Nutrition
Simple Tips for Getting Started
- Create a plan of short term healthy eating goals to avoid being overwhelmed.
- Clear the house of food-like products, a.k.a. junk food, soda, etc.
- Keep a list of your favorite healthy recipes for meals and snacks as well as stocking your fridge once or twice a week with healthy ingredients.
- Take responsibility for what ends up in your grocery cart. Buy foods that looks like foods in their most natural wholesome state.
- Learn to read food labels so you can avoid extra sweeteners and trans fats.
- Avoid fast-food chains if at all possible as most of the foods are loaded with trans fats, extra sugars/ high fructose corn syrup and chemicals.
- Pack a lunch or a cooler to always have healthy meal or snack options with you.
- Be consistent with your food messages.
- Check out a local farmer’s market or join a CSA (community supported agriculture) to get the freshest produce possible.
- Make your plate a rainbow of color to ensure you are getting a wide variety of nutrients.
- It takes most adults and kids at least 10 exposures to new food before they begin to like it so keep trying.
- Don’t eat while you drive. Try to sit down and relax while you eat and enjoy the company of others.
- Eat when you are hungry and try to stop eating when you are almost full.
- Experiment with new food flavors such as different herbs and spices, vinegars and oils. Most food industry items (snacks, fast foods, restaurants, etc.) find the perfect balance of fat, salt and sugar to keep us coming back for more.
- “Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can’t pronounce, ask yourself, ‘What are those things doing there?’” — Michael Pollan, author of “Food Rules.”
- Try not to eat anything that contains ingredient items you can not pronounce or define.
- Limit ingredients on a food label to 4 or 5 items.
- “Let food be your medicine and your medicine be your food” — Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.)