Healthy Eating and a Healthy Lifestyle
I love sweets. I can't get enough sugar and chocolate in my diet and I know this will be my undoing some day. But I have a plan. It's a simple plan but I think I will be able to keep to it.
I will walk every day. No matter what I am doing with my life I will find a reason to walk for at least one hour a day. I can break up the hour however I need to. I think two hours would be better. If I take a ten minute walk every hour then I only have to walk 12 times a day. But ten minutes may be too long when you are working so maybe getting up and walking for about 5 minutes every half hour would be better.
Of course I love to run but you cannot run all your life. And too much running will be hard on your joints. I want to be able to walk and run for decades to come, not just for the next ten years. So I don't want to be too hard on my body.
Eating is the real hard part. I do love to eat salads and hearty soups but these foods can be loaded with extra calories and carbohydrates. In fact, soups are now more unhealthy than healthy, especially if they come from a can. I try to eat soup only when I am sick or not very hungry.
I have been tempted to skip lunch but I recently learned that missing lunch is unhealthy. I want to make sure I eat something for lunch every day.
I also love fruit, like sweet and delicious huckleberries. I used to think that if I eat a cup of yogurt with fruit every day that would be a good snack. But if the fruit and yogurt have extra sugar in them then I am getting too many calories. It is better to eat the fruit as part of a healthy breakfast and to have just a little bit of yogurt with lunch or dinner.
In other words, spreading your sugars throughout the day allows you to enjoy that sweetness without getting caught into the carbohydrate trap. You need to eat a balance of proteins and fats with your carbohydrates so that your body digests your food properly and manages your blood sugar. Type II Diabetes is a growing problem in the American population because people are not living as healthy a lifestyle as they should. We eat too much and don't get enough exercise. But the real problem is that we eat too much of the wrong kinds of foods.
One of the most popular weight-control diets today is the Atkins diet plan, a high-protein food diet system. The Atkins and other protein diets have been criticized for encouraging people to eat too much fat but the fat is not causing diabetes. People who eat too many carbohydrates overwhelm their bodies' abilities to burn off the calories. You have to exercise more to counter the bad effect of eating too much bread, flour, cake, and cookies.
We also eat too large portions. Restaurants really make oversize portions a regular part of our diets. I try to eat at home more often so that I can control portion sizes. But when I eat out I try to eat only half the food on my plate and then take home the leftovers. I can eat them the next day and save myself some money and effort.
New research suggests that diet sodas may help people lose weight but if you look at the other effects of drinking diet sodas, they are still not so healthy. The carbonation dehydrates you and makes you more thirsty. Drinking water and natural fruit juices is a more satisfying drinking experience. And caffeine that is added to many soft drinks may cause heartburn, upset stomach, and lead to ulcers.
We can enjoy rich foods, sweet foods, and carbonated drinks in moderation but they should not be the mainstays of our food lifestyles. Even though some foods are great natural remedies for health problems we don't want to become unhealthy in the first place.
So while it is still good to enjoy your favorite oriental foods you want to make healthy food choices and balance those choices with enough daily activity (like walking) to keep your body working at its optimum performance.