Want a healthy diet that doesn’t taste boring? Some knowledge on Healthy Eating!
In the name of health, fed up with the tasteless food? Learn how to plan to create and maintain a ‘Tasty and Healthy Diet’! Sharing with you, some useful suggestions for tasty but healthy eating!
What is ‘Healthy eating’? Is it staying unrealistically thin, or depriving yourself of the foods you love? Or is it about looking into strict nutrition philosophies, calculating the calories for every bite you take? No. Rather, it’s about feeling great, having more energy, stabilizing your mood, and keeping yourself as healthy as possible. With some knowledge on some simple basic nutrition facts, you can expand your range of healthy food choices and learn how to plan ahead to create and maintain a tasty and healthy diet.
To set yourself up for success, think about changing to a healthy diet in several small, manageable steps rather than one big, drastic shift. If you approach the changes gradually and with commitment, you will get into a healthy diet sooner than you think.
A dietitian says, “Think of your diet in terms of color, variety, and freshness, rather than calculating the calories. This way, it should be easier to make healthy choices. Focus on finding foods you love and easy recipes that incorporate a few fresh ingredients. Gradually, your diet will become healthier and more delicious. You don’t have to be perfect, and you don’t have to completely eliminate foods you enjoy to have a healthy diet. The only long-term goal is to feel good, have more energy, and reduce the risk of cancer and disease”. Sounds good, right?
Trying to make your diet healthy overnight isn’t realistic or smart. Changing everything at once usually leads to cheating or giving up on your new eating plan. Make small steps, like adding a salad (full of different coloured vegetables) to your diet once a day or including some millets in your cooking. As your small changes become a habit, you can continue to add more healthy choices to your diet. Soon, I will share some interesting info on “Mini Habits”.
The goal of healthy eating is to develop a diet that you can maintain for life, not just a few weeks or months, or until you’ve hit your ideal weight. Do you agree with this?
So, do not plan to change your entire eating habits. Doctors say, we all need a balance of carbohydrates, protein, fat, fiber, vitamins, and minerals to sustain a healthy body. More specifically, it means eating far less of the unhealthy stuff (refined sugar, saturated fat, for example) and more of the healthy (such as fresh fruit and vegetables). But it doesn’t mean eliminating the foods you love. When you ban certain foods or food groups, it is natural to want those foods more and then feel like a failure if you give in to temptation. Moderation is the key!.
It’s not just what you eat, how you eat also matters! Healthy eating is about how you think about food, more than just the food on your plate. It is important to slow down and think about food as nourishment rather than just something to gulp down in between meetings or on the way to pick up the kids. In particular, morning breakfast is just something we swallow while running to catch the bus to work. This we see in many of our homes, right? Inculcate the habit of eating with others whenever possible. Eating with other people has numerous social and emotional benefits, particularly for children, and allows you to model healthy eating habits. Eating in front of the TV or computer often leads to mindless overeating.
Chew your food slowly, so that your brain recognises what you are eating! It actually takes a few minutes for your brain to tell your body that it has had enough food. In the meantime, we eat some more food, that too if it’s tasty, we even overeat! Then, after some time, we will feel our stomach is very full, not even be able to walk! Have you noticed this? We tend to rush through our meals, forgetting to actually taste the flavors and feel the textures of our food. Enjoy mealtimes and have the joy of eating. It is good to ask yourself if you are really hungry. Listen to your body. During a meal, stop eating before you feel full.
Our elders have advised us to be mindful of this: Half stomach food, 25% water, and 25% of your stomach empty!
A healthy breakfast can jumpstart your metabolism, and eating small, healthy meals throughout the day (rather than the standard three large meals) keeps your energy up and your metabolism going. Do NOT skip breakfast. Eat breakfast, and eat smaller meals throughout the day. Make it a habit to eat dinner earlier in the day and then fast for 12-14 hours until breakfast the next morning. In earlier days, people used to have their supper around sunset! Studies suggest that this simple dietary adjustment—eating only when you’re most active and giving your digestive system a long break each day—may help to regulate weight and thus a healthy body.
I read in an article about the importance of including protein and calcium in our diet: Protein gives us the energy to keep going. A lack of protein in our diet can slow growth, reduce muscle mass, lower immunity, and weaken the heart and respiratory system. Calcium is one of the key nutrients that our body needs in order to stay strong and healthy. It is an essential building block for lifelong bone health in both men and women, as well as many other important functions.
One of my friends, who is a naturopathy doctor says, fill up on colorful fruits and vegetables, eat more healthy carbs and whole grains, enjoy healthy fats & avoid unhealthy fats and limit sugar & salt for maintaining a healthy eating!
Finally, think of water and exercise as food groups in your diet, dietary expert says:
Water helps flush our systems of waste products and toxins. Less intake of water will cause tiredness, low energy, and headaches. This you yourself might have experienced, right.
Find some activity that you like to do like walking, exercise, gym workout, yoga or gardening and add it to your day. As you know, the benefits of regular exercise are abundant, and that may even motivate you to make healthy food choices a habit. Exercise and healthy food goes hand in hand!
Hope this was useful for planning your ‘Healthy Eating’ and slowly tune yourself towards this to live healthy!.
At www.spavai.com, you’ll find a collection of easy, wholesome recipes featuring mostly the millet varieties and also wheat, and rice items. Whether you’re looking to add more nutrition to your daily meals or explore healthy alternatives, these recipes are simple, flavorful, and perfect for everyday cooking. Discover how healthy eating can be both enjoyable and satisfying!
Comments (2)
Pramod Kumar Yadav
Eat your fruits instead of drinking them
Studies have repeatedly linkedTrusted Source eating fruit to a reduced risk of several health conditions, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancerTrusted Source.
Because fruits contain fiber and various plant compounds, their natural sugars are generally digested very slowly and don’t cause major spikes in blood sugar levels. However, the same doesn’t apply to fruit juices.
Many fruit juices aren’t even made from real fruit but rather concentrate and sugar. Some varieties may contain as much sugar as a sugary soft drink.
Even real fruit juices lack the fiber and chewing resistance of whole fruits. This makes fruit juice much more likely to spike your blood sugar levels, leading you to consume too much in a single sitting.
Choose whole-grain bread instead of refined
Refined grains have been associated with many health concerns. Whole grains, on the other hand, have been linked to a variety of health benefits, including a reduced risk of type 2 diabetesTrusted Source, heart diseaseTrusted Source, and cancerTrusted Source.
Whole grains are also a good source of:
fiber
B vitamins
zinc
iron
magnesium
manganese
Just make sure to read the label to ensure that your bread is made with whole grains only, not a mixture of whole and refined grains. It’s also preferable that the bread contains whole seeds or grains.
Pramod Kumar Yadav
Water intake, supplements, and other lifestyle changes
Drink enough water
Drinking enough water is important for your health.
Many studies have shownTrusted Source that drinking water can increase weight loss and promote weight maintenanceTrusted Source. It may even slightly increaseTrusted Source the number of calories you burn daily.
Studies also showTrusted Source that drinking water before meals can reduce your appetite and food intake during the following meal.
That said, the most important thing is to drink water instead of other beverages. This may drastically reduceTrusted Source your intake of sugar and calories.
Take omega-3 and vitamin D supplements
Approximately 1 billion peopleTrusted Source around the globe are deficient in vitamin D.
Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that’s very importantTrusted Source for bone health and the proper functioningTrusted Source of your immune system. In fact, every cell in your body has a receptor for vitamin D, indicating its importance.
Vitamin D is found in very few foods, but fatty seafood generally contains the highest amounts.
Omega-3 fatty acids are another commonly lacking nutrient that’s found in fatty seafood. These have many important bodily roles, includingTrusted Source reducing inflammation, maintaining heart health, and promoting proper brain function.
If you don’t eat fatty seafood regularly, you should consider taking a supplement. Omega-3s and vitamin D can often be found together in many supplements.
Become more active
Good nutrition and exercise often go hand in hand. Exercise has been shown to improve your mood, as well as decrease feelings of depressionTrusted Source, anxietyTrusted Source, and stressTrusted Source.
These are the exact feelings that are most likely to contribute to emotionalTrusted Source and binge eatingTrusted Source.
Aside from strengthening your muscles and bones, exercise may help you:
lose weight
increase your energy levelsTrusted Source
reduce your risk of chronic diseasesTrusted Source
improve your sleepTrusted Source
Aim to do about 30 minutes of moderate to high intensity exercise each day, or take the stairs and take short walks whenever possible.
Get a good night’s sleep
The importance of good sleep can’t be overstated.
Sleep deprivation disruptsTrusted Source appetite regulation, often leading to increased appetite. This can result in increased calorie intake and weight gain.
In fact, people who sleep too little tend to weighTrusted Source significantly more than those who get enough sleep.
Being sleep-deprived also negatively affectsTrusted Source concentration, productivity, athletic performance, glucose metabolism, and immune function.
Moreover, it increases your risk of several diseases, including inflammatory conditionsTrusted Source and heart diseaseTrusted Source.
That’s why it’s important to try to get adequate amounts of good-quality sleep, preferably in one bout.