Healthy Diet Changes
by Julie Fletcher
Are you trying to lose weight after the holidays? I know I am. I thought it was going to be a lot easier than it has been. Then I realized, it took more than just a few days to put it on, why do I expect it to only take a short time to come off? Silly me. It is going to dedication and some serious resolution to stick with this one.
A few changes to the diet here have been:
More vegetables.
We have always been vegetable fans, but we have really tried to up our intake with different types. An interesting way to add more and different types of vegetables into your diet is to work your way through the produce section in your grocery store each time you visit. Buy one or two new items, then find a recipe on the internet or in your cookbooks to try. You could also choose a country to try out recipes and vegetables from, find the recipes, then shop around that list. You will find many interesting ways to prepare a rainbow of vegetables.
Less soda, more natural beverages.
Carbonated, syrupy beverages are not only bad for your teeth, they can actually contribute to dehydration, albeit a small amount. High sugar and sodium content, plus chemicals most of us cannot pronounce. Substitute your normal soda, even diet soda, with green tea, black tea, or pure water. You can purchase green tea in powder form, much like the flavored ‘shots’ available from Crystal Light and other companies. Powdered green tea is very beneficial, as you are ingesting the whole leaf and gaining all of the nutritional value of the plant.
Wine.
If you do not like the taste of wine, you can gain many of the same health benefits from drinking dark colored grape juice. Wine and dark colored grape juice has health benefits, mainly for the heart. As a woman, my heart health is very important and it should be to other women. Heart disease is a killer, a silent killer of women all over the world. Taking steps to ensure your heart health can increase your enjoyment of life, if only by allowing you to live longer!
What changes have you made? What changes do you plan to make?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 9:47 am and is filed under Nutrition, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 9th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I have had heart disease for atleast ten years as far as I know. I had a heart attack at age 38. and that was ten years ago. so far I have had 4 heart attacks.I had a triple bypass when I was 40 and I have 5 cardiac stent implants. Heart disease was very prominant in my family and my mom died when she was 51. still I smoked and ate a lot of junk food. I really didn’t know the dangers of what I was doing until I had the heart attack.
I no longer smoke, eat red meat,I drink 1 glass of red wine,I eat alot of vegtables and get more exercise. I have lost 50 pounds and am doing much better.
I’m spending alot of time promoting Awareness. I have a website if anyone is interested.
http://www.living-with-heart-disease.com
Joey
January 9th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
That is great to hear that you are doing better, Joe. Thank you for sharing!
January 9th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
I’m a health advocate. I’ll continue what I’m doing.
Whole Foods
Add whole foods (close to the natural source as possible.) into your daily lifestyle.
Juice & Smoothies
Another way to add more fruits and vegetables into your diet is to juice or make smoothies.
Re: Wine
Similar benefits can especially be achieved by eating red grapes (skins.) Select grapes with seeds. The seeds are actually good for you and loaded with nutrients. Many of your fruits and vegetables are “heart healthy.”
Exercise
Make sure this is included into your weekly routine. You don’t have to go to a gym to get a good workout.
Stress
Healthy diet and exercise can actually lower your stress levels. Think of ways that you can avoid stress.
January 9th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Thank you, Opal, great tips! I’ll be paying attention to you…sometimes I slip in my resolve and eat bad things.
January 20th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
I’ve started taking omega-3 and cod liver oil capsules, with the aim of increasing my DHA intake. It winds up being cheaper than buying a lot of fish, although eventually I would like to use a DHA supplement that doesn’t use any sort of fish at all. (DHA also comes from seaweed, so it is possible to source it that way.)
I would like to cut grains and beans mostly out of my diet by the end of the year. I’ve been reading interesting things about plant defenses and how seeds have adapted to cause health problems for animals that eat them. One defense is something called phytic acid, which a friend who has taken AP chemistry tells me is a fantastic chelating agent. This means it makes minerals less available to the body and in fact takes them out of the body. (Think “chelating therapy for lead poisoning.” It works for other minerals too.) Over the years I’ve read things about how diabetes may be linked to mineral deficiency, particularly chromium and magnesium, and when I recently read about phytic acid, the lightbulb went on. You can remove most of it by preparing grains and beans correctly, but I thought, Why am I bothering with this to begin with, because if I can’t eat it raw or near-raw, is it really that sustainable? Not to mention the carb count.
I need more vegetables in my diet. I’m working on that.
I also need more healthy fats, which has to do with the omega-3 supplementation.
I *also* need exercise but that’s going to be harder to implement, simply because I have never liked exercise. Walking is OK, but we get cold winters here and I have a three-year-old and no regular access to a car, so… gotta think of something else.