Eating healthy is the sort of thing that can seem quite daunting to a lot of people, and the main reason for this is that when you are trying to eat healthy you are actually attempting to curb your impulses and eat in a manner that can be quite different from the kind of eating habits that you may already be used to at this point in time. If you are new to eating healthy don’t worry, we are here to provide you with some tips that are definitely going to make it easier for you, and you can read the full info here.
Choosing the Right Vegetables
Everyone knows that in order to eat right you need to eat vegetables but the fact of the matter is that not all vegetables are made equal. Indeed, several of them are actually not that good for your health at all, and this sometimes has to do with the manner in which they are cooked but it often has to do with the very lack of nutrients that they possess which leads to them being more or less useless for your health.
Potatoes are an example of a vegetable that you really can’t do all that much with. While potatoes are a good source of starch and carbohydrates, neither of these things are particularly rare in other foods, and indeed if you look into them you would see that they are not as important as some of the other nutrients that you need from the food that you are consuming. Skipping potatoes would be a good place to start when the time comes to start changing your diet and making it more in line with kind of health that you would like to possess.
However, don’t think that starchy vegetables like potatoes are the only ones that are going to be crossed off of your list of things that you could potentially end up eating on a regular basis. A lot of the vegetables that you might think are extremely healthy are actually not that good for you. Some of them are not exactly bad for you, it’s just that they don’t provide any actual nutritional value to your meal so skipping them might just end up being quite a good idea for you for a lot of different reasons.
If you want an example of a vegetable that you might think is healthy but is actually useless, just take the example of lettuce. Iceberg lettuce can add a great crunchiness and freshness to any salad, sandwich or wrap that you are creating, but even though it can improve texture to a great extent lettuce doesn’t hold any nutritional value. While saying that it is completely devoid of nutritional value is incorrect, it is fair to say that lettuce is mostly useless, so if you are making a salad and you want to add some leafy greens to it try going for something else like rocket or perhaps spinach both of which are very dense in nutrients and low in calories to boot.
Choosing the Right Proteins
Vegetables are important but you can’t live off them completely because of the fact that you need a wider range of nutrients. The more diverse the foods you eat are, the more likely it will be that you would start to improve your health in a lot of different ways and notice the various benefits that you are obtaining from eating in a more controlled and far more healthful manner.
You need protein in your diet, but where you get this protein from matters. Red meat like beef and mutton is probably the worst way for anyone to get protein, since this meat is high in cholesterol and tends to harm the body if you eat too much of it. What’s more is that meat is very dense in calories, so if you are trying to cut calories you won’t be able to get enough protein from meat since you will need to reduce the size of your portions until they become a bit more manageable and this will lead to a lack of protein in your diet.
If you want to stay healthy and you are able to avoid meats, try using lentils such as daal to get your required protein intake for the day. If you are the sort of person that absolutely cannot go without meat then you should probably look into eating fish as your main source of meat based protein. White meat such as chicken as well as turkey will also do nicely, but fish is the best meat because of how light it is along with the numerous other benefits that eating it has the potential to provide you with.
Choosing the Right Grains
The final portion of your diet will involve the grains that you are consuming. You should avoid refined flour as much as possible, and try to make it so that you are consuming as much whole grain flour as possible. Brown bread should be preferred over white at all costs, and try to avoid rice entirely since it has a tendency to make people gain weight when they least expect it, something that you are not going to appreciate at all once you have started to put on a few pounds.
Final Tips
You now know all of the major things that you need to know in order to start eating healthy. A final tip that we would give you is that you should try and cut added sugar out of your diet completely. You can try to replace refined sugar with brown sugar wherever possible, but the best solution would be to go completely sugar free.
Another final tip that we would like to give you is that you should start controlling your portions as much as possible as well. This will lead to a healthier diet in the easiest way imaginable.