Friday, January 21, 2011

Healty Eating Tips

Healthy eating tips are available from one's doctor in almost every magazine, newspaper articles and even television programs that run incessantly on cable stations. Medical experts are telling us that healthy eating can add five years or more to our life span. But not only does eating the right food add to our life span, but it also can reduce the amount of medical costs that we can accrue over our lifetime. Because there are so many foods out there that can actually hurt us, we need to be aware of their potential dangers and concentrate on eating the foods that are good for our bodies. There are so many healthy eating tips that are available but here are a few that are ultra important.

To begin, the American restaurant industry has been a prime culprit in conditioning us to eat much larger portions that we are supposed to be consuming. Steak that is supposed to be the size of a credit card is the size of a spare tire and the baked potato that should look more like the size of a jumbo egg looks like an NFL football. And the advent of the all you can eat smorgasbord is a killer when it comes to waistlines. The food piled on those plates look like a miniature Mt. Everest! Study the portion sizes of the average serving on the cans and boxes that are bought in the store. Talk about small! But it's what Americans have gotten used to over the past fifty years or so and the first page of any healthy eating tips guide says that needs to change.

In fact, almost all nutritional experts are in favor of very small but more frequent meals during the day to rev up the body's metabolism. The three meals of the day that are large and loaded with calories are being shunned by nutritionists in favor of five or six tiny meals a day that respond to the body's hunger cycle. Extremely small meals that are meant to quiet hunger are the preferred eating model of many professionals who espouse healthy eating tips. The advice is to eat slowly, and eat only till the hunger subsides. This way of eating actually speeds up the fuel burning capacity of the human body, burning more calories and burning away excess fat. People who eat fast, scarfing down their food like vultures are often overweight because they are not allowing the small amount of food needed to quiet their hunger to do its job.

The time tested advice of more vegetables, grains and fruit still holds true today. Try as much as possible to stay away from processed foods if possible. They are less expensive in today's grocery world, but they are the foods that are loaded with salt and other added ingredients that are harmful to the human body. As much as possible, buy the heavy dark breads that are made from natural grains so look for stamps on the packaging that says 100% whole grain. Healthy eating tips all agree: avoid the white breads that produce lots of sugar in the body after being ingested. And because canned vegetables can often contain a lot of salt, attempt as much as possible to buy fresh vegetables and cook them without any added salt.

Healthy eating tips encourage people to, at least in the first year of eating correctly, keep a journal of everything eaten each day. This will enable the person to correctly begin to instinctively know how many calories it actually takes to maintain or lose weight. One high school math teacher once showed his class that eating five teeny tiny M and M candies each day for one year could put on three pounds if everything else remained the same in that person's diet. The neat thing about a food journal is that when a person first starts journaling before changing eating habits, it can provide a much needed shock as to how much food is actually being consumed. Many people concentrate on feeding their bodies, but ignore the nourishment their souls need. The Bible provides perfect nourishment for our soul, as Jesus said in Luke 4: 4, "It is written, that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word of God."

Surprisingly, many Americans are dehydrated because they do no not drink enough water. With our bodies being 75% water to begin with, it is important that we rehydrate all during the day. Drinking eight classes of water each day is very much a part of every guide that is filled with healthy eating tips. In fact, some experts suggest that sometimes our hunger that we think we have is really thirst that could be sated easily by a tall drink of water. So visit that water cooler often!

Make sure that you get plenty of fiber in one's daily diet. This can come from fruits and vegetables that are packed with fiber to help lower blood fats. Antioxidants that help fight certain forms of cancer are in those dark green veggies that you may have gagged on as a child. Healthy eating tips always include the encouragement to power up on the bright and deeper colored fruits and to stay away from fruit juices that can have plenty of sugar added. Visit your local farmers' market for those fresh foods that are best and to get enough protein, have a small serving of meat once in a while, or if this is a strict vegan lifestyle, use nuts, seeds and beans as a source of needed protein.

For more information: http://www.christianet.com/tips

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