What You Eat Determines Your Health

Somewhere caught up in your busy lifestyle, between your Blackberry, day planner, laptop, your kids sports, piano lessons, traffic jams, and household duties, being healthy got deleted from your agenda.  Instead of planning healthy meals and taking the time to sit down to eat, you’re on the go, driving through fast food joints eating combo meals, forgetting to eat lean protein, fruits and vegetables.  Unfortunately, those quick and easy foods are loaded with carbohydrates, sodium, sugar and fats.   

You must make the effort to change your way of eating if you want to be healthy. Here are some tips for healthy eating:

1.            NEVER skip breakfast.  Eating in the morning will jump-start your metabolism, giving you energy to get you through the morning.  Protein and carbohydrate in the morning is a great breakfast.  Breakfast should be your largest meal for the day. 

2.         Reduce your intake of caffeinated and carbonated beverages.  Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant and is addictive.  Caffeine will make you hungry.  Carbonation prevents your body from absorbing nutrients.  Both caffeine and carbonation will cause your body to be in a more acidic state, something you do not want. 

3.         Drink at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day.  I personally drink distilled water and avoid tap water at all costs.  Filtered, purified, ionized and reverse osmosis water is also good.  Think of water as cleansing the toxins out of your body.  Water is water. It is not ice tea, coffee, or Crystal light. 

4.         Eat your fruits and vegetables daily.  A diet rich in dark green, orange, red and yellow choices are best.  Your body likes variety that comes in all colors.  Variety gives your body a greater amount of nutrients.  The most overlooked benefit of eating raw vegetables in your diet is the benefits of the enzyme activity in raw vegetables.  Eat at least 3 portions of raw vegetables a day. 

5.         Eat whole-grain products.  Your best sources are whole-grain breads, cereals, rice and pasta.  Stay away from enriched and white flour products.  Read the label.  Processed foods are not whole-grains.  All the healthy nutrients have been stripped away from processed foods.  Try to greatly reduce your intake of processed foods.

6.         Cut the “bad” (saturated) fats and increase the “good” (unsaturated) fats.  The bad fats include coconut and palm oil, butter, full-fat dairy products and animal fat.  Eat the good fats that include olive, canola and corn oils.  Read the label.  Anything fat that is solid at room temperature is best to avoid. 

7.         Drink alcohol in moderation, if at all.  Alcohol has wasted calories and if consumed on a regular basis, adds unwanted pounds.  Alcohol also increases your blood sugar levels which is unhealthy for your metabolism. 

Try and make one change a week.  Or continue to work on one of these tips until it becomes a part of your healthy lifestyle.  Healthy eating takes some planning.  It’s very difficult to eat healthy on the fly.  Spend some time and plan your meals.  It’s well worth the rewards.  You are what you eat.  If you are eating unhealthy, don’t expect to stay healthy for long.  It’s easier to stay healthy than to try to get healthy once you are sick. 

With only a few simple changes, you can make a big difference in your daily eating habits.  Use your mind – if you think healthy, you will eat healthy.  Think of foods as fuel for your body.  Eating healthy foods will produce a healthy body.