How To: Recognize and Choose A Healthy Diet

When you hear someone say, "I am on a diet", you more than likely immediately think about some fad diet where the person is restricted from eating this or that, or only allows themselves to eat this or that while depriving themselves from something else, which they will inevitably over indulge in or something will happen and they will drop their 'diet' and if they had successfully lost weight, gain it all back and then some. Well, that is NOT what this blog is about! In general, a diet is actually the foods and beverages a person consumes (Sizer & Whitney, 2014), and this can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the choices of foods and beverages you eat and drink. In this context, every single person is actually on a diet, regardless if they like the thought of it or not. However, a disappointingly large number of people do not have a healthy diet. Ideally, a healthy diet is one where a person eats foods that are full of important vitamins and minerals that is well balanced and does not contain too much fats, sugar, or calories in excess over what is needed to thrive, or what will harm the person's health. A healthy diet will be balanced with a variety of foods that provide the vitamins and minerals that our bodies do not produce but are necessary for our bodies to be healthy, these include but are not limited to calcium, folate, iron, magnesium, vitamin A, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, vitamin D, vitamin K, and zinc (CDC, 2014). It is suggested that a healthy diet contain servings from the food pyramid, such as a low-fat meat, fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and a small amount of healthy oils/fatty acids and this is illustrated with what is commonly known as the Food Guide Pyramid, which was built by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) (Harvard School of Public Health, 2014) .

(Harvard School of Public Health, 2014)

So based on this information, a healthy dinner example for an average adult would baked tilapia, steamed broccoli, brown rice, apple slices, and water. A good start to being able to recognize and build a healthy plate is to use the Healthy Eating Plate below as a blue print

(Harvard School of Public Health, 2014)

At this point, you should now have a good idea of what to eat and what not to eat. However, in realty when facing time restraints, peer pressure, and food cravings, this may not be such an easy choice to make. First, you should know that you can do it! To address peer pressure, you first need to surround yourself with people who will support your efforts and desire to be be healthier and eat healthier, because a strong support system can help you through emotional eating and help with accountability. Food cravings can at times be your body's misread signal of dehydration, and the number one tip would be to first drink a cup of water and then give your body a few minutes to reread the signal. There will be times when you will be wanting something sweet, and is during these times that fruit can not only meet this craving but also meet a nutritional need. Now for time restrain. In today's world, most people have so much to do that they have little time to devote to food preparation. There are a couple ways you can overcome this. First, there are many people who choose to prepare meals ahead of time. I know two ladies who will spend one evening a week cooking food and packaging them up so they are ready for them to heat and eat the rest of the week. I am not this well organized, so I choose to find healthy foods and recipes that will take a minimum amount of time and effort, but will be tasty all at the same time. Follow this link to a variation of a recipe for the meal I used as an example, and consequently one off my favorites http://allrecipes.com/recipe/healthier-easy-baked-tilapia/.

References

CDC. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Nutrition for everyone. (2014). Vitamins and minerals. Retrieved from website: http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/basics/vitamins/

Harvard School of Public Health. (2014). Food pyramids and plates: What should you really eat?. (Master's thesis, Harvard University School of Public Health). Retrieved from http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/pyramid-full-story/

 

Sizer, F., & Whitney, E. (2014). Nutrition - concepts and controversies. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.