like exercising, take this one step at a time as well by implementing only 15 to 30 minutes at a time, at first.

2 – Choose foods and activities that you enjoy. If you do activities that you get enjoyment out of, you will find them to be much more successful than trying to exercise in ways that you do not enjoy. The same goes for foods that you implement in your diet: Choosing foods that you enjoy will help you enjoy your diet rather than craving bad foods.

3 – Build muscle. You lose calories based on your weight. Muscles, surprisingly enough, burn calories more quickly than fat does, pound for pound. Work out with weights to build muscle and lose weight, and then allow your extra lean muscle mass to burn more calories for you on a long term basis.

4 – Reduce your carbohydrates. Do not cut your carbohydrates out completely, because your body needs carbohydrates for energy. Cut out some of the white breads and pastas from your diet, though, to cut down on the carbohydrates that you consume. What carbs you do need to eat, you can replace with whole wheat and brown carbs for better health.

5 – Set realistic, measurable and attainable goals. Put deadlines on your goals, making them measurable. Make them realistic by choosing goals that you know you can attain. Set long term and short term goals and you will more readily achieve your expectations regarding quick and healthy weight loss.

6 – Give up the bad stuff. It may surprise you how unhealthy it is to eat candy, cookies, cakes and other sweets, and to drink soda and sugar laden drinks. Cut these bad goodies out either completely, or at least 80% of the time and the pounds will shrink away without you having to do much else to make the weight loss happen.

7 – Have a suitable breakfast. Most of your calories should be consumed early on in the day, and breakfast is no exception. Eat a nice breakfast to give your metabolism a good foundation to run from for the remainder of the day.

8 – Control portions by leaving something behind. Make sure your portions are correct based on the actual serving size of your food, and then make sure not to clear your plate completely. Exercising portion control will give you better control over what you put into your body for easy and achievable weight loss.

Implement these tips one by one and in no time at all you will begin to see a significant difference in your weight.

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