Food Patterns for a Healthy Life

The new wave of thinking and believing that prevention is better than the cure is sweeping the world and is being perfected by noted medical experts. Healthy life is the best prevention, and this can be achieved by incorporating healthy food patterns in the lifestyle.

Sugar-Free Beverages

Quenching your thirst is serious business, especially when you do not know that what you put in your body may be fattening or unhealthy. Think “diet” if you want a soda. Most cola drinkers often look for the cola taste in their drinks. However, this is not particularly in line with a proper healthy life. A compromise, therefore, is a cola drink that will not add worry lines to your forehead from feeling guilty over the extra calories and chemical substances you have gulped down. So feel good and taste your cola drink minus the guilt.

Fruit and Vegetable Juices

The craze worldwide is to go natural. This explains the sudden proliferation of juice stands in malls and gyms. Natural juices are always best for the body and a healthy life. They help cleanse the system, are full of vitamins, and give you extra energy you need. While fruit juice may be more popular than vegetable juice, both types of beverages provide almost the same benefits to the body. Fruits have natural sugars and, therefore, provide a more palatable taste. Fruit juices are best taken the natural way. Avoid consuming over processed juices.

Avoid Processed Foods

Anything processes, whether canned, bottled or packaged may contain chemicals that adversely affect your health. However with the majority of processed foods in the supermarket, it is almost impossible to avoid processed foods. An essential tip for your healthy life is to read food labels before buying them. Preservatives or food additives like MSG (monosodium glutamate hydrolyzed vegetable protein sucrose) are very bad for you. Watch out for BVO (brominated vegetable oil), BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) and BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene). These additives that are common in canned foods can cause a build-up in your body and eventually change the metamorphosis of cells.

Drink Lots of Water

Parched throats, dry lips and tongue are symptoms of thirst. Do not rely on signals of thirst alone, to decide on when to drink. Healthy life means drinking enough water to replace lost fluids in your system. A person with a good water habit is quite healthy. If you do not drink sufficient amount of water, your body cells will not function properly.

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Food Habits that will Change your Body Shape

A person’s body shape depends on his food habits. Therefore, a person who is unsatisfied with his body shape has no one to blame but himself. However, what caused the problem is also the solution in this case. Changing food habits to healthy and slimming ones can rapidly change a person’s body shape as long as it is done with conviction. Here are some food habits that you have to learn by heart, to make your body shape into a more pleasing one.

Trim the Fat off your Diet

Eat more fiber such as fruits, vegetables, and grain. Substitute red meat in your diet with fish or poultry. Chicken or turkey meat is better than red meat for it contains half the fat content. If you cannot avoid eating red meat, go lean. Trim the visible fat before cooking. Grill, roast or boil it to get rid of the invisible fat.  Top food habits include cooking with unsaturated vegetable oils like olive oil and Saffola instead of butter, lard or shortening. 

Go Non-Fat

Replace high-fat snacks like potato chips, candy bars, etc. with unbuttered popcorn, vegetables, and fruits. Go non-fat cow’s milk or soy milk instead of fresh cow’s milk. Sour cream based dressings can be replaced with low fat yogurt or cottage cheese. Skim the fat off soups by chilling them so that you can scrape off the top layer of fat. Going non-fat should be at the top of your food habits list.

 

Eating Habits

Food habits aren’t always literally about foods. It is also about eating. Remember to eat only when hungry. Never overeat. A common mistake made by people is relating food to negative emotions. The metabolism is much slower when there is stress on the body so remember never to eat when tired, tense or upset just for the sake of it. Eat five small meals a day rather than three big ones. Cut down on alcohol, coffee, tea and sodas. These beverages aren’t only bad for your health, they also have high calories. Do not eat late at night.

Know your Food Pyramid

There are carbohydrates that are good for you like asparagus, beans, broccoli, blueberries, cabbage, cantaloupe, citrus fruits etc. and there are bad carbohydrates such as bananas, breads, carrots, processed cereals, corn, pancakes, and potatoes. Knowing the food types and what they possess is part of good food habits. The trend nowadays is not limiting what you eat, rather knowing what you’re eating.

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