By the Consumer Health Interactive Editorial Team
Below:
• How did you do last week?
• Change your nutritional outlook
• What's a healthy diet?
• Shopping tips
• Eat lots of color
• Watch your portion size
• Try some new recipes
• To-do's for this week
• Weight loss toolbox
Part 2: Eating for Health How did you do last week? • Did you decide on your goal weight range? If not, don't worry, you can still use our calculator to find a weight range that's healthy for you. |
| •If you didn't have time to rid your kitchen of fatty foods, it's not too late to do that, either! Keeping those chips or cookies out of the house will help you avoid impulse snacking. |
| •Did you make a meal plan? You can use the food diary to track your meals each day. If you need to check the calorie, fat, or carb content of a food, use the Nutrition Toolbox |
Change your nutritional outlook Losing weight -- and keeping it off in the long run -- often means changing the way you live in addition to how you eat. It's usually not enough to just eat less, because what you eat is as important as how much of it you're eating. If your regular lunch is a cheeseburger and large fries, then just holding the cheese isn't going to do it -- you'll probably need to find a deli and go for a roast turkey sandwich and a side salad instead. At least on some days. For some people it's easier to follow a particular diet plan (like Weight Watchers) to lose weight, but others may want to avoid the diet trap and simply eat more sensibly. If you think a diet plan or program is for you, read our review of the most popular ones here. However, if you want to make a permanent change in the way you eat in order to keep the weight off once you lose it, it's smart to learn the basics of good nutrition. When you understand how nutrition works, you actually have more flexibility in choosing your meals and you don't need an overly restrictive diet plan that leaves you feeling deprived What's a healthy diet? All food is not alike, of course. After eating a heavy meal, you know that "gut-bombed" feeling -- you feel sluggish, even though you've just loaded up on lots of calories. Eating balanced meals actually makes it easier to lose weight because you'll feel better and you'll have more energy to stay active. Ideally, your daily supply of calories should break down like this: | •55 to 60 percent from carbohydrates (no more than 10 percent from sugar) |
| •15 to 20 percent from protein |
| •20 to 30 percent from fat (minimize saturated fats and trans fats) |
Research shows that the oils in nuts and certain vegetable oils, like olive oil, are good for your health -- they have unsaturated fats, certain essential fatty acids, and no cholesterol or trans fats. On the other hand, too many simple carbs (like sugary sodas and cookies) can eventually lead to overweight and diabetes if not balanced by complex carbs (like grains, corn, and potatoes), fiber, and protein. Sound confusing? It can be a little overwhelming to sort through all the information about good fats and bad fats, simple carbs and complex carbs. To make it easier, we've put together a one page Healthy Eating Guide. Use this to see how many servings of each food group you should eat -- and what foods you need to limit in order to reach your goal. Shopping tips Healthy eating starts with healthy shopping. If you don't have any vegetables on hand, you won't cook them. Frozen vegetables have nearly the same nutritional value as very fresh ones, so don't be shy about using them -- they're easier to keep stocked, especially if you don't shop for groceries very often. Ditto for fruits that freeze well, like berries. When you cruise the grocery aisles, make a habit of reading the labels. You might be amazed at what you read! Canned soup can have over 1000 mg of sodium per serving -- nearly half the daily value -- and remember that most cans have two servings in them. Crackers and cookies are usually high in saturated fat because that form of oil has a longer shelf-life. When you go grocery shopping, take along our Healthy Shopping Guide. It will help you make sure you're getting enough fruits and vegetables, and will also tell you what to watch out for on food labels so that you don't load up on foods high in fat or sodium. Finally, don't deprive yourself of foods you like, because otherwise you won't stick to your eating plan. Just eat less of the fattening ones (an occasional scoop of Haagen-Dazs, not a whole pint). Eat lots of color A simple rule to follow is to try to get lots of color on your plate -- that will make it easier to reach the "good nutrition" goal of basing your diet on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, low-fat dairy and meats. For some people, it takes a subtle shift in meal-planning: Instead of thinking, "We have some chicken in the freezer, what can we make with that?" you might think, "We have some pasta and broccoli, and maybe we can throw in some spicy chicken for flavor." The vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber in fruits and vegetables help provide lifelong protection from a host of health problems, including cancer and heart disease. To learn more about what different colors can mean for your health, read our review of The Color Code: A Revolutionary Eating Plan for Optimum Health , written by experts on nutrition. And if you make a habit of choosing complex carbohydrates from whole grains and beans, you'll also squeeze out the "bad" carbs from your diet -- the refined starches and sugars that make it so easy to gain weight. (The Atkins diet replaces all kinds of carbs with fat and protein, a strategy which hasn't been proven an effective or healthy long-term solution, though it can work in the short run.) 
Watch your portion size As important as knowing what to eat is knowing how much to eat. As a first step, you should do a reality check on what really constitutes a serving. This is the standard unit of measurement used by nutritionists, and there's a good chance your definition differs from theirs. For instance, a "standard" serving of meat or poultry is 3 ounces, about the size of a deck of cards. There's no law against eating two decks worth of steak or chicken, but you should know what you're getting: Double the fat and calories of a standard serving. Here's a rundown of standard serving sizes of various foods, adapted from the American Institute for Cancer Research: | •Chopped vegetables: 1/2 cup (a rounded handful) |
| •Raw leafy vegetables: 1 cup (the size of an adult fist) |
| •Fresh fruit: 1 medium fruit (or 1/2 cup chopped) |
| •Dried fruit: 1/4 cup (the size of a golf ball) |
| •Pasta or rice (cooked): 1/2 cup (a rounded handful) |
| •Nuts: 1/3 cup (a level handful) |
| •Cheese: 1.5 ounces (about the size of 6 dice) |
| •Meat: 3 ounces (about the size of a deck of cards) |
You may notice that most "standard" servings seem small compared with real-world portions. Truth is, restaurant portions have ballooned in the past few decades, so now we actually believe that a half-pound steak, 10 breaded shrimps, and a cup of buttery mashed potatoes -- accompanied by a bottomless soda and followed by an ice cream sundae -- is a normal-sized dinner. The good news is that it's probably easier to eat five servings of fruit than you thought. An apple counts as two servings, a handful of grapes is one. A 16-oz. smoothie with a banana, a handful of frozen berries, and a splash of juice gets you halfway to five servings! Learn more about portion sizes, and then take our quiz to test yourself. Try some new recipes Testing new, healthy recipes is a great way to not feel deprived while you're changing your eating habits. We've reviewed some healthy cookbooks and even included a few sample recipes to get you started: 
The Dreaded Broccoli Cookbook: A Good Natured Guide to Healthful Eating with 100 Recipes By Barbara and Tamar Haspel Scribner 317 pp $23 Click here to read our review. 
Harriet Roth's DeliciouslyHealthy Jewish Cooking By Harriet Roth Plume Paperback 461 pp $16.95 Click here to read our review. 
Healthy Latin Cooking:200 Sizzling Latin Recipesfrom Mexico, Cuba,the Caribbean, Brazil,and beyond By Steven Raichlen Rodale Press 410 pp $19.95 Click here to read our review. To-do's for this week | •Continue to track what you eat on your daily food plan. |
| •Take a minute every day to visualize the stronger, healthier body you'll have when you reach your goal. |
| •Keep in mind these healthy eating tips: |
- Eating several small meals and healthy snacks each day will help you keep your appetite under control. - Drink plenty of water -- at least 8 glasses a day. - Try healthy snacks to keep your energy up between meals. Try these: Carrots and hummus, apple slices and peanut butter, or cheese on whole wheat crackers. Because peanut butter and cheese are high in fat, it's best to limit your daily servings of these. - Eating foods of lots of different colors is an easy way to get the nutrients your body needs. - Know your portion sizes. - Don't deprive yourself -- eat your favorite foods in moderation. Find more articles, tips, and tools to help you reach your goal in our Weight Control Center. Future classes: 
Weight loss toolbox Every class will contain links to all the tools used in the classes, so you can access them at any time. -- Deepi Brar, Chris Woolston, and Nancy Montgomery contributed to this report.
References
Reports. January/February 2000. 115: 12-24.
The American Institute for Cancer Research. The New American Plate: A timely approach to eating for healthy life and healthy weight.
U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Reviewed by Lisa Tartamella, MS, RD, an ambulatory nutrition specialist at the Yale-New Haven hospital in Connecticut and a contributing author to The Yale Guide to Children's Nutrition.
First published April 13, 2005
Last updated November 26, 2008
Copyright © 2004 Consumer Health Interactive
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