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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Are you interested in losing weight? If you are, you may have been told to create your own weight loss plan. Weight loss plans, which serve as guides and motivation for many individuals, have been known to help many achieve their weight loss goals. Although it is more than possible for you to join a local weight loss program or an online weight loss program and have a weight loss plan given to you, many take comfort in creating their own, customizable weight loss plans.

If this is your first time attempting to create a weight loss plan for yourself, you may be unsure as to how you should proceed. If that is the case, you will want to continue reading on. Below, a few of the many components of a weight loss plan are outlined for your convenience.

Perhaps, the most important component of a weight loss plan is that of healthy eating. Healthy eating is a vital component of losing weight. When it comes to healthy eating, you dont necessarily need to cut junk foods, like chocolate, completely out of your diet, yet you should limit your intake. If you find that you have a problem cutting junk food or sweets from your diet, you may want to create an eating schedule for yourself. That eating schedule could include days or meals where you allow yourself to have a treat. In a way, you can consider that time as a reward for doing so well.

In addition to making a generalized schedule for yourself, you may also want to create a more detailed eating schedule. To get started, you may want to research healthy recipes online or buy a healthy eating cookbook. Once you have a collection of healthy foods to make, you can better plan out all of your meals. To help prevent you from becoming bored with eating the same foods over and over again, you may want to experiment with different healthy foods and healthy recipes. The best way to keep yourself focused and on task is to spice, up your weight loss plan as much as possible.

Aside from eating healthy, another important component of losing weight is regular exercise. That is why your weight loss plan should include exercise. Similar to the healthy eating schedule outlined above, you may want to create an exercise schedule for yourself. When incorporating exercise into your workout plan, you have a number of different options. For instance, you can get a membership at one of your local gyms, buy workout DVDs to use at home, buy other exercise equipment, like a treadmill or a stair climber, or exercise for free with walking.

If you do decide to create your own exercise plan, there is something that you may be missing out on. Should you join an online weight loss program or a local weight loss program, you would likely be a part of a larger group; a group that offers support to each other. When creating your own weight loss plan, you may not necessarily have that same support. For that reason, you may want to think about seeing if you have any friends, family members, neighbors, or coworkers who would like to exercise with you. Having a workout partner may help give you the support that you need, as well as serve as a little bit of motivation for you.
When creating a weight loss plan for you, you are advised to put your plan in writing. You may even want to turn to your computer, as many computers have nice template programs that you can use to make easy to read schedules or charts. Having your weight loss plan in writing, namely the exercises that you wish to do and the foods that you wish to eat and when, may help to motivate you with losing weight. What you may want to do is post your schedules in a well-seen spot, like on your refrigerator.

In short, weight loss plans serve as guides, as well as motivation. The above mentioned points are ones that you should keep in mind, when making a weight loss plan for yourself.

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How many times have you looked in the mirror and said to yourself, “I need to lose weight?” Is this a trick question? Seriously, how many minutes are there in a day? That’s probably how many times you have said these words to yourself just yesterday as a matter of fact.

Those little words, “I need to lose weight” can bring on a stress level and intimidation that is hard to get around and hard to understand. We all know for a fact that if we want to lose weight that there is no magic pill that we can take when we go to bed and we will be thin and beautiful when we wake up.

Too bad there isn’t but we all know that to lose the weight we need to lose will take some hard work on our parts and we are not sure we can sustain that level of commitment for the long haul. Maintaining motivation is difficult and most human beings are inherently lazy. I’m not dissin’ anybody, I am the same way, and I will be the first to admit it.

What we do not realize is that with just a few little adjustments we can change our lives and our weight with very little effort. If you follow a few simple suggestions and guidelines then you will be on your way to having a new body to show off to all of your friends and family.

The first thing is to eat sensibly. Go to your kitchen right now and throw out all the junk food. This may be the hardest thing you have done in a long time but it needs to be done. Ok, I will let you save one item for your first weeks reward. Pick one and put it away.

Next, when you go shopping make a list beforehand and stick to it. Start by buying fresh foods, fruits, and vegetables. Or go to a local farmer’s market on Saturday morning to get some really fresh stuff from local growers. You might have to spend a little more but the quality is well worth it.

If you really do not know where to start find a cookbook and choose several recipes that you think may be good and good for you. Make your fresh food list from the recipes. Buy only what you need for the recipes, if you want to be successful then make sure you have all the ingredients you need for the dish you want to make. I find that nothing is more frustrating than starting to make something and then finding out that I don’t have all the ingredients.

Most importantly here, drink plenty of water. Try this, put a cup (or more to taste) of fresh or frozen berries into a gallon jug and fill it with water. Let the berries infuse their juices for a couple of hours and then strain the berries off through a fine mesh strainer lined with cheesecloth to catch the pulp and seeds. This will help with the mundaneness of water and add some vitamins and minerals, too. If you feel the need to sweeten it then do so with an artificial sweetener to keep the calorie count down. Following these suggestions will change your statement from, “I need to lose weight” to “I need to go buy some new, smaller clothes”.

Tags: Cookbook, Fresh Food, Fresh Foods, Fruits And Vegetables, Hardest Thing, Human Beings, Intimidation, Junk food;, Long Haul, Long Time, Losing Weight, Magic Pill, Maintaining Motivation, Matter Of Fact, Mirror, Recipes, S Market, Saturday Morning, Simple Suggestions, Stress Level, Trick Question, Vitamins And Minerals —

Ok, so, today is the day you start losing weight. You did your research and figured out how to lose weight naturally and you are really motivated to start putting what you learned into practice. Everything is lined up and ready all you have to do now is just pull the trigger and get busy.

It isn’t going to be easy and it isn’t going to happen overnight but just like with anything else worth having, it will be quite the journey with a wonderful prize when all is said and done. That prize? A brand new fit and trim you. Just imagine all the new clothes you will be able to buy and how good you will look. You will probably kick yourself that you didn’t do this a lot sooner.

When you learned how to lose weight naturally one of the first things you learned was you were going to need to make some lifestyle changes. No more pop or overly processed foods. You are going to have to learn how to cook for yourself with all natural ingredients and drink a lot of water. Half of your body weight in ounces of water everyday.

Did you go out and buy a good cookbook? You should, a cookbook could give you some great ideas in case you get bored with what you are eating anytime along the way. Just remember, cookbooks are mainly suggestions and if the recipes call for ingredients that are not a part of your overall diet plan then just omit them or substitute something else that you can have. For instance, instead of real eggs, use an egg substitute.

You probably also learned to track everything that goes in your mouth and to write it down in a journal. This is the easiest way to see where you can make the changes you need to make and where you trouble spots are in your day. You need to create a calorie deficit throughout the week in order to lose the weight you want. You need to take in less or burn off 3500 calories in one week to lose one pound of fat.

Journal your activity as well to see improvements in strengthening, the length of your work outs, and the intensity of your work outs. You can easily measure the intensity of your work outs by following this rule: During an easy work out you should be able to carry on a conversation without being short of breath; a moderate work out lets you carry on a conversation while being short of breath; and an intense work out will not let you carry on a conversation at all.

Every six weeks or so you should redo your plan if things are getting boring or if you have hit a plateau. One small change could get you right back on track so just keep plugging away at how to lose weight naturally and soon you will be right where you want to be.

Tags: Calorie Deficit, Calories, Clothes, Cookbook, Cookbooks, Diet Plan, Eating Habits, Egg Substitute, Eggs, Healthy Diet, Improvements, Intensity, Journey, Lifestyle, Losing Weight, Lot Of Water, Natural Ingredients, New Fit, Recipes, Today Is The Day, Trouble Spots, Work Outs —