To be healthy, strong, not overweight and cellulite free, you need to eat! But you need to know what to eat, why, and when to eat it. Our bodies were not designed to eat anything other than real food. By real food, I mean food that is in its natural state. We were not intended to consume additives, preservatives, or chemicals. So eat food as close to its natural form as possible.
Wrong foods – making the right choices to change our diet
Everything in the food industry today is driven to get you to buy food with a high-profit margin. Even the layout of the average supermarket emphasises poor food choices.
Here are some specific tools to help you change your habits in choosing better foods:
- Stay out of the centre aisles in supermarkets. This is where most of the wrong food choices are. It’s also where you’ll spend the most money. Try and shop around the parameters of your supermarket (except the bakery section – stay the hell out of there wholly).
- Don’t buy pre-packaged foods and fast foods.
- Do buy and eat in this order – proteins (chicken, fish & leaner cuts of meat are best), vegetables and fruit, preferably fresh. Frozen is the next best choice. Canned is not so good because it usually contains too much salt and sugar. Deli meats are NOT considered a good choice of protein because of their high levels of fat and nitrates.
- No junk food. It’s in a centre aisle to start with, but once in your house, it’s also one of the greatest temptations to browse/snack on. If you must have something to nibble on, pop your popcorn. Use a vegetable spray and your favourite spice/herb for seasoning as a topping.
- Shop often and only buy what you’ll eat in 1 or 2 days. Our forefathers shopped every day. Mainly because you do not have minivan to carry 2 weeks’ worth of groceries and also because refrigeration wasn’t available and you needed to buy only fresh food, if you don’t have 2 weeks of food in your fridge and cupboards, you can’t snack on it in the evening. You’ll end up eating fresher foods, it will cost you less, and of course, you won’t eat as much.
- Stick to the 5/5 rule for any food you buy. Five or fewer grams of fat per serving and five or fewer grams of sugar per serving.
- Choose healthy desserts that are sugar-free from services like Bakingo cake delivery in Hyderabad.
Too much food – size does matter
Human beings are visual by nature. It’s no accident that marketing in the Fast Food industry over the last few years has steadily increased the portion size of their menus.
So let’s look at some strategies that can help with the portion size of food we eat.
1. Change your plate. Yep. This will make the most significant difference in the quantity you eat. There is nothing worse than placing proper-sized food portions on our traditional dinner plates. The food sits in a small pile in the middle of a vast empty expanse of the container. I swear, sometimes the food looks like it’s shivering in loneliness. Start using lunch-size plates for all your meals. The portions you should be eating will fill the container, and your eyes will think you’re eating lots.
2. Start measuring. Get yourself a good scale and set of measuring cups. You’ll find that after you use measuring cups for a while, you’ll be able to gauge how much a proper food portion is. This comes in handy when you’re out at a restaurant. Take a look at the plate when it arrives and push away those parts of the food that don’t fit your portion sizes.
3. Serve your plates in the kitchen before bringing them to the table. No bowls of food on the table to get second helpings from.
4. If you do have a snack after dinner, leave the food container in the kitchen. Bring only the serving size to your favourite recliner in your living room.
Take care of what you eat, and stay healthy!
