If you have any food or diet tips you'd like to share, feel to post them here. It is always at this time of the year we start looking at ways to better ourselves, and one way to accomplish that is through improving your daily diet.
One thing I have found particularly helpful is to eat a handful or more of raw fresh veggies or raw fruit about 30 minutes before I eat a meal or before I go to a party or even out to eat with family and friends. It sends a signal to my brain that I have already eaten and that there is no need to over-indulge because I'm already getting full.
It also makes sure that I get enough fruits and vegetables in my diet, because they are always consumed first.
Any raw fruits or vegetables will work for this... a banana, an apple, some raw pineapple, a raw carrot, some raw bell pepper, some raw zucchini squash, raw cucumber, etc.
Why does raw food work better than cooked food? I think your body has expend more energy and effort breaking down the raw food, and so it makes you think that you are already getting full, eventhough you have consumed very few calories. And of course, raw food tends to have more fiber, and it is also very filling.
For overall nutritional benefits, I advise people to look for very colorful fruits and veggies. Beets, for example, are almost off the scale in terms of antioxidants. I simply use my hand-held grater and grate a raw beet into my coleslaw or my salad. Raw beets are surprisingly sweet, but they do need to be grated or cut up very fine because they tend to be very tough if they are not cooked. If you grate up a raw carrot and a raw beet into your salad at the evening meal, you are getting a huge amount of nutrients and not very many calories.
Another simple thing to do is to simply switch from white potatoes to sweet potatoes. Similar uses, but what a difference in nutrients!
The easiest thing to change is your drink preference. Rather than drinking a sugary soda, try fruit or vegetable juice. V8 juice or its store brand competitor offer an easy way to boost your nutrient intake without adding so many calories and it's very convenient. As for fruit juice, I would try to stay away from anything that adds sugar or corn syrup. The ones which contain only juice may be more expensive, but when you think of what it would cost to buy the fresh fruit yourself and then juice it, and end up with a comparable amount of juice, it's not a bad deal at all. I happen to think that blueberries are some of the best things a person can eat, and there have even been studies which showed that drinking a small glass of blueberry juice everyday has some health benefits. I've started drinking the Knudsen "Just Blueberry" juice every day. It's a very easy way to get a large amount of blueberries into my diet without having to just sit there eating a big bowl of raw blueberries, which are not cheap, either.
Tea is another easy switch. During the winter I drink a lot of hot tea... green tea, black tea, and Earl Grey tea. During the summer I make up huge batches of ice tea and put in the fridge. They actually have antioxidants in them.
One thing I have found particularly helpful is to eat a handful or more of raw fresh veggies or raw fruit about 30 minutes before I eat a meal or before I go to a party or even out to eat with family and friends. It sends a signal to my brain that I have already eaten and that there is no need to over-indulge because I'm already getting full.
It also makes sure that I get enough fruits and vegetables in my diet, because they are always consumed first.
Any raw fruits or vegetables will work for this... a banana, an apple, some raw pineapple, a raw carrot, some raw bell pepper, some raw zucchini squash, raw cucumber, etc.
Why does raw food work better than cooked food? I think your body has expend more energy and effort breaking down the raw food, and so it makes you think that you are already getting full, eventhough you have consumed very few calories. And of course, raw food tends to have more fiber, and it is also very filling.
For overall nutritional benefits, I advise people to look for very colorful fruits and veggies. Beets, for example, are almost off the scale in terms of antioxidants. I simply use my hand-held grater and grate a raw beet into my coleslaw or my salad. Raw beets are surprisingly sweet, but they do need to be grated or cut up very fine because they tend to be very tough if they are not cooked. If you grate up a raw carrot and a raw beet into your salad at the evening meal, you are getting a huge amount of nutrients and not very many calories.
Another simple thing to do is to simply switch from white potatoes to sweet potatoes. Similar uses, but what a difference in nutrients!
The easiest thing to change is your drink preference. Rather than drinking a sugary soda, try fruit or vegetable juice. V8 juice or its store brand competitor offer an easy way to boost your nutrient intake without adding so many calories and it's very convenient. As for fruit juice, I would try to stay away from anything that adds sugar or corn syrup. The ones which contain only juice may be more expensive, but when you think of what it would cost to buy the fresh fruit yourself and then juice it, and end up with a comparable amount of juice, it's not a bad deal at all. I happen to think that blueberries are some of the best things a person can eat, and there have even been studies which showed that drinking a small glass of blueberry juice everyday has some health benefits. I've started drinking the Knudsen "Just Blueberry" juice every day. It's a very easy way to get a large amount of blueberries into my diet without having to just sit there eating a big bowl of raw blueberries, which are not cheap, either.
Tea is another easy switch. During the winter I drink a lot of hot tea... green tea, black tea, and Earl Grey tea. During the summer I make up huge batches of ice tea and put in the fridge. They actually have antioxidants in them.
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