The foods you eat have big effects on your health and quality of life. Although eating healthy can be fairly simple, the rise in popular “diets” and dieting trends has caused confusion. If you eat or drink more than your body needs, you’ll put on weight because the energy you do not use is stored as fat. If you eat and drink too little, you’ll lose weight. You should also eat a wide range of foods to make sure you’re getting a balanced diet and your body is receiving all the nutrients it needs. It’s recommended that men have around 2,500 calories a day (10,500 kilojoules). Women should have around 2,000 calories a day (8,400 kilojoules).
Replace unhealthy habits
Replace unhealthy habits with new, healthy ones. For example, in reflecting upon your eating habits, you may realize that you eat too fast when you eat alone. Another strategy is to put your fork down between bites. Also, minimize distractions, such as watching the news while you eat. Such distractions keep you from paying attention to how quickly and how much you’re eating.
- Eat more slowly. If you eat too quickly, you may “clean your plate” instead of paying attention to whether your hunger is satisfied.
- Eat only when you’re truly hungry instead of when you are tired, anxious, or feeling an emotion besides hunger.
- Plan meals ahead of time to ensure that you eat a healthy well-balanced meal.
Common eating habits that can lead to weight gain are:
- Eating too fast
- Always cleaning your plate
- Eating when not hungry
- Eating while standing up (may lead to eating mindlessly or too quickly)
- Always eating dessert
- Skipping meals (or maybe just breakfast)
Do’s
Try to eat more unprocessed foods
Use fresh ingredients like vegetables, eggs, milk, lean meat etc to prepare meals in and try to avoid consumption of processed food as far as possible. Processed food items are loaded with preservatives, added chemical substances, sweeteners, fats and artificial colours, which should be avoided to maintain good health. Include lots of fresh fruits, nuts and legumes in daily diet instead of fruit juices, instant noodles or frozen food items.
Include whole grains in your diet
Whole grains have a lesser glycemic index which makes them a healthy food option. Whole grains keep full for long hours while providing with energy to concentrate at work throughout the day. When it comes to taste, the flavour and nuttiness of whole grains are superior to refined ones. So, prefer wholegrain bread, pasta or brown rice when choosing food items.
Choose lower-fat options
These include white-meat chicken and turkey (without the skin) and reduced-fat dairy products. If you eat a lot of red meat, look for the lowest-fat options, such as ground round or sirloin, sirloin steaks, reduced-fat lunch meat, reduced-fat bacon and ham. I also recommend soy versions of traditional meat – they taste great and are much lower in fat.
Make food items at home
Making them at home is going to give you a good workout the process of grinding crushing and skillfully making the items really requires a lot of calorie burn so the ball is in your court if you think about workouts.
Monitor your serving sizes
Monitoring the amount of what we eat is important as it helps you to limit your intake of unhealthy food. The amounts of food eat for dinner is lesser than that of your lunch. Half meal consists of salad or vegetables and the other half should contain lean proteins and whole grain carbs in equal amounts.
Watch your portion sizes
An appropriate serving of meat is 3-5 ounces – not the 12-ounce prime rib found on restaurant menus. Choose a 3-ounce serving if you weigh less than 150 pounds or a 5-ounce serving if you weigh more than 150 pounds. This equates to roughly the size of one or two decks of cards.
Follow Grand-Mother’s recipe
All the exclusive ingredients that are used in food during special occasions have special nutritional value. Most of the sweets are made by adding ghee in it. So the diabetic people don’t need to completely stay away from it, they can enjoy a small portion for satisfying the taste buds. Same applies to namkeen items. There is no harm in having these. Don’t count calories in terms of fats, carbohydrates and proteins. Eat nuts and dry fruits. They are going to help you stay strong during the winters.
Don’ts
Don’t Eat if You’re Not Hungry
A lot of people overeat simply because the food is readily available. So get rid of the visual cues! Dish the correct portions onto your plate and leave the rest of the food in the kitchen. Do the same with your snacks. Buy “sometimes” items such as chips and sweets in small packs or individual servings.
Skip breakfast
Breakfast is considered to be the most significant meal of the day. Make it a habit to have breakfast every day as skipping this meal can adversely affect your health by causing obesity, irritated mood, and headaches while increasing your risks of getting hypoglycaemia.
Give up your entire diet plan for a small mistake
If you happen to make only one dieting mistake, don’t feel disappointed and start munching on unhealthy or junk food. Just remember that eating large amounts of unhealthy food can nullify all the effects of healthy eating you have experienced so far.
Avoid ready-made items
Because you never know how they are fried or in which ghee or oil they are made. We don’t reuse the oil for frying at home. But outside items don’t come with that guarantee. And it is very harmful to our health.
Eat excessively saturated fat
Try to minimise your intake of food containing saturated fats as this can lead to the accumulation of weight in different parts of your body. Instead of consuming huge amount of milk, cheese, butter, bacon and meat etc. Switch to low-fat substitutes like white-meat chicken, reduced-fat dairy products, soy versions of traditional meat etc.
Don’t have chocolates
Forgetting the laddoos and Barfi, we have started this chocolate exchange trend. But it is the worst thing you can feed your body under the name of gifts. Our traditional sweets stand on the top in terms of health benefits
