Living healthy

Bigredmed
Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:47:59 +0000

It all comes down to smart choices. You don’t have to give up the foods you love, just cut down on how frequently or how much you eat them.

REALLY simple things you can do that will make a difference:

Switch to diet soft drinks. A can of coke has 240 calories, and your body’s physiology doesn’t “recognize” calories taken as liquids - so it’s not like you’ll cut down how much you eat by the same number of calories.

Say no to drive-thrus. If you want McDonald’s, park your car, walk inside, order and then eat in the restaurant - you’ll be surprised by how much less you crave fast food when it stops being so convenient.

Switch from white bread to Whole Grain wheat bread.

Read labels at the grocery store. You don’t have to count calories, but it’s good to know what you’re putting in your body. I used to love to eat those Little Debbie fudge brownies, until I looked at the box and found that one of those 2x4 brownies had almost 300 calories. Needless to say, I don’t eat those like I used to.

Reading labels is good to for finding foods that are nutritionally dense. Let’s face it, calories are unavoidable, and they’re not evil either. The problem comes when we eat high calorie foods that provide ZERO nutrition. High calorie, high nutrient foods aren’t really a problem. Orange juice vs Coke? Obviously that’s an easy one.

Finally, the last part is don’t think of this as a “diet”. That word has connotations of temporary, short term and failure. Think instead of “lifestyle change”, you want the changes you make to be permanent.