Health Pages
Set Your Goals
Set Your Goals
A well-planed shopping list, full of delicious choices, is the key ingredient for a heart healthy way of eating.
How to change your shopping habits one step at a time:
Think carefully about your reasons for incorporating healthy food into your life, and then fill in the goals portion of the personal healthy eating list. By setting a series of achievable goals, you can make progress! As each goal on your original list is achieved, replace it with a new goal. In a just a few trips to the grocery store, you'll see improvements in your shopping routine.
The most effective way to take in adequate amounts of nutrients is to eat a balanced diet. keep in mind that different people need different amounts of food. The amount of food you need every day depends on your age, body size, activity level, whether you are male or female, and if you are pregnant or breast-feeding.
Change your shopping habits one step at a time. Select a few goals to work on now:
Became familiar with today's food labels, and use the information provided to reduce trans-fat ans sugar content of your meals.
Increase your water consumption. Water provides the medium for nutrient and waste transport, controls body temperature, and functions in nearly all of our body's biochemical reactions. Limit beverages that tend to dehydrate your body (tea, coffee, and alcohol) and increase water consumption. Needed fluids can also be obtained from fruits, vegetables, juices, milk, and other noncaffeinated beverages, but they may have impact on your daily calories and sugar intake and your weigh.
Learn about functional foods and became familiar with health claims on foods. Functional foods contain not only recognized nutrients but also new or enhanced elements that impart medicine-like properties to the food.
Analyze your food intake and develop a plan to modify your food intake patterns to make them agree with your goals and recommended guidelines.
Buy and eat more vegetables and fruits, in place of meats, cheeses and processed food. If few foods of animal orgin are consumed, a wide variety of incomplete protein sources must be eaten to provide complete protein in the diet.
Limit your intake of convenience foods and processed foods, particularly those that are high in sugar, trans-fat and saturated fat.
Keep in mind that fat-free or low-fat foods can be more calorie-dense and unhealthy than presumed by consumers.
Top 10 ways to change:
"Foods with a high nutrient density are better choices than those that supply only empty calories"