Why Changing How I Eat is Important to Me
There are many good reasons why you may want to pay attention to what foods you are eating and in what quantities:
Are you feeling that the extra weight that you are carrying around is slowing you down? Are your knees and ankles sore or do you get short of breath when you try to exercise?
Are you afraid that your cholesterol and/or triglycerides are too high and that you could have a stroke or heart attack as a result?
Do you have a family history of Diabetes or has your doctor told you that you have pre-diabetes and you want to slow down or reverse the damage that higher than normal blood sugars are having on your body?
Do you have high blood pressure?
Are you concerned about how much money you are spending on prescription medication?
Once you have decided that you are ready to make changes in how you eat you will need to develop new eating habits and find tricks to help you not over eat.
You will need to be able to look at a food label and be able to tell if the food should go in the ok to eat all the time, ok to eat occasionally, ok to eat rarely or best avoided category. (Amazingly, things that you used to think tasted good and didn’t see how you could cut back on will no longer taste as good when you aren’t craving sugar or carbohydrates).
You will need to plan ahead so that you aren’t starving and needing something to eat right now.
You will need to have a basket of healthy snacks out in the open and ready to take with you when you go to work or go to play. (If someone else at your house has junk food around, ask them to hide it in the cupboard out of sight).
You will need to learn what kinds of food help you stay full longer and what kinds of foods leave you craving more food in a shorter period of time.
You can start by making small changes in how you eat.
Eat a good breakfast that contains protein, fat and carbohydrates with fiber in them. It helps prevents cravings later in the day.
Use a smaller plate. Serve up food at the counter and don’t bring extra food to the table.
Use olive oil (preferred) and canola oil rather than other vegetable oils when cooking or making salad dressings. Hydrogenated fats or partially hydrogenated fats should not be eaten.
Check food labels for added sugar and avoid those products – often low fat products will add sugar to improve the flavor. Better to have a little more healthy fat and less sugar! Avoid salad dressings, spaghetti sauce and apple sauce that have additional sugar added or that contain high fructose corn syrup.
Add more fiber to your diet by eating fresh fruits, fresh cooked vegetables, whole grain cereals (a good trick is to divide the grams of carbohydrate on the label by the grams of fiber – if the number you get is more than 7 there is too much sugar in your cereal.)
Have nutritious snacks in your car, in your desk and in a basket at home so that eating isn’t an emergency.
Good Snack Selections: 1 ounce (12) almonds or other nuts, plain yogurt with fresh fruit in it, celery with peanut butter on it(the no sugar added kind), a small bag of popcorn, 8 dill pickles, 5 Hershey’s Dark Chocolate kisses, a whole wheat English muffin half with Cheddar cheese melted on it, cheese sticks, fresh fruit, freeze dried fruit. (It is best to combine some fat or protein or fiber with low fiber carbohydrate snacks like pretzels or crackers.)
When you eat more calories then you need – whether those calories come from bread, pop or pizza, your body turns those calories into fat. Taking a short walk after you eat increases your muscles demand for calories and helps your body use the calories that you have eaten more efficiently.
And Remember, exercise is important because when you lose weight you lose both fat and muscle and muscle helps you burn more calories.
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