Ways to develop healthy eating habits

You are what you eat. This means that how you choose to fuel your body affects your overall well-being, physically and mentally. Many people assume that eating healthy food will restrict their taste buds to dull and drab tasting leafy greens or veggies only, but that just isn’t true. There is a wide variety of healthy food that you can consume, which will tantalise your taste buds. These foods can be legumes, whole grains, fresh juicy fruits, a much wider variety of vegetables and essentially anything that isn’t highly processed. Once you have decided that happiness is what you want in life then a healthy diet is the way to go.

Some of the following steps will help you in your journey of building a healthy diet for yourself.

1.      Fill Your Food with Flavours  

The best thing about nature is its wide assortment of food that you can relish. Eating healthy doesn’t mean consuming just plain salads or boiled foods. When taken in a balance anything can be healthy, therefore, make sure that you consume all kinds of macro and micronutrients.

Just limiting yourself to one kind of food might not provide you with all the essential nutrients that your body might need for its proper functioning. One kind of food may help you against a particular condition and thus variety matters. In addition, food with antitoxins will help flush your body of any toxic or poisonous substances.

2.      Consume more Whole Grains

Make sure that more than half of the grains that you consume are whole grains such as whole wheat, barley, oatmeal, and brown rice. Their greatest advantage is that it retains germ and bran, in contrast to refined grains, which makes it much more nutritious and wholesome.

Try to buy products, which have 100% whole grain or wheat in them, preferably not as an added ingredient because such products might contain a whole lot of white flour, and sugar otherwise which defeats the whole purpose of consuming whole grains in the first place.

3.      Cut Down intake of Refined Sugars

The term refined indicates that such an item has been stripped off most essential nutrients. Consuming such things will cause nothing but harm in the form of weight gain, high blood cholesterol, and various heart problems. Food such as white rice, white bread, pasta, and most of the snack food has little to no fiber in them, which is essential for your proper digestive system functioning.

Cookies, sodas, candies, and cakes will give you nothing but weight gain. Not only are such foods high in sugars but they also contain a large amount of fat content making them very high in their caloric content.

4.      Take Healthy Fats and Avoid Trans Fats

Foods that contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oils are a source of trans fats. Such oils can be abundantly found in commercial food products such as pizzas, donuts, cookies, french fries, and cakes. All of them increase the amount of LDL, which is the bad cholesterol level in your body.

MCT Oil is the perfect alternative to such a dietary hazard. It is a type of saturated fat, which is quickly metabolised by the body and provides quick energy to the brain and the body. It has a small molecular structure that is broken down into ketones in the liver. As ketones are a preferred brain fuel, MCT Oil helps improves your brain functioning.

It is a form of fats that possess thermogenesis property which help to burn fat, promote weight loss, strengthen your gut, give a greater mental clarity and improve your immune system in its fight against many bacterial and fungal infections.

5.      More Potassium, Less Sodium

Consuming greater amounts of salt can cause your body to raise the blood pressure and ultimately negatively affects the heart. If you are suffering from diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, or kidney problems then limit your sodium consumption even more so, because it might exacerbate your disease.

The best alternative is to consume greater amounts of potassium-rich foods such as bananas, peas, mushrooms, potatoes, cucumbers, yogurt, and citrus fruits. It will help remove excess sodium from your blood, lower your blood pressure and prevents heart disease.  

6.      Avoid Liquid Calorie Foods

As far as liquid calories are concerned, they can be found in healthy food too, such as milk and fruit juices. But the problem arises when such calories are consumed through beverages such as soda, coffee or alcohol, which contain only calories and not nutrients with them, unlike the milk and fruit juices. That is why you should beware of how to consume your liquid calories, too.