What type of meat and other food stuff should i let go in my diet so as to eat healthily?
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light,
The best thing to do first would be to go to the Vegsource.com website for information and to the Vegweb.com for their recipes. You'll find a lot of information on both.
Then look up Dean Ornish's books, especially "Everyday Cooking with Dr Dean Ornish." You'll find overviews of his work on reversing heart disease with low fat diets. While you don' tneed to reverse heart disease, if you eat this way, you won't get heart disease, which starts a lot earlier than most of us think. 20-year-old soldiers in Viet Nam, operated on for wounds, were found to have detectable heart disease.
20? Ouch. I guess we can't start too early.
Now, a few years ago four diets were studied head-to-head: Ornish, Atkins, Zone, and one other. All of them did equally well for short-term weight loss, but the one with the best long-term biomarkers for health was the Ornish diet, the lowfat diet.
Moreover, "The China Study" did a long-term study of rural Chinese with a cholesterol level of 150 maximum, and found a greatly reduced rate of heart disease and many cancers.
That's lowfat eating, and it works.
So cut out most fats, with one exception: fish. YOu can take fish oil capsules instead of eating fish twice or three times a week, but 3-4 grams of fish oil, a 2000 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition said, improved heart health. We've also known that the EPA and DHA in fish oil guards against certain sudden cardiac deaths, and it raises HDL cholesterol, the "good" kind.
So fat free except for fish looks like the way to go.
That means no red meat or pork, and no cheese, either. The amount of fat in cheese--and its calories--is surprising.
Here are a few other rules of thumb for healthy eating:
Nothing in a package colored like a clown.
Nothing with more than five ingredients in the ingredient list.
Nothing with any ingredients you can't pronounce.
Nothing with added sugar.
Sugar is funny stuff. Table sugar is really two sugars, and they are broken apart in the intestine into glucose, which goes right into the blood stream and raises out insulin level, and into fructose, which goes to our liver and is turned into fat. Triglycerides, really, which are the main form of fat our body stores. So sugar raises our triglyceride levels.
Stay away from deep-fried foods. It really doesn't matter that fast-food places are trying to be "trans-fat free." They can't be if they heat the oil they fry in, because the heating causes the fats to twist into the trans shape (that's what "trans" means in "trans fats." It's fats bent or twisted the wrong way so it won't work in our bodies any more).
Eat lots of fruits and vegetables, mostly those, in fact. Get a lot of your protein from beans and lentils and whole grains. Use no oil in frying or sauteing.
Now, dairy will be important,but go fat free here, too. Fat free milk feels "thin" at first, but you will get used to it, and eventually even 2% will feel too thick.
Fat free yogurt is wonderful stuff. Eat it, but be careful of theyogurt with fruit in it. They tend to sugar that stuff pretty heavily. Watch the calories in that. Putting some on top of fruit is quite good.
I guarantee it, if you do this you will be healthy. My doctor was very pleased when I went on the Ornish diet and lost a little (it didn't take much) weight. My cholesterol and triglycerides dropped by almost 40% and have stayed there, 'way down. My doctor was so happy about that that after two years he stopped taking my lipid profile. He now does it only every three years and smiles when we talk about it.
I also run and work out with weights, so I'm really active, and that has helped a lot, too.
So eat fat free, be active, and you'll be really healthy.
Low Carb Dieting Tip
Your rate of metabolism dictates how many calories you burn. Heredity, gender, age, body size. diet and nutrition, activity level, and your overall health factor in on determining how high or low your metabolism is. It is normal for metabolism levels to lower as a person ages. Because of this it is important to begin stepping up your exercise routines in your thirties and forties.
Ways to Boost Your Metabolism
Eat Regularly - Eating 5-6 small meals throughout the day will give you energy throughout the day--helping you to burn calories. Whereas, calories eaten during larger meals tend to get stored as fat.
Maintain a Balanced Diet - Not only how often you eat is important, but your food choices are equally as important. Nurture you body with the appropriate balance of protein and carbs.
Eating whole foods rather than processed food gives your digestive system a workout that burns calories. For example: choose an apple over apple juice.
Workout with Weights - Building muscle mass will replace stored fat. As you build muscle tissue your metabolism increases.
Don't Forget Cardio - You need to get that heart rate up and breathe a little heavier. Twenty to thirty minutes of cardiovascular activity 5 days a week is recommended. Brisk walking or swimming are good. Or utilize exercise equipment (exercise bike, treadmill, or elliptical trainer).
Ok. Well if you are looking to avoid fad dieting, which i am recommending you should, ignore the whole low carb/fat free/ hulabaloo.
As a rule of thumb, the more varied you diet, the easier it is to make it a life choice, not just a need to lose 5 pounds in order for so and so to like me.
I say:
1. Cut back on red meat, such as beef, (particularly if you are worried about cholesterol) and add fish which is crazy good for you, and white meat chicken/lean turkey yada yada.
2. Cut out the processed junk. Find a homemade cookie recipe for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (as an example) opposed to buying a box of Oreos. This goes for anything, if you make it at home, you regulate the amount of sugar/butter+oil you put in things. So find a recipe you love, and stick to it.
3. Switch from Cheese to Yogurt. Dairy is VERY important. I take it from the question you are a young female, (they, myself included, tend to worry about this more) young women NEED to have calcium and Vit D. So eat some freaking yogurt, and avoid the cheese.
4. Switch from white bread to whole wheat. Same goes for pasta. It makes a difference.
5. Don't drink your calories! In a can of Coke there are something like 150 calories. Have two or three of those a day, and its equivalent to a meal. FYI Orange juice has even more, but at least OJ has vits and calcium. Anyway, point is for most people, if they switch drinking to juices and pop to water, they consume HALF the amount of calories. Thats it, cut out pop etc. and immediately your calorie in take is cut.
6. Ok this isn't food related, but everyone says diet and exercise go hand in hand, and they do. But work out smart! Do things you actually like to do to lose weight/be healthy, like join a soccer team, go to the beach and so on. PLUS the greater the muscle mass, the faster you will burn fat. To simply exist, muscle cells require a TON more energy than fat cells. So it would be a good idea to use weights, medicine balls etc.
I guess the best advice is don't cut something out of your life if you don't have a replacement. Preferably a health one. So replace bad choice with good one, and you will not have those haagen-das binges.
Well thats all i have. Kinda got sidetrack, ah well.
Good luck!
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