Sally's six tips for healhy eating

For some, eating well can be an overwhelming and formidable prospect. But it doesn’t have to be. The following tips for good nutrition are my top six choices to get you started.

1. Eat mindfully
2. Drink more water
3. Eliminate soft drinks
4. Prepare/ cook your own food
5. Buy high quality meat and produce
6. Eat to 80% full

By eating mindfully, I mean be conscious about your food choices. Mindlessly grabbing whatever is within reach is not a good strategy. Hopefully the food choices you make are healthy ones, but at the very least the food that you put in your mouth should be a conscious decision.

Drinking more water is a no-brainer. We hear this all the time but it remains an important element to good health. The body is composed of 80% water and as such we need to keep it well hydrated. The best way to do this is to drink water. There is much debate about tap water vs bottled and distilled water but the main goal is to get water that is free of contaminants. Tap water is safe to drink but you can make it better by filtering out the chlorine and fluoride. Most bottled water is the same as water from your tap and it is an abomination to the environment.

Eliminating soft drinks and other heavily sweetened drinks is a must for the health-minded individual. Soft drinks are responsible for sky-rocketing rates of obesity and diabetes in North America and contribute significantly to rapid tooth decay. These drinks have no redeeming nutritive value. While water is the best alternative, even fruit juice is preferable to soft drinks as they contain vitamin C and they do not contain the added chemicals found in soft drinks. Also, many drinks are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, a refined sweetener that is even worse than ordinary cane sugar. Avoid this cheap alternative to sugar at all costs.

Preparing your own food – as in making up a salad or a sandwich – and cooking your own food is a big step to healthier eating. By doing so, you know what goes into your food preparations and you can control the quality of the ingredients. Eating well is all about making high quality food choices: buy fresh, local produce whenever possible. Organic is ideal when budgets allow. Buy local meat that is free of hormones and antibiotics from animals that are raised and butchered in a humane manner. Preparing your own food also means you will be ingesting fewer chemicals, preservatives and other harmful additives that are hidden in packaged foods.

Not overeating at any one sitting is not only essential for maintaining a healthy weight but will ease the burden on your digestive system. This is especially important as we age. Overwork of the digestive system is one of the most common digestive difficulties in North America. Many people of advanced years have attributed their longevity to purposeful under-eating.

By following these six tips, you can make signifcant improvements to your health. For a more personalized approach to improving your nutrition, please contact me for a private consultation.