Healthy Eating Plan For a Longer Life
How to Customize Your Healthy Eating Plan
As you begin to eat your pre-packaged microwavable dinner, do
you sometimes wonder if you are getting all the necessary nutrients
from your meal? Are you wondering how you can improve your
eating habits, without increasing your expenses?
Food plays a vital role in our well-being. In fact, creating a healthy eating plan to suit your dietary needs is much easier than you think. With the following healthy eating tips, you can create a dietary plan to improve your eating habits.
Identify Your Food Groups
Food is categorized into five groups. In order to maintain a healthy diet, you should select your meal from a cross section of the groups.
Starchy Foods: Foods such as rice, pasta, bread, and potatoes provide energy for the body. Eat processed refined foods in moderation, and opt for whole grain and unrefined products, such as brown rice and whole grain breads instead.
Fruit and Vegetables: Fruits and vegetables should be incorporated into our daily diet, as they provide us with beneficial vitamins and minerals. Ensure you take in at least five portions a day in whatever form you can.
An antioxidant juice is more effective, not to mention the convenience, to stay on track with your healthy eating plan.
Meat, Fish, Eggs, and Beans: These foods are also important to your diet. Choose lean red meat and remove the skin from poultry before you prepare it. This will reduce the fat content of your foods. Eat fish at least twice a week. Eggs are good, but take it easy on the yolks. Choose from the wide variety of beans available to make your meals more appealing, and add protein to your diet.
Milk and Dairy Products: Another food group is milk and dairy products. Buy low fat, or skimmed milk, and choose cheese that has a reduced fat content. Dairy products contain calcium, which helps maintain healthy bones.
Fats and Sugars:You have to eat cautiously from this group. There are some foods with naturally occurring sugar that are good for you. Those with added sugar, such as soda and other processed foods, should be a reduced part of your diet.
Good fats are the polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, which digest better in the body. By mixing and matching food from the five food groups, there should be a noticeable improvement to your diet.
The Benefits of Healthy Eating
Eating a balanced diet helps us lose weight, and also improves our health. A balanced diet provides benefits such as:- Foods low in saturated fats are known to reduce blood cholesterol levels.
- Eating five fruit and vegetables can help lower the possibility of stroke, coronary heart diseases, and certain forms of cancer.
- By consistently eating the right amount of vegetables, fruits. and whole grains, blood sugar level associated with diabetes can be controlled.
- People who eat oily fish, such as mackerel, salmon and herring, twice a week, are less susceptible to the risk of heart diseases.
Fats and sugars, when eaten in excess, will cause you to take in more fat than you can burn as energy, and you will gain weight in the process. Obesity can lead to heart disease, certain cancers, and stroke.
Eating a balanced diet, as hard as it may seem, is worth it, as your life may depend on it. By committing to the above healthy eating tips, and changing your eating habits one step at a time, you will see a reduction in your weight, increased confidence, and a healthier, happier you.
The healthiest carbohydrates are:
- Fruits
- Vegetables
- Whole grains
- Legumes (beans, peas and lentils)
- Low-fat dairy products
The Best Fiber-rich foods
- Fruit
- Vegetables
- Legumes (beans, peas and lentils)
- Whole-wheat flour
- Wheat bran
- Nuts
Prepare your foods with the nutrition in mind:
- Raw is best; it maintains almost 100% of the nutrients.
- Steam, stir-fry; about 11% nutrition loss.
- Boiling; about 66% nutrition loss
- Microwaving; about 74-97% nutrition loss
Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 2003
Limit saturated and trans fats -- the Mayo Clinic says to get no more than 7 percent of your daily calories from saturated fat, and try to avoid trans fat completely.
Eat heart-healthy fish, like salmon (only wild salmon), at least twice a week. However, avoid fried fish and fish with high levels of mercury, such as tilefish, swordfish and king mackerel.
Wild salmon especially is very necessary to your healthy eating plan. Avoid farm-raised fish. The food they're fed can counter any healthy eating plan you adopt.
There are fabulous foods out there from around the world that will expand your horizons and your appetite: fruits, vegetables, spices, herbs, salsas, beans. Explore to your heart’s content, and expand your healthy eating plan.
Consuming a health-promising diet like the following is a gigantic step forward in preserving your health:
- Plant Based - 90% of calories derived from fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds.
- 10% of calories rom animal foods.
- Restrict consumption of dairy foods.
- Low fat - 20% or less of calories from fat.
- High fiber
- Reduce intake of artificial sweeteners, chemical additives and preservatives
- Water, water and more water.
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