Tips to Living and Eating Healthier Without Even Trying – Part 7
Forget the diet. Just take some these common sense steps into mind and you will begin to live a healthier lifestyle without the pain, suffering, craving and starvation of a typical diet.
Think that Salad is Healthy?
Well, it probably is healthy. Salads are a great source for nutrition and fiber. The problem is not the salad itself but often the guilty party is the salad dressing. It is tough to win when it comes to salad dressings. You have to either choose regular, high fat salad dressings or you can choose the low fat versions that are chock full of sugars and other sweeteners that are added to make up for the lack of taste from the reduction in fat.
One way to beat the hidden dangers and drawbacks that dressings have is to learn to always order your salad dressing on the side of your salad. Instead of covering your salad in salad dressing, just leave it on the side. Take your fork, dip the tines into the salad dressing and then pick up some salad on your fork and eat. It sounds dumb and even you will find this can quickly grow into a very healthy habit. You will consume far fewer calories this way. Think about you have about four tablespoons of regular salad dressing such as honey mustard or thousand island, that equates to about 60 grams of fat! That is almost a full days worth of fat in a single meal.
And you wondered why you cannot lose weight even though you are good and eat salad once a day!
Broccoli and Cheese!
Broccoli is one of the healthiest, nutrition packed vegetables you can eat. It is full of beta-carotene which is a great antioxidant that your body needs. But beta-carotene is a fat-soluble substance. What does this mean? It means that in order for your body to absorb the nutritional benefit from beta-carotene, it needs to accompany some sort of fat. Add a little melted cheese sauce, olive oil or small amount of butter and you have a combination for a healthy helping of nutrition. Without the fat to catch a ride with, a lot of the nutritional value will go unabsorbed by your body.
Biggie Size that Order
Well, that order of vegetables that is. Always try to have seconds on vegetables. Or just make sure that you vegetables double or triple the other food helpings you have each meal. In the south, there are a lot of mom and pop diners that offer a lunch special called a “meat and three”. This simply means that you pick one meat from the menu and then select three sides to go with the meat. (Just forget that a lot of southerners consider ‘mac and cheese’ a side ‘vegetable’; aside from that, you have the makings of a healthy meal combo!)
Always try to get at least three servings of vegetables per day. Remember that a serving size of vegetables is about a half a cup in size. Think about the approximate size of a tennis ball – this is about a half a cup in volume.
