WAY TO EAT

One question I am frequently asked is “What's the secret to a healthy diet?” The answer isn’t all that mysterious. You just have to keep some basic guidelines in mind, beginning with:

1. Use smaller plates. Switching from a standard 12-inch plate to a 10-inch plate leads people to eat 22% fewer calories. This means a savings of 5,000 calories/month if the dinner plate is switched. This is about 1 1/2 pounds of weight lost.
2. Make half of every meal fruits or vegetables. At breakfast fill your bowl halfway with cereal and the rest with fruit. At lunch, eat a smaller-or half-sandwich and add 2 pieces of fruit. At dinner, fill half your plate with vegetables or salad. Bring a banana and a small bag of baby carrots for snacks between meals.
3. The shorter the ingredient list, the better. Longer lists of ingredients generally mean more sugar, salt and artificial flavors. In other words, more unhealthy stuff.
4. Nutritious food does not have to be expensive. In fact, nutritious meals, especially those that substitute beans or lentils for meat, are actually less expensive. Visit www.nutritiondetectives.com for ideas.
5. Take an extra 10 minutes a day to prepare healthy meals. A wholesome, home-cooked dinner takes only about 10 minutes longer to prepare than serving processed or ready-made food. Make enough for leftovers and this saves even more time.
6. Retrain your palate. Taste buds are trainable. We develop a taste for just about anything we frequently eat. It can take 1-2 weeks to discover that you actually don’t mind eating certain healthy foods that you didn’t know you could learn to like. Try it. It works.
7. Stop eating before you are full. Slow the pace of your meals. Pay attention to what you are eating. Call it quits when you are about 80% full. After a pause, you will likely find that “comfortable” is full enough. Studies show that simply be eating at a leisurely pace, you could drop up to 20 pounds a year.
8. Sit down to eat with the entire family. Kids who eat with their parents are less likely to eat junk, less likely to overeat, and less likely to be overweight. Make it happen at least 3 out of 7 dinners each week.
9. Don’t eat on the run. When we eat on the go, our brains tend to register the food as a snack-regardless of how many calories we consume. This leads us to overeat at the next meal.
10. You really are what you eat. You want radiant skin and healthy hair? Eat 5-7 fruits and vegetables most days. You want better mental acuity? Eat whole grains most of the time, eat fish twice a week, and replace the meat at 2 meals each week with beans or legumes as your protein. Good health is not an accident. It is deliberate.