Part 1
Part 2 is here
Healthy eating can be simple, inexpensive, and satisfying! Most people, including myself at one time, put off becoming a healthy eater because they hate the idea of giving up certain foods, establishing a complicated regimen, and the increased cost.
Let me tell you a huge secret. Eating healthy foods is an easy practice that can cost less money and be more enjoyable than your current diet. Let’s break it down.
The basics of a healthy diet take what you already know about food and reduce or eliminate the bad stuff that you also already know about — fat, sugar, salt, and highly processed (junk) foods. If you are smart, you can buy a full month of healthy groceries for less money than you would spend on your usual diet. This is especially true if you add in all the fast food meals and junk food snacks that you buy during any given month. Once your body adjusts to dramatically lower amounts of the bad stuff, and once you gain some knowledge about the amazing benefits of healthy eating on your body and mind, you’ll gain more pleasure from eating than you ever did before.
Part of the pleasure that you’ll feel will come from the satisfaction of taking control of what foods you put into your body. Up until the point when you know that you have taken control, you have given that control to others without really knowing it. You, like everyone else, including me, have been brainwashed and manipulated through advertising to eat products created by companies striving for more profits! These companies have well-paid teams of people who spend their days dreaming up products, tasty mixtures, and clever advertising campaigns to persuade you to buy, consume, and develop a habit.
Until relatively recently, most of these products were developed with little, if any, regard to how they affected your health. Their only goal was to create products that sold well because they tasted good and made you feel good. Many of these products delivered on these promises, but the pleasures were usually brief, and they frequently damaged your body.
One of the best product marketing successes of all time is cigarettes. Here’s a product that can kill you and is also highly addictive. The only thing I have to do as a producer of cigarettes is to persuade you to try it for a while, and then I’ve got you hooked! Really hooked!
Here’s a list of some well-known products that give you a lot of brief pleasure, have little or no nutritional value, and can be damaging to your health: soft drinks, French fries, potato chips, corn chips, butter, sugar, salt, hamburgers, hot dogs, bacon, candy, ice cream, cookies, pies, and cakes.
In recent years, food companies have attempted to create healthier foods, but many still fool you with cleverly worded messages on their packaging. They use buzzwords like “All Natural,” “Multigrain,” and “Low Fat” in large letters on the front of their products. Unless you read the list of ingredients on their label, you wouldn’t know that these claims are misleading. For example, multigrain suggests healthy, but unless they are multi “whole” grains, it’s not that good for you. Here’s another example. Low fat may be true, but many manufacturers compensate to create taste by adding an unhealthy amount of sugar and/or salt.
Health advocates are winning the war, and consumers are benefiting from healthier foods and more information about products on their labels. This was brought about by the addition of the “Nutrition Facts” panel, which is required in the United States and other countries. There is also a lot more information about healthy eating available in a myriad of forms.
Once you’ve convinced yourself of the benefits of healthy eating, you’ll find yourself reading the labels on food products, drawn to articles and books on nutrition (see category), and eagerly putting what you’ve learned into practice. The payoff comes in the way that you look and feel. You’ll lose unwanted weight, your complexion will improve, your energy will increase, and your moods will stabilize.
The next step in healthy eating is to learn about what’s in a healthy diet. The second article in this two-part series is “Healthy Diet Strategy for Fitness & Quality Living.” It describes the ideal healthy diet and how to make the transition to healthy foods.
If you want to get excited about healthy eating, watch the documentaries listed here.
To your health and fitness.