Five Steps to a Healthy Eating Plan
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What are five steps to a healthy eating plan? How do you get started on the path toward a better lifestyle? For some people, they know where to start. For others, the myriad of food choices is simply overwhelming and unapproachable.
You know you should eat healthy and exercise, but how do you begin, much less incorporate it into your everyday life? In trying to find my way, I discovered I have something in common with the contestants of the Biggest Loser show.
They can’t cook.
A recent New York Times article
talks about how we see the contestants exercising, and promoting products, but we never actually see them cooking and eating. According to the article, “Contestants climb a steep and brutal learning curve in the kitchen, since they have to do all their own cooking. “There’s no chef whipping up spa cuisine,” Ed Brantley, a contestant from last season, said glumly.”
It sounds like the contestants are dropped Dorothy-style into the land of food and exercise, without a yellow brick road in sight. Their most difficult problem is finding a healthy diet plan that works for them. Some make peace with food and have a healthy lifestyle after the show. Others gain back the weight, never having found what they needed to make their weight loss last a lifetime.
So what can you do to start a long term healthy eating plan that works for you and your family?
Five Steps to a Healthy Eating Plan
1. Clean out your kitchen of anything that has high fructose corn syrup and/or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (transfat) in the ingredients. This simple step should remove most processed food from your pantry.
2. Grab the healthy food shopping list and head to the grocery store. Beware of those "Smart Choices" foods with the checkmarked labels.
3. Select some days from the two week menu that appeal to you and try the foods and recipes.
4. Think about your attitude towards food and what is really holding you back from healthy eating. Make a list of non-food rewards to pat yourself on the back for getting started.
5. Do something that gets you moving. Even if it is just dancing around the house while you clean it.
And most importantly, be realistic. A healthy lifestyle doesn’t happen overnight, but by following the five simple steps you are moving in the right direction. There will be days when you may not eat the healthiest food and that is OK.
I still can’t cook. But at least I’m finding easy ways to feed my family a healthy diet.
Here’s to hoping that we won’t ever need to follow the yellow brick road that leads to a reality TV show. And here’s to hoping that those who do make the trip to that Biggest Loser ranch in Malibu find success that will last a lifetime.
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