Healthy nutrition starts not only with your food choices, but also deciding on the proper approach to health. Healthy living is reliant on your lifestyle choices. You can eliminate and starve yourself, but you will not receive adequate nutrition and you will put your overall health at risk.
Poor diets increase your change of having a serious disease. Eating healthy reduces your chance of developing heart disease and cancer. Your brain function and physical performance improve with a healthy diet.
Nutrition Basics:
1. Choose Whole Unprocessed Foods
Whole foods are better for your overall health than processed foods. This includes eating more fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. For a healthy diet, you cannot eat pizza, ramen, and white bread on a regular basis due to their high sugar content, which increases inflammation in your body. Processed foods are empty calories that offer no significant nutritional value.
Whole foods are filled with essential nutrients for your health that include:
- Protein
- Fiber
- Healthy Fats
- Vitamins and Minerals
2. Eliminate Sugary Drinks
To have a healthy diet you need to say “NO” to sugary drinks. On average Americans drink around 45 gallons of soda yearly. Having a diet regularly consisting of sugary drinks increases your chances of developing diabetes and obesity. Both of these conditions increase liver damage, premature aging, and anxiety-related symptoms.
You can swap out your sugary drinks for unsweetened beverages or infused water. Avoid packaged juice and soda.
3. Have Healthy Food Available
When you are hungry you usually grab the food that is the closest to you in the kitchen. To improve your diet you need to keep healthy food easily accessible and visible in places in your home or workplace. This is possible through meal planning.
You can store healthy snacks in your pantry or at your office desk. Some great snack options are almonds, pistachios, and dried berries. You can also keep fruit in a basket on your kitchen counter; have small batches of cooked whole grains, fresh fruits, and veggies in your fridge or pantry. Having readily available food options for meals and snacks eliminates impulse eating and prevents regretful choices.
4. Smart Grocery Shopping
A healthy way to shop for groceries is only shopping along the perimeter at a grocery store. The healthiest food for you is found along the perimeter at a grocery store. The food you can find is fruit, vegetables, lean meats, fish, egg, and nuts.
Healthy foods decrease your cholesterol levels, reduce your blood pressure, decrease your body weight, and control your blood sugar.
Speaking of nuts, these are great nutritional foods. You can add them to your cereal or cooking recipes to increase protein content. Seeds also pack a great amount of nutrition as well. Some great sources of calcium, zinc, and magnesium include:
5. Eat More Protein
Protein provides the building blocks of every cell in your body as well as energy. The best source of daily protein can be found in fish. The Heart Association recommends eating fish twice a week. Fish has large amounts of healthy omega 3, which is the fat you need for your heart. Having significant amounts of protein in your diet prevents developing diseases and improves heart and brain health.
6. Healthy Lifestyle Tips
Some great lifestyle suggestions are using whole grain flour instead of white flour when you cook. This is a healthier alternative when cooking. Also, you can start eating on a smaller plate. When you eat on a bigger plate your mind thinks you have not eaten enough. Smaller plates make you feel fuller quicker and you avoid overeating as well.
You should also increase your daily water intake. A great start is to drink at least 2 liters of water every day or drinking half of your body mass in water. Along with water, you can also add more probiotics to your diet. Probiotics like Kefir improve your digestion system, immune health. A healthy gut helps ward of infections are usually found in:
- Yogurt
- Kimchi
- Apple Cider Vinegar
- Soft Cheeses
Visit Trusted Nutrition for an informative article that discusses more useful methods to improve your digestion system.
How to Sustain a Healthy Living?
The trick is moderation and understanding it is about the journey. You will learn new habits that work best with your lifestyle and you will make mistakes along the way. Do not deny yourself a few treats and foods you love. It is best to cut back on unhealthy foods that are high in sugar, fat, and sodium and focus on portion control. No food should be off-limits forever because eliminating certain foods will increase your cravings and decrease long term success. Having a diet consist of 90 percent whole foods and smaller portions is a great start to beginning your healthy lifestyle.