Eating Healthy

When it comes to healthy eating there are many different aspects to consider. Perhaps the easiest to place to start is by understanding what your food is all about. Your focus should be to try to eat a diet that is balanced and nutritious.
 

Eating a balanced diet means getting all of the five basic food groups each day. A great guide is the food pyramid which tells you how many servings of each food group you should be getting each day. A balanced diet means eating a wide variety of foods and eating everything in moderation.

The Five Food Groups

The five food groups are grains, vegetables, fruits, dairy, and meat/meat alternatives. A balanced diet will contain something from each of these food groups every day. Some food groups require more servings than other, for instance you should be eating more vegetables than dairy. There is also another part of the food pyramid, which is oils and sweets, which don’t necessarily need to be part of your daily meals and should be consumed with discretion. Each recommended daily serving depends on several factors such as age and activity level. This should be taken into account when determining your personal daily food pyramid.

It is recommended that to eat a healthy, balanced diet you should have from three to five servings of vegetables a day. Vegetables are a primary source of vitamins and minerals and we cannot live without them. Fresh vegetables are the best choice but cooked vegetables and vegetable juice are also acceptable. Try to eat a large variety of vegetables each day, including many different colors.

Fruits are also full of vitamins and minerals. You should have anywhere from two to four servings of fruit a day. If you are choosing fruit juice make sure it is 100% and has no sugar added. You should also try and choose whole fruits as much as possible since they have the added bonus of fiber.

The dairy group includes milk, yogurt, and cheese. Two to three servings a day is recommended and you should try and choose low-fat options. Dairy is an important provider of calcium and other vitamins. If you are lactose intolerant or vegan it is important that you get these vitamins elsewhere. Soy milk is a great option.

It is recommended that you get anywhere from six to eleven servings of grains each day, depending on your age and activity level. Grains include bread, rice, pasta, and cereal. Try and choose whole grains and avoid the “white” grains such as white bread and white rice. You can find almost all grain foods in a whole grain variety, including pasta and bread.

Meat and meat alternatives are an important source of protein and many other vitamins and minerals. Some foods that fall into this category include fish, poultry, beef, pork, eggs, beans, nuts, and of course tofu. The recommend daily servings are between two and three. Try to choose leaner meats since they have fewer animal fats which aren’t healthy.

Try and limit this food group as much as possible. Remember a little fat is good for you, preferably in the form of vegetable oils such as flax seed oil.

Learn about Losing Weight

At some point in time almost everyone wants to lose a little weight. Whether you have five pounds to lose or a hundred pounds, losing weight can be very difficult and frustrating. Everyone is different but there are certain fundamentals which we must understand in order to lose weight and keep it off.

A good rule of thumb on how much weight you need to lose (if any) is the body mass index, or BMI. The BMI takes into account your height and give you a weight range in which you should fall into. Determining your BMI will give you a good idea of how much weight you can safely lose, or if you don’t need to lose any.

With all the fad diets out there it can seem very confusing which way is the best way to lose weight. Everyone has heard the many diet myths and many of us jump from diet fad to fad in hopes of permanently losing our excess weight. When it comes down to it weight loss is no great mystery. If the calories you consume in a day exceed the calories you use, you will gain weight. If you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. If the calories consumed and used are approximately the same you will stay the same weight.

Many people loath the thought of calorie counting, but getting a good idea of how much calories are in your food is a great way to either lose or maintain weight. Start by figuring out approximately how many calories are in your daily meals, and soon it will actually become second nature. You don’t need to be exact down to the calorie but a general idea should help you. It is also important that you know how many calories your body needs to function properly and ensure you never go below that number.

One of the biggest diet traps is portion sizes. In today’s society our portion sizes are often double what they would have been only 30 years ago. Try taking smaller amounts of food and eating slowly, thus allowing the stomach to signal the brain that it is full. Eating smaller meals throughout the day is another great way to control portion size. Many people eat large meals because by the time their scheduled meal time rolls around they are starving. If you go out to eat, getting half your meal wrapped up for later is a great way to control your portions.

Diet and exercise go hand in hand when it comes to weight loss. Getting some sort of exercise everyday is important for our health. Even if you just go for a 30 minute walk everyday you are still contributing. Losing weight means a lifestyle change for most people that include healthy and nutritious food as well as getting your body on the move.

How to Diet Correctly

The word diet strikes fear in the heart of many of us, but diet doesn’t have to be a bad word. Learning how to eat healthy is a diet habit that we can do for the rest of our lives. Most people think of diet as being something that you do until your lose a certain amount of weight, and then you go back to regular eating. This is the precise reason why most diets fail; they are impossible to sustain in the long run. Learning how to diet right will help you get to a healthy weight and stay there.

Staying away from fad diets is vital to losing weight successfully. Low carbohydrate diets are a good example of this. Millions of people swear by the latest low carb craze, but how many of us know a friend or coworker who had lost a shocking amount of weight in a short period of time, only to gain it back in an even shorter period? Carbohydrates are an important part of a complete and healthy diet, so they certainly can’t be omitted forever. While your body may lose weight while on the diet, you’re bound to gain it back when you start eating carbs again.

Everyone knows that too much fat is a bad thing. While certain fats are very good for us, many people on low carb diets are getting too much of the bad fats, i.e. animal fats. It is a shame that people are so concerned with losing weight that they lose sight of the fact that their wonder diet may actually be doing their body harm.

Approaching losing weight with an attitude of health and longevity is the secret to dieting success.

Calorie counting can be a great way to learn how many calories you are consuming each day compared to how many you are using. If you consume more than you use, you will gain weight. However, this type of dieting can be done to the extreme as well which is unhealthy. Make sure you discuss what range of calories you should be consuming each day to make sure you’re getting the recommended amounts.

Calorie counting can actually be detrimental to your diet. If you find yourself constantly hungry your body is probably in starvation mode. This means that your metabolism slows down and any calories consumed are stored as fat. Not exactly what you want to have happen. Be sure to eat a wide variety of food and get the required calories so that you’re losing weight in a healthy way.

Talking to your doctor is the best way to diet and lose weight. He or she can give you a recommended plan, or even put you in touch with a nutritionist who can help you look at your current eating habits and how to change them.

Adapting Recipes for Good Health

Most of the recipes of some of our favorite foods are full of fat and calories, as well as other ingredients that people with food allergies and intolerances aren’t able to eat. However, most of these recipes can be altered and adapted to suit anyone’s dietary restrictions. All it takes is a bit of knowledge about what makes a recipe healthy and how you can make these alterations so that the recipe still tastes good.

Having restrictions on what you eat doesn’t mean that you have to give up food that tastes great or that you need to limit yourself to what you eat. By incorporating some of the following changes to any recipe you’ll be able to add lots more food ideas to your daily food plan.

One of the most important things that you can do to reduce the number of calories that a recipe has is to cut back on the amount of sugar that you’re using. No matter how much sugar that a recipe calls for, you can reduce the sugar by 1/3 of the original amount. To keep the taste of the recipe you can add nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla flavoring. Recipes that can be successfully adapted by reducing the amount of sugar include cakes and cookies, muffins, quick breads, fruit recipes, custards, and puddings.

Reducing the amount of fat in recipes is important if you need to watch the fat content in your daily diet. You can reduce the amount of total fat used in recipes by up to 1/3 without significantly altering the texture of the recipe or the way that it tastes.

For cake recipes a general rule to follow is to use 2 tablespoons of fat for every cup of flour that you’re using. For cookie recipes you can add apple juice as you reduce fat by 1/3 but you may have to add a bit more flour to get the cookie recipe to the right consistency.

Many recipes use too much salt that is entirely unnecessary for the taste of the dish. You can reduce the amount of salt that you use in a recipe by up to 1/2 (for some recipes you can eliminate salt altogether) by using salt-free seasonings, herbs, and spices to get the taste and flavor that you’re looking for. Adding garlic to many main dishes is a great way to get added flavor without the use of salt.

Changing recipes for health is easy once you’ve adapted one or two recipes. You’ll find that you can eat the foods that you want by making modifications to any recipe to improve the overall health and nutrition of the final product.

Rheumatic Disease

"What is the single most important dietetic factor in causing Rheumatic Disease?

There are multiple dietary factors that may be responsible, and they will differ greatly from person to person. If you had to pick one single factor, it would be the usage of refined carbohydrates and overeating. An excess of even natural carbohydrates can be a potent contributing factor in some people. Food allergies are also a contributing factor in many patients. Some patients have eaten so much in the way of refined carbohydrate or excess carbohydrate overall over a number of years that they have thrown off their insulin/glucagon balance leading to an imbalance of eicosanoids with resulting lowered immunity and increased inflammatory responses."

Some things to keep in mind if you or someone you know is suffering from Rheumatic Disease include:

· Sugar is inflammatory: Thus sugar causes inflammation.

· Inflammation may cause intestinal permeability: Intestinal permeability may develop numerous food allergens.

· Daily intake of food allergens cause further long term inflammation.

· Long term inflammation may initiate autoimmune disease as the immune system is hyperactive.

· Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease.

· Remove food allergens.

· Restore intestinal health.

· These reduce inflammation.

· Reduced inflammation leads to a quiet immune system.

· Quiet immune system leads to dormancy of autoimmune disease.

Learning to control your diet is a major part of controlling Rheumatic Disease.