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 regiment, and the increased cost.
Let me let you in on a huge secret. Eating healthy foods is really an easy practice that can cost you less money and be more enjoyable to eat than your current diet. Let's break it down.
The basics of a healthy diet takes what you already know about food and reduces or eliminates the bad stuff that you also already know about -- fat, sugar, salt, and highly processed (junk) foods. If you are smart, you can purchase a full month of healthy groceries for less money than you would spend for 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 individuals 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 recent times, 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, hotdogs, 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," "Multi Grain," 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, multi grain suggests healthy but unless they are multi "whole" grains its not that good for you. Here's another example. Low fat maybe true, but many manufacturers compensate to create taste by adding an unhealthy amount of sugar and/or salt.
Health advocates are wining the war and consumers are benefiting by having 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 on the benefits of healthy eating, you'll find yourself reading the labels on food products, drawn to articles and books on nutrition, 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.
To your health and fitness,