Start eating healthier today - it's easy!

Tips on healthier eating

Overwhelming amount of research proves that the diet low in animal protein and saturated fats is the way to stay healthy,lose fat and fight off a range of diseases – from cardiovascular to cancer.

Your best choice is organic non-GMO plant-based mostly raw diet.

Quoting Dr. Phil, "How do you feel about this?"

Embracing such a perfectly healthy eating habits requires a lot of time, money and dedication. With busy lives, split in between work and kids, can most of the people realistically do this? The answer is no – however it doesn’t mean they should’t even try. ‘All or nothing’ thinking is something that stands on their way to improving their health.

Take baby steps

Most of us are somewhere in the middle - we do not eat junk food all day, but don’t make all our choices the healthiest ones either. And this is a good start. The best thing one could do is to take baby steps in the right direction. One baby step a day will amount to 365 steps a year, and provide 20-30% improvement to your diet and overall health.

What are some steps to maintaining a healthy diet?

1. Educate yourself.
   This is the most important step to eating healthy. Being an ostrich with your head buried in sand is comfortable only until you become an ill ostrich.
   You need to know the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods. Commit to reading one book a month from the recommended list ; watch youtube videos and read articles. Being sick is no fun and avoiding health problem is the best strategy.
2. Replace one meal a day with healthier plant-based meal.
   Just by doing this, you reduce amount of animal protein in your food by 25-30%! Breakfast ideas
3. Start eating healthier foods with the least important meal of the day. Why? Because it matters the least to you and it will be easier. What is your favourite meal of the day? Is that dinner? Don’t change it yet, replace your breakfast with healthier option.
4. Use healthy snacks in between your meals. If you eat a handful of walnuts instead of a cookie, your brain will receive much needed boost.
5. Healthy snack ideas. We eat unhealthy snacks because there is nothing esle to eat when we get hungry. It is important to have "an emergency snack" with you. You can buy dried fruit and nuts in the health store and pack them into 10 zip-lock bags. Voila! You just planned 2 healthy snacks a day. When you want to eat, they will be readily available.
6. What are you thinking?
   Are you thinking "No way I will feel full without eating meat" or "I need that cheesecake to feel happy"?

   Let's talk about meaning of food cravings. You know that if you eat portion big enough, your stomach will be full. You are just conditioned to think what you think by the habit formed over years and by traditions. This is the problem that needs to be fixed in your brain, not your stomach. It may sabotage your plan to start eating healthier. Other examples of these so-called sabotaging thoughts could be:

   • I need my chicken...
   • I am not a cow to eat grass...
   • Life is short, and I am too busy to do this...
   • I have no money.

   Identify the sabotaging thought and replace it with a positive one every time it appears in your head. This is a very useful method commonly applied by the cognitive therapists to fight depression without drugs. By providing positive thought every time the negative one pops up, you reprogram your brain to think differently.

   • When I am older I will be free of medication
   • My brain will function better
   • The salad is tasty and filling
   • I want to lose weight more than I want such and such food
   • I choose to eat plants because they are good for me.
7. Change proportion on vegetables and meat on your plate. Cover 2/3 of your plate with veggies and only 1/3 with meat.
8. Change proportion of raw to cooked vegetables on your plate. Which is better, raw or cooked vegetables? Raw vegetables are healthier than cooked ones. They lose 20-60% of the nutritional value after being cooked. See the details here: Cooking food: what happens to the nutrients?
9. If you must eat meat, choose organic. (Why eat organic food?)
   It is more expensive (so you may choose to eat less) and less detrimental to your health. Current meat farming/killing practices are not safe: as an example, e-coli is not properly controlled; there is a limit of feces allowed in your meat, and this limit is not zero!
10. If you must eat meat, avoid deli processed meats and hot dogs. The Physician committee for responsible medicine is campaigning to prohibit hot dogs at schools due to indisputable evidence of it raising risk of the colon cancer.
11. Remove bacon from your fridge. Not having it there will force you to look for the alternatives.
12. Buy parsley and add it to your smoothie. Parsley contains a lot of vitamins A,K, and C. You need 12 tablespoons to meet your RDA in Vitamin A; so just add parsley to a smoothie. It tastes surprisingly well with fruit.
13. Replace soft drink with water. Replace canned or packaged juice with water. They contain too much sugar. Add lemon to your water if you cannot drink it plain.
14. Buy a stainless-steel bottle, fill it with water and carry it with you. Make a commitment to yourself to drink the whole bottle a day.
15. Buy liquid greens (chlorophyll) and add to your water that you carry around. You’ve just provided your body with antioxidants and phytonutrients without making grand changes to your diet.
16. After drinking your coffee, drink two glasses of water. Coffee is diuretic, and is not good for you especially if you are in danger of arthritis. To compensate for every cup of coffee, you have to provide your body with 2 cups of water.
17. Use stevia instead of sugar. Stevia is a plant that is very sweet yet doesn’t raise glucose levels in your body. Do not use artificial sweeteners. The price for their supposed aid in the weight loss is simply too high.
18. Using protein powders? If you are building muscle and consuming a lot of protein powder, be aware that it may act as MSG in your body and it increases free radical production. Whey protein also makes your body more acidic, setting up a terrain for the future diseases. Replace it with vegetable protein like hemp protein or just eat high-protein plant-based diet.
19. Replace milk with other alternatives. Try almond milk, rice milk, oat beverage or soy milk. Read the label - all of them provide more vitamins and minerals than cow milk, in addition to the healthy protein.
20. Replace white bread with whole-grain
21. Replace cereal with muesli, oatmeal or steel-cut oats.

As you can see none of these steps requires dramatic effort, yet every one of them moves you in the direction of eating healthier and feeling better. Have your own ideas how to eat healthier without huge investment of time? Send them to me and I will gladly add them to the list!

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