Eating Healthy

Health Minded Shopping

Shopping for the Home 

Keep the cupboards bare or stocked with good healthy foods and snack alternatives and control or slowly eliminate unhealthy snacks.  

What you buy and have on hand is what you are going to eat.  

·    Chose alternative snacks like fruit that you do not have to prepare, especially apples and crunchy vegetables like bay cut carrots and celery sticks.   

·    Be a smart shopper. Stay away from high calorie, fat, sugar foods (read the labels).  

·    Cut down on the ABCs -- alcohol, bread, and complex carbohydrates.   

·          Check the labels of everything you buy, and try to substitute your regular foods with less fat for lower calorie foods.    

·          Learn how to read and compare nutrition label information.  

·          Avoid common mistakes made by people experimenting with healthier foods, such as overeating low fat items as many calories as the full-fat varieties.  

·          Look at things like fiber, protein and sugar content to help you understand what you’re feeding your body.  You'll feel good by trying to take better care of your body.  

·           Children should go food shopping with parents to check labels and choose from the variety of healthy foods available.  

·           Choose foods whose labels say fat-free, low, light or reduced to describe calories or fat.  

The Fat Difference  

The Three Types of Fat 

Polyunsaturated Fat: Found mostly in vegetables products such as avocados, vegetable oil, corn oil, etc. These fats are the best ones for you to eat. If eaten in moderation, they will give you energy to perform. Try to eat mostly polyunsaturated fats in your diet instead of saturated and monounsaturated. 

Saturated Fat: Found mostly in animal products (red meat, whole milk, cheese, etc.) and cocoa butter, and palm oil. These fats should be avoided. 

Monounsaturated Fat: This type of fat is found in both animal and vegetable products and can be as bad for you as saturated fat if you don't burn it off during exercise. Try to avoid this type as much as possible. 

Other Healthy Foods
Garlic, chives and spring onions are thought to promote good circulation.  

Nuts and Seeds
Rich in omega-3 essential fatty acids and high in Vitamin E. Unsalted nuts,
like walnuts, cashew, brazil nuts and almonds, and seeds like sunflower, flaxseeds, poppy seeds and pumpkin seeds.  

Pulses and Grains
Including lentils, chick peas (garbanzo beans), brown rice, whole wheat bread,
wheat germ, whole wheat cereals, pasta, couscous, bulgar, noodles.  

Calcium
Include calcium-rich foods like low-fat cheeses, tofu, almonds, low-fat milk and yogurt, brazil nuts, seeds, chickpeas, broccoli, leafy green vegetables and bread.  

Oily Fish
Like salmon, mackerel, sardines, herring, tuna and trout are rich in omega-3 essential fatty acids and high in Vitamin E.    

More About dieting . . .  

Your body has a fixed weight, what obesity researchers call a "set point," a weight to which it will keep trying to return. 

A landmark study found that if you loose weight, your metabolism slows down and becomes more efficient, burning fewer calories to do the same work -- your body will do everything it can to gain the weight back! 

Similarly, if you gain weight, your metabolism speeds up. In this way your body uses its own natural weight control system to keep your weight at its set point. 

Clearly your body doesn’t keep you at one weight all your adult life, because your body adjusts its fat thermostat, the "set point", depending on your age, food intake and amount of physical activity. Adjustments are slow, however, and it seems to be a great deal easier to move the body's set point up than to move it down.

Apparently higher levels of fat reduce the body's sensitivity to the leptin hormone that governs how efficiently we burn fat. That is why you can gain weight, despite your set point resisting the gain -- your body still issues leptin alarm calls to speed metabolism, but your brain doesn't respond with as much sensitivity as it used to. Thus the heavier you get, the less effective your weight control system becomes. 

Now that we are beginning to understand the biology of weight gain, we must accept the hard fact that we cannot beat the requirements of the two diet laws. The real trick is not to give up. Eat less and exercise more, and keep at it. In one year, or two, or three, your body will readjust its set point to reflect the new reality you have established by your decision and dedication for health.