The remedy for eating better isn’t deprivation,
blandness, or a rigid diet―it’s incorporating good habits into your
life. The key to eating right and maintaining weight is a plan that fits
your life. Consider these points…
1. Know Yourself
Some people revel in the art of food preparation. For
others, the microwave is a lifesaver. What matters is that you find a
healthy way to cook and eat that works for you. If you love a large,
sit-down dinner, for example, ignore conventional wisdom that says it's
best to eat lots of small meals (just be sure not to snack all day if
you plan to feast at night).
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Knowing yourself also means planning for pitfalls. If,
say, you often nosh while you work, keep food as far from your desk as
possible or bring in a healthy snack from home. If your downfall is
salty junk food, don't eat directly from a multi-serving package; take
out a handful and put the rest away.
Slight changes don't feel like sacrifice, says Brian
Wansink, a professor of marketing and nutritional science at Cornell
University, but they do make a difference: "Eating 200 fewer calories a
day can mean 20 pounds of weight lost in a year."
2. Mix It Up
It's easy to say "Eat more vegetables," but what about
people who don't like spinach and broccoli? With a little attention to
food prep, even vegephobes should be able to find greens (and oranges
and reds) that are appealing.
"People, when they cook, focus on the recipe for
meat," says Margo Wootan, the director of nutrition policy at the Center
for Science in the Public Interest. "Then they serve plain steamed
broccoli on the side. And that's boring. You need to put the same care
into vegetables." Wootan suggests dipping Brussels sprouts in Dijon
mustard or sautéing spinach, collards, or Swiss chard with garlic―or
bacon.
Think about using leftover or fresh vegetables in
risottos, soups, casseroles, and stews and putting leftovers in
breakfast frittatas or pureeing them with olive oil to make a spread or a
dip for a sandwich or an appetizer, suggests Laura Pensiero, who
co-wrote The Strang Cancer Prevention Cookbook.
Another benefit of piling on the vegetables is that
you can pump up the volume of a meal, even as you trim calories. By
adding water-rich vegetables and fruits and substituting leaner cuts of
meat in a recipe, you can create lower-calorie, healthier meals--and
trick yourself into thinking you're eating as much as you always have.
3. Eat Less Meat
The mainstays of a healthy diet should be grains,
nuts, and seeds, as well as non-starchy vegetables and fruits, rather
than meat. Whole grains (oatmeal, brown rice, whole-wheat bread) provide
fiber, which aids the digestive system and makes you feel fuller, and B
vitamins, which can boost energy and aid metabolism. Nuts and seeds
contain nutrients, such as vitamin E in almonds and sunflower seeds,
that are otherwise hard to come by. Legumes―including beans, soybeans,
peanuts, and lentils―provide fiber, too, along with protein, iron,
folate, and other nutrients. Replacing meat with legumes as a protein
source is a good strategy for reducing saturated-fat intake.
It's easier than you think to work these foods into
your day. Open up a can of kidney beans or chickpeas and add them to
soup, chili, or pasta. Or try a bowl of fortified breakfast cereal, 1
1/2 ounces of shelled sunflower seeds on a salad, or two ounces of
almonds. You'll be one of the less than 3 percent of Americans who get
the recommended daily dose of vitamin E.
4 . Watch Those Portions...
Even as you try to eat foods that are loaded with
nutrients, pay attention to the overall amount you consume. Brian
Wansink, a professor of marketing and nutritional science at Cornell
University, explains that people have three measures of satiety:
starving, could eat more, and full.
"Most of the time, we're in the middle," he says.
"We're neither hungry nor full, but if something is put in front of us,
we'll eat it." He suggests announcing out loud, "I'm not really hungry,
but I'm going to eat this anyway." This could be enough to deter you, or
to inspire you to eat less.
Restaurants bring challenges, because portions are
huge and tend to be high in fat and sodium. "Eating out has become a big
part of our diet, about a third of our calories," says Wootan. "When
eating out, we should apply the same strategies we do at home―not on
your birthday, but on a Tuesday night when there's no time to cook."
One strategy: Share an entrée. You'll eat a healthier portion size and also save money.
5. Eat, Don't Drink, Your Calories
Beverages don't fill you up in the same way that foods
do: Studies have shown that people eat the same amount whether or not
they wash down their food with a 150-calorie drink. And most beverages
don't contribute many nutrients.
In fact, all you really need is water, says Barry
Popkin, head of the division of nutrition epidemiology at the School of
Public Health at the University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill. "In a
historical context," says Popkin, aside from breast milk, "we drank
only water in the first 190,000 years of our existence.
6. Cut-Out Packaged Foods and Read Labels
Be aware that three-quarters of the sodium and most of the trans fats and added sugar Americans ingest come from packaged foods.
The trick is to turn a blind eye to all the enticing
claims on the fronts of packages―low-fat, low-net-carbs, zero trans
fats!―as some are empty, some are unregulated, and some are misleading.
Instead, cast a critical eye over the nutrition-facts box. Look first at
calories, saturated fat, trans fat, and sodium.
Saturated fat and sodium are presented in grams and
milligrams, respectively, and as a percentage of the recommended limit
of what we should eat in a day; calories and trans fats are listed
simply as amounts. If the numbers seem high, check out a few competing
products to see if you can do better.
Note that you may need to multiply if there's more
than one serving in a package and you realistically expect to eat two or
three servings. Also read the figures for fiber, magnesium, potassium,
calcium, and vitamins A, C, and E. These are the nutrients you need to
be eating more of every day.
