Some Healthy Eating Tips To Keep You Fit

Unhealthy practices such as excessive eating and drinking, inadequate rest, financial stress and alcohol abuse are common.

Here are some healthy eating tips to keep you on top:

1. HAVE A HEALTHY BREAKFAST

Eating a good breakfast is a vital step towards optimal health. Scientific studies demonstrate many benefits to starting your day with a healthy breakfast. In the Christmas rush most people eat unhealthy foods or miss breakfast. Morning breakfast is essential because you take it after 6 to 8 hours of sleep on empty stomach.

Breakfast powers up your day by kickstarting your metabolism, giving your body the energy and nutrients it needs to get through the mornings. Those who skip breakfast, and do not make up for the missed nutrients, tend to gain weight.

The perfect breakfast should provide protein (for building and maintaining muscle and other tissues), carbohydrates (for energy), fibre (for healthy digestive function), calcium (for building strong bones), plus many additional vitamins, minerals and trace elements. The popular packaged breakfast cereals - hot and cold - fall short.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION:

For years, I have used and recommended a simple, convenient, affordable and balanced liquid breakfast. It is a soy protein-based meal replacement shake, along with an energising herbal tea blend. The shake is based on a concept called cellular nutrition, developed to properly nourish cells. The tea comes from ancient herbal wisdom and is based on a concentrate of green tea. It is a fantastic combination that takes less than five minutes to prepare.

This simple, convenient but powerful breakfast takes away all the excuses for not having a healthy breakfast. So make an important health resolution for December. Start the day right for yourself and your family - have my healthy breakfast every day for the rest of December.

2. EAT LESS

Less is more. For a long time, researchers have known that eating less extends the lifespan and health of animals. Unfortunately, in December we eat too much. A technique called CRON (caloric restriction with optimal nutrition) has been used by organisations like the Life Extension Foundation as a way to prevent illness. It reduces your risk of heart disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes and cancer while lowering you cholesterol levels.

This is not a starvation plan. The idea is to restrict your intake of high-calorie foods while optimising your consumption of healthy nutrients.

Here are some guidelines:

Avoid sweet, starchy and fatty foods that are calorie rich.

Emphasise foods that are high in water and fibre and low in calories. These include fresh vegetables and the not-so-sweet fruit.

Replace one or more regular meals with the shake I mentioned earlier. The shakes contain less than 200 calories each, while providing more nutrients than what is found in 2,000 calories of regular food.

Supplement each meal with a high-quality multivitamin, mineral tablet and fish-oil capsules.

Have a fibre supplement before meals. This will increase your feeling of fullness, reduce your absorption of bad fats and your overall food intake.

Drink lots of water. Make water your standard drink. It contains zero calories while helping to make your stomach feel full. The next choices of beverages should be herbal tea or natural coconut water. Keep your alcohol intake low, as alcohol is a very high-calorie drink.

Avoid heavy eating late at night. Your digestion and metabolism are at their lowest then.

source: jamaica gleaner