How To Get Started Eating Healthy: Balanced Meals

Once you have everything you need to cook healthy meals, you are well on your way to a better healthstyle. But first let’s stop and make sure we know what a healthy meal looks like.For many people the first big step in getting healthy is losing weight, and this means eating better and eating less. But my advice is generally the same (with a few exceptions) if you are not overweight. Healthy eating is the same for everyone–eating for fat loss and eating for health and longevity are the same thing.

How can you permanently eat better?
You cannot expect to let yourself go hungry and stick to that eating plan forever. It is therefore critical that you get the most out of your meals by making sure they have enough nutrients and flavor to keep you satisfied. I would go so far as to say you should love the food you eat and should walk away from it not wanting another bite. With balanced meals and wonderful ingredients, you can feel this way about what you eat.

Your body needs many things to function properly. It runs on complex carbohydrates, vitamins, fats, fibers, minerals, proteins and probably many more things we have not yet discovered. If you follow some trendy diet that encourages you to eliminate one or more of these, your body will feel deprived and ultimately find a way to get what it wants (usually in binge form). So let’s forget the starvation option and instead choose foods that give us all the nutrients we need. What we will reduce (not eliminate) are foods with fewer nutrients, the ones your body can be happy without. These foods will be addressed in a future post.

The best strategy is to give yourself a steady supply of what your body needs throughout the day. Every day. And because scientists have been unable to replicate a healthy diet with a pill, we need to focus on eating food. Real food. The kind that comes from the earth, not from a drive-thru.

The following is a guide to creating a perfect, healthy meal from food. It is only meant to be a blueprint, not a rigid plan. But I feel it is important to spell this out at the beginning because it is so different from how most people eat. I can assure you that it is very doable and more than satisfying. I eat this way, and I can say without hesitation that food is my favorite part of my day.

Eat Your Vegetables: Size Matters
The bulk of your diet must be vegetables if you hope to permanently lose weight and avoid heart disease, diabetes, cancer and dementia. The science is very clear on this point. If you do not like vegetables, I suggest you try and learn to like them. Chances are you have not eaten many high-quality vegetables from your local farmers market or that the ones you have tried were not prepared very well. Keep trying! Explore different recipes. Try different vegetables at high-end restaurants. Go out of your way to find vegetables cooked a way you like.

I recommend finding a friend who loves to cook and inviting him or her to explore your local market together–the enthusiasm of a chef at a farmers market can be contagious! You could even volunteer to help make a meal afterward with the fresh ingredients you found. It is amazing how quickly a kitchen becomes demystified when you spend a little time in one. Start with simple recipes. Delicious food does not have to be complicated if you cook with wonderful ingredients.

To reiterate, your first task is to increase your vegetable intake. Aim for about half of your (medium-sized) plate to be covered in vegetables. Make this happen for both lunch and dinner. If for whatever reason your choice of meal makes this difficult, try to get at least some green on your plate. Adding kale or spinach to whatever you’re making is usually pretty easy.

Diversify
You also want to try to get as much diversity as you can in the types of vegetables you eat. If you have seen those obnoxious lists of “superfoods,” you may have started to realize thatany fruit or vegetable can be considered super. The fact is that all vegetables have some unique benefit and you maximize your health by eating many kinds of them, not by eating a lot of one kind. I try to mix up my weekly shopping cart to reflect the diversity of the farmers market, and I usually try to buy something I have never eaten before.

One wonderful thing about seasonal shopping at your local farmers market is that vegetables and fruits come and go pretty quickly, so diversity comes with the territory.

Smart Protein
I mentioned above that it is important to feel satisfied by your meals, and protein can go a long way in helping you achieve this. However, there are many misconceptions about protein, particularly regarding how much and what kinds you should eat.

I’ll start by saying that virtually no one in the Western world is protein deficient. It is relatively easy to get the protein your body needs to maintain its muscle mass. I do not recommend counting protein grams unless you are a professional body builder, in which case this probably isn’t the best website for you.

Despite what some people may say, many vegetables and grains contain protein. For instance, a cup of brown rice has 5 grams of protein. A cup of black beans has 15 grams of protein (and 20% of your daily iron). Some will argue that these are not “quality” sources of protein because they are not “complete proteins,” meaning that they are lacking in some essential amino acid. However, this argument is irrelevant if you follow my advice above and enjoy diversity in your diet. Yes, if all your protein comes from brown rice then you may be deficient in lysine, but presumably you are eating more than just brown rice and the rest of your food will easily make up the difference.

Getting all your protein is important, but since it is relatively easy to get I find the biggest value of protein is helping you feel satisfied after a meal. Protein digests more slowly than carbohydrates and can help you feel full longer. From this perspective, it matters very little where your protein comes from.

Intact Grains
Carbohydrates, intact whole grains are essential to a healthy diet.Unfortunately, real whole grains are not very easy to come by in our culture. I have explained before, there is a tremendous difference between an intact whole grain that still looks like a grain and the “whole grains” in Lucky Charms that have been mutilated then reassembled. Real, intact grains digest slowly and are an essential source of fiber, vitamins, minerals and other wonderful things.

Like protein, whole grains should comprise about a quarter of your plate. However, since whole grains are rather difficult to get, I usually choose to make intact grains the bulk of my breakfast, and usually incorporate other grains such as brown rice or quinoa into either lunch or dinner. These will also go a long way to increase the satisfaction you feel from a meal.

Healthy Fats
One of the reasons the low fat diet from the 20th century failed so miserably is that it did not account for the necessity of healthy fats. Oils from plants and fish are critical for protecting against disease. And, like protein and grains, they contribute greatly to how satisfying your meal is.

Because fats have a high caloric density, a little really goes a long way and there is no definitive space on your plate that I allot to them. However, generally I recommend dressing or cooking all your vegetables in minimally processed oil, such as cold-pressed olive oil. I also recommend cooking with nuts (many different kinds, of course) regularly and enjoying avocado and other oily plants frequently.

Fish provide a different kind of oil than plants, and both are important. But if you are eating substantial amounts of fish you should be aware of the dangers of mercury contamination.

Strive to eat a diverse array of fresh vegetables, healthy proteins, intact grains and plant and fish oils as a part of your daily healthstyle, particularly in the meals you have control over. However, this is not something you should approach as all-or-none. Any meal can be made more healthy by adding these ingredients, and it is worth it to work them in if possible.

But most important, be sure that whatever you eat you enjoy. None of this is “diet food” and all of it should make you happy.

How to Develop Healthy Eating Habits

Step 1 

Eat whole, unprocessed foods whenever possible. This means fresh or frozen fruits instead of canned, whole grains instead of enriched flour, brown rice instead of white rice, and as little fast food as possible.
Avoid ‘low-fat’ or ‘zero-calorie’ processed foods, as they typically have more sugar and salt. Refining grains also removes bran, which contains most of the vitamins, minerals, and fiber.

Step 2 

Follow the FDA’s recommendations to eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Try sprinkling berries in your cereal, drinking a fruit smoothie or juice, and adding extra veggies to your pasta sauce, pizza, casseroles, and even sandwiches.
An official serving size is: a medium piece of fruit, a ½ cup of chopped fruit, ¾ cup of pure juice, a ¼ cup of dried fruit, a ½ cup raw or cooked vegetables, or a cup of leafy vegetables.

Step 3 

Pay attention to what, how much, and how often you eat. Absentminded eating is one of the greatest threats to successful weight management and long-term health.
Don’t multitask when eating. You’ll often stuff your face with nutritionally poor foods that are convenient but not healthy.

Step 4 

Try to drink 64 ounces of non-caffeinated fluids every day—the majority of which should be plain, pure water. A glass with every meal will help your digestion, keep you full, and help your mood—and if you drink it before eating, it can stave off hunger pangs.

Step 5 

Eat fish twice a week: it’s packed with top-quality protein, as well as omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids that can protect your heart and brain from damage and disease.

Step 6 

It’s okay to splurge and eat something less-than-healthy now and then, just be sure to watch out how much and how often.

Why We're Always Hungry

We're a country of people who never stop eating. The freedom to eat anytime and anywhere is convenient, but it also means you may be mindlessly inhaling hundreds of extra calories without even realizing it.

With so much food constantly in our face, it's no wonder that many of us are grazing all day long. Americans eat an average of 570 calories more per day than they did in the 1970s, largely due to constant eating, according to research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "People have snacks with them at all times -- in their car, at their desk, in their purse," says study coauthor Barry Popkin, PhD. "We don't even know what hunger feels like anymore."

The health consequences aren't pretty. Think about it: Every time you load up on empty-calorie snacks, it means you're not eating foods that provide vital nutrients to give you energy (complex carbs), help you feel full (protein, fiber), and help prevent disease (a whole range of vitamins and minerals). Chronic snacking can also make it harder to lose weight.

The Psychology of Mindless Eating

Snacking isn't inherently bad; the problem is that we're not doing it right. "If people were reaching for real food with fiber, it would fill them up," Popkin points out. Instead, we tend to munch on sweet, high-carb snacks -- some of which contain nearly as many calories as a meal. These foods throw off your hunger cues big time, since they give you a quick sugar rush, then make you crash a short time later. The result? You crave another hit of the sweet stuff to feel better, and the cycle repeats itself.

The fact that snacks are available everywhere doesn't help either, because now it's socially acceptable to eat no matter where you are: walking down the street, waiting in line at the post office, during meetings, on planes, trains, and automobiles. This is mindless eating at its sneakiest. "It's a combination of a lack of awareness and environmental triggers," says Michelle May, MD, the author of Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat: How to Break Your Eat-Repent-Repeat Cycle. "The car wash is boring. There's a rack of candy bars -- suddenly, there's something enjoyable to do!"

These food-place associations are what Cornell University eating behavior expert Brian Wansink, PhD, calls "mindless eating scripts" -- those moments throughout the day when we eat out of habit, not hunger. "The most common one is eating on the way to work or on the way home," Wansink explains. "These scripts get reinforced by repetition."

Maybe your script is a doughnut on the way to work or a pack of cookies on the way home -- fillers between real meals that don't fill you up but will make you fat. And there's no denying that these foods can make you feel good. "We're wired neurologically to crave food that's high in fat, salt, and sugar," explains David Kessler, MD, author of The End of Overeating. "Snacks like ice cream and potato chips taste good but they also activate the pleasure centers in our brains."

Sometimes that blissful feeling becomes connected to a happy memory, says Dr. Kessler, which may give a particular food a powerful emotional appeal. That explains my relationship with soft-serve ice cream: Yes, it's delicious, but it also reminds me of those special days with my mom.

People also connect snacks to specific places where they simply have to have that food. Some associations are the result of conditioning -- think popcorn at the movies and hot dogs at a baseball game -- while others develop seemingly out of nowhere. I polled my friends and family, who sheepishly admitted their own strange links between a particular snack and place. Lavetta buys Twizzlers whenever she goes to FedEx. "It gives me something to do while I'm waiting in line," she says. My sister Amanda gets a pack of cupcakes at gas stations. And Diane always picks up a bag of cheese-filled pretzels at airports. "I have to fly a lot for work and I won't get on the plane without them," she says. "It's a habit I've had for years -- and I have no idea how it even started."

Afraid to Be Hungry

The first step toward breaking the cycle of mindless eating is to ask yourself, Am I really hungry right now? Because chances are, you're not. "Our bodies are designed to exist among scarcity, but we're constantly surrounded by food," says Dr. May. "As a result, we've learned to ignore what it means to feel full. We're choosing food for pleasure but then not eating in a way that gives us pleasure -- walking down the hallway or scarfing it down in the car."

I've certainly experienced this phenomenon, which happens a lot now that I have a 17-month-old daughter, Bella. Like most new moms, I'm busy and tired all the time so I'm putting less thought into what, where, and when I eat. I find myself grabbing a muffin (my second breakfast) at the shop conveniently located next to the subway on the way to appointments in the city. I crave a sweet snack around 4:00 in the afternoon as well -- not necessarily because I'm hungry but because it's soothing. And for the five minutes it takes to inhale a double-fudge brownie on my walk home to relieve the babysitter, I do feel better. But just a short time later I'm my old exhausted self again.

Since our impulses and cravings are so often unconscious, the step toward changing them is to make them conscious. "If you look at a bag of chips and see that it's filled with fat and salt, and then think, 'That isn't going to sustain me,' you can change how you value those chips," says Dr. Kessler. When Dr. May has a craving for a cookie or candy bar, she thinks about whether an apple would satisfy her instead. "If I'm really hungry, it will," she says. But sometimes, she ends up deciding that she does want the cookie -- and that's okay, too.

5 Reasons You Should Be Taking Fish Oil

Turns out the cardiovascular benefits of fish oil may just be a fisherman’s tale after all. According to the New York Times, at least two dozen studies of fish oil were published in leading medical journals from 2005 to 2012, nearly all of which focused on the pill’s ability to prevent cardiovascular events. All but two found fish oil had no benefit to heart health. (Find out more about what you should now about heart health).

However, fish oil is now the third most widely used dietary supplement in the United States—about 10 percent of Americans take the pill believing the omega-3 fatty acids will bolster their heart health—according to the National Institutes of Health. So, should we just flush ‘em down the drain? Of course not. Just because fish oil may not live up to the touted heart health benefits, doesn't mean there aren't other reasons to take them. You can also get the omega-3's in these foods if supplements aren't your thing. To prove it, here are five other ways you can benefit from fish oil.

BOOST MEMORY

18- to 25-year-olds who consumed fish oil pills every day for six months boosted their working memory by 23 percent, according to research published in the journal PLoS ONE.

IMPROVE MODERATE TO SEVERE ACNE

A 2012 study from California State Polytechnic University Pomona found evidence that fish oil can improve the severity of acne. Participants supplemented their normal acne-fighting regimen and typical diets with 3 grams of fish oil per day. After 12 weeks, the acne symptoms had greatly improved for 60 percent of the volunteers.

BOOST EYE HEALTH

A 2009 study from the National Eye Institute found that participants who reported the highest level of omega-3 fatty acids in their diet were 30 percent less likely than their peers to develop macular degeneration during a 12-year period.

HELP MUSCLE GROWTH

A 2013 study from the Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology found that fish oil can improve the anabolic effect of exercise by promoting more lean muscle growth, function and quality.

REDUCE IMPACT OF AIR POLLUTION

A 2012 study suggests fish oil can help protect your heart against air pollution—good news for city dwellers, and great news for city dwellers who run on highly-polluted streets. Researchers gave 29 middle-aged adults three grams of fish oil or olive oil every day for four weeks. Then they exposed them to two consecutive hours of unclean air, after which their cardiac responses were measured. The participants who were given fish oil didn’t experience as negative an effect to their white blood cell activity. The fish oil protected the participants against the harmful cardiac effects associated with air pollution exposure.

It may not boost your heart health, but the supplement does yield benefits for your brain, lungs, skin, and muscles.

Just the Facts - About Weight Loss

So many people are fighting obesity today, and despite the many success stories, countless books, endless magazine articles, it seems weight loss, dieting and slimming remain a problem and concern for so many people. If you are struggling with weight control and want to take control of your health problems, too, its important to recognize that healthy weight loss is possible, but requires commitment, dedication and perseverance. Instead on focusing on slim-fit jeans, think about how you want to feel when you can walk up a hill without being breathless, or if you'd like to be able to chase after your grandchildren without worrying about a heart attack! If you're serious about getting healthy and gaining a better lifestyle through weight control, do read on for some tips on gaining a healthy lifestyle. 

1. Concentrate on creating a HEALTHY LIFESTYLE, not just a short-term diet - you are aiming for long-term health and a gradual, healthy weight loss. Fad diets cause yo-yo weight loss, which in the long term affect your metabolism and self-confidence.

2. Watch what you eat – 3 healthy meals & 1-2 small snacks is the maximum each day
It's very easy to fall into the trap of constant snacking. Often we don't eat for sustenance, but because we are bored, stressed or just have a snacking habit. Learn to replace empty calories in snack foods with healthy nutritional snacks like nuts and fruits. Keep a water bottle handy, and drink from it all day to stave off hunger pangs.

3. Get up and move (walk, hula hoop, do aerobics or swim) for 30 minutes a day. No excuses!
Exercise not only ensures you burn excess calories, but helps keep your blood circulated, your skin hydrated and your mind active. If you can't find the time for 30 minutes of activity, sneak in 10-15 minutes any time you have the chance, all the small bursts of activity add up!

4. A healthy lifestyle plan, including times for meals, amount of water to be consumed, and type of daily exercise, has proven effectiveness.
Knowing what you have to do in advance helps you be prepared for the natural disinclination to do exercise or choose the healthy food for lunch. Deciding what food you will eat each day, what times to eat, what activity you are going to do, will help you to feel in control of your life, and better enable you to stick to it.

5. Eat in moderation instead of calorie counting. Choose wholesome, unprocessed foods and smaller portions, eating slowly and enjoying the meal.
Calorie counting can be very effective for some dieters, but most people find it too much hassle to keep writing down and working out the calories in every singe meal, snack, drink, etc that they eat. Often, it also makes they overly concerned with every food choice that they make, to the point that meals become depressing and inconvenient, causing them to abandon their efforts altogether. Instead, eat well, but in moderation, choosing smaller portions of food you really enjoy.
Dying for fried chicken? Make it an occasional treat, and pack half away for later. Can't resist the curry? Don't cover your plate with a large serving, but leave plenty of room for healthy accompaniments like vegetables and fruits. Can't refuse the birthday cake? Ask for a small sliver or share with a friend, and take your time eating it.

Drinking plenty of water, both before and during the meal will help you to slow down and eat less, too. Take the time, savour the taste, feel and texture of the meal as you eat it, giving your stomach time to register fullness, and the brain time to enjoy the meal so you can eat less, yet feel satisfied.