Beginners Guide To Healthy Eating

If you’re currently not eating a healthy diet, it can be difficult to start such a plan. However, healthy eating along with some exercise is very important for maintaining a good bodily function and goes a long way towards living a disease-free life. If you struggle with healthy eating, then you know that breaking unhealthy habits can be the most difficult part of the process. Therefore, if you truly want to live the best lifestyle possible, it is important to follow tips in order to start eating a healthier diet. 

Get rid of temptation.

A great first step when you want to start eating your way to a healthy lifestyle is to rid your home of all temptations that will distract you from following better eating habits. Ideally it would be a wise course to keep junk foods and beverages out of your house so as not be tempted to snack during the day. If you’re worried about getting hungry, keep healthy snacks like carrot sticks, yogurt, fresh fruit, or whole-wheat crackers on hand. If you find that you just cannot bear to toss out the sweets, try keeping something tiny on hand, peppermints or barley sugar. Eating a few, (emphasis on few) of these won’t ruin your diet but also will give you that little sugary fix you crave.

Learn how to listen to your body.

Another great step to healthy eating, when you’re first starting the process, is to take a few moments to learn what foods are the healthiest for you and how they work within the body. To begin healthy eating, we must start with a healthy mindset. Most people understand that fruits, vegetables, and lean meats and dairy products are good for you, but few people understand why. The key is learning about nutrients. When you understand how specific nutrients work and why you need them, it becomes more reasonable for you to make healthier choices for your body. Knowledge really is power!

Preparation is a major key when starting a new healthy diet. 

You must take into consideration your schedule for meals. If you often eat in a hurry at odd times of day, you are probably more inclined to grab fast food which will probably do more harm than good. So, plan ahead! Instead of grabbing a fast-food lunch on the go, take a bagged lunch to work, complete with a healthy wrap and some fresh fruit and vegetables. Remember not to forget your evening meal, a simple plan to have a meal ready before you get home would be perfect, but in our fast-paced lifestyle, sometimes this just can’t be done. One way to solve this problem is to plan out your evening meals for the week, on your days off. Perhaps just before you do your weekly shopping. Another warning: when going to the supermarket, do not go food shopping hungry because if you're anything like me, one or two chocolate bars won’t hurt! That becomes the first break in your healthy eating. 

Initially, many will find it very difficult to make those necessary changes to healthier eating. Along with the difficulty of change, you may not feel well for a short period of time. Usually this is normal as your body is adjusting to your new and improved lifestyle and is cleansing itself from the unhealthy toxins built up from poor eating habits. However, if this feeling continues or you are worried a visit to your doctor would be the correct thing to do.

Start with baby steps and give yourself some grace. 

Even if you only replace one soda a day with a glass of water, you are really improving your calorie intake. If you eat fast food every day for lunch, try replacing that half of the time with better quality foods. When you start by taking small steps you aren’t cutting out all the foods you love all at once. By taking your time to learn about your eating habits and slowly replacing them with better meals, by taking the time to learn and understand why you should be doing that and making the necessary changes in an orderly fashion, you will feel much better within yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally and well on the road to becoming as healthy as you can be.

6 tips to prolong your life by 13 years!

We hear it all the time…lose weight for your health. However, few people realize the extent to which this is critical to their physical well-being and ultimately their life expectancy.

In January 2003, the Journal of the American Medical Association featured a study finding that obesity appears to lessen life expectancy, especially among young adults. The study showed an obese 20-year-old white male, (5'10")178cm and weighing (288 pounds) 130kg was estimated to lose 13 years of his life as a result of obesity.

It is now well researched that a Western diet that leads to obesity may actually act to stimulate the growth of cancer cells. It is never too late to improve your health through healthy eating and adopting a healthier lifestyle. Here are simple steps to follow which can make an immediate improvement to your health and vitality.

1. Check to see if you are overweight or obese.

To find out your BMI you need to divide your weight (measured in kilos) by your height (measured in metres) squared. If the result is greater than 25, your health may be improved by losing weight. Having said that, use this a guide only. BMI measurements don’t account for all factors that account for your weight. In other words, if your BMI is at 26 or 27, there is no cause for alarm. Rather, it is a marker to indicate that you should evaluate your diet and activity level to optimize your overall health. 

2. Match your diet to your body’s requirements.

If you eat and drink more calories than your body requires you will put on weight. Learn to control calories and portion sizes, make recipes leaner, and eat infrequently from fast food restaurants. Also learn how to snack with healthful choices.

3. Color your diet with a large variety of colorful, cancer-fighting fruit and vegetables.

There are seven different color ranges of both fruit and vegetables and by choosing between 5 to 9 daily serves from a wide range of fruit and vegetables, we are extending our consumption of cancer (and other disease) fighting nutrients. The prettier your plate, the better.

4. Eat lean protein with every meal.

Protein provides a powerful signal to the brain providing a longer sense of fullness. The right source of protein is essential to controlling your hunger with fewer calories and necessary to maintain your lean muscle mass. Choices of protein should be smoothies with fruit; the white meat of chicken and turkey, seafood such as shrimp, prawns, scallops and lobster and ocean fish.

5. Rev up your metabolism with activity.

If you want to enjoy a lifetime of wellbeing, exercise is a key ingredient. Thirty minutes activity each day that takes as much effort as a brisk walk is recommended for adults. Children should be active for an hour each day.

6. Get support to ensure you develop a healthy eating plan and reach your goal weight.

A study, “Effects of Internet Behavioral Counseling on Weight Loss in Adults at Risk of Type 2 Diabetes” shows that participants who had the support of an accountability partner lost more weight than those who didn’t. The study concluded that the support of an accountability partner can significantly improve weight loss results.

Being overweight or obese has been identified next to smoking, as the most preventable major risk to developing cancer. Even small weight losses have been shown to have beneficial health effects including reversing some of the effects of chronic illness and stroke. So, it’s never too late to start and you can never be too young or too old to be concerned about your health and do something about achieving a healthier weight.

Can a diet rich in antioxidants reverse the progression of certain diseases?

An antioxidant is a chemical that reduces the rate of particular oxidation reactions in a specific context, where oxidation reactions are chemical reactions that involve the transfer of electrons from a substance to an oxidizing agent.

Antioxidants are particularly important in the context of organic chemistry and biology: all living cells contain complex systems of antioxidant chemicals and/or enzymes to prevent chemical damage to the cells' components by oxidation. The importance and complexity of antioxidants in biology is reflected in a medical literature of more than 142,000 scholarly articles.

A diet containing antioxidants from plants are required for good health since plants are an important source of organic antioxidant chemicals. Antioxidants are widely used as ingredients in dietary supplements that are used for health purposes such as preventing cancer and heart disease. However, while many studies have suggested benefits for antioxidant supplements, several large clinical trials have failed to clearly demonstrate a benefit for the formulations tested, and excess supplementation may be harmful.

Antioxidants are chemicals that reduce oxidative damage to cells and biochemicals. Researchers have found high correlation between oxidative damage and the occurrence of disease. For example, LDL oxidation is associated with cardiovascular disease. The process leading to atherogenesis, atherosclerosis, and cardiovascular disease is complex, involving multiple chemical pathways and networks, but the precursor is LDL oxidation by free radicals, resulting in inflammation and formation of plaques.

Research suggests that consumption of antioxidant-rich foods reduces damage to cells and biochemicals from free radicals. This may slow down, prevent, or even reverse certain diseases that result from cellular damage, and perhaps even slow down the natural aging process.

Since the discovery of vitamins, it has been recognized that antioxidants in the diet are essential for healthful lives. More recently, a large body of evidence has accumulated that suggests supplementation of the diet with various kinds of antioxidants can improve health and extend life.

Many nutraceutical and health food companies now sell forms of antioxidants as dietary supplements. These supplements may include specific antioxidant chemicals, like resveratrol (from grape seeds), combinations of antioxidants, like the "ACES" products that contain beta carotene (provitamin A), vitamin C, vitamin E and Selenium, or specialty herbs that are known to contain antioxidants such as green tea and jiaogulan.

How to Reduce Rheumatic Pain and Inflammatory Conditions through your Diet

Inflammation is a major component in most Rheumatic pain conditions or rheumatic diseases, therefore it is advisable to eat food that reduces inflammation and reduce the consumption of food that contains inflammatory agents. Here is some simple dietary advice that may help reduce rheumatic conditions:

THINGS YOU SHOULD EAT TO REDUCE RHEUMATISM

Fish, especially fat fish, fish oil, olive oil, walnut oil and raps oil should be a part of your diet. The fat in these types of food, omega-3-poly-unsaturated fat or omega-9-poly-unsaturated fat, reduces inflammation. However, if you add these types of oils to your diet, you should reduce the intake of other types of fat, so that you do not get too much fat.

You should also eat a lot of vegetables, since these also make a body chemistry that reduces inflammation.

THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT EAT TOO MUCH OF

Do not consume soy oil and corn oil, since these types of fat increase inflammation. Most food that you buy that is ready to eat from the factory or restaurant contain these types of fat. You should therefore reduce the consumption of food you do not cook yourself.

Bread, cereals and products made of corn or cereals also increase the inflammatory response, especially if they contain wheat. Wheat causes a special type of inflammation in the intestines called celiac disease in some individuals but may also trigger inflammation of non-celiac type. However, full-corn cereals and full-corn bread are valuable types of food, so you should not stop eating them. But if you eat bread or corn products at every meal, you should reduce your intake of these and eat more potatoes, beans and peas.

THINGS YOU SHOULD IDEALLY NOT EAT AT ALL 

You should absolutely not consume fat that has been chemically altered to give it another consistency. This type of fat has a very negative effect on your health and may have very potent inflammatory agents. Margarine, snacks, fast food and ready-made cakes or cookies often contain this kind of fat. Unfortunately, this type of fat is also often added to bread. A good idea could be to bake your bread yourself.