Eating a Healthy Diet

What is eating a healthy diet? A healthy diet should include eating a variety of foods from the basic food groups. The basic food groups are:

• Protein (meat, eggs, legumes)
• Dairy Products
• Fruits and Vegetables
• Grains (breads and pasta)
• Fats and Sweets

It is more difficult than you realize to actually eat a healthy diet. You might end up eating a whole of your favorite foods and not enough from one of the other groups just because you don't like that particular group of food. You might be pressed for time almost all the time and you are forced to opt for convenience over quality when you get hungry.

You need do some planning in order to really maintain a healthy eating pattern. It takes effort to eat the recommended daily allowances from each food group. You will need to look closely at what you are eating now and then make plans to implement healthier eating habits.

Keeping a food diary of everything you eat and drink for one week should be sufficient enough to tell you if you are on the right track or if you need to make some changes.

For example, add a yogurt as a snack if you find you are not meeting your daily requirement for milk servings. Add some strawberries or other berries (berry fruit is better because they contain more antioxidants) to your cereal) to obtain an extra serving of fruit. An 8 ounce glass of orange juice everyday can serve as another serving. An 8 ounce glass of cranberry juice everyday can serve as another serving. I can't stand tomato juice, but if you can stand it, a small can of tomato juice serves as one vegetable serving. If you are pressed for time, adding these quick and easy items to your daily routine can help you meet the daily requirements for each food group. The new dietary guidelines recommend 2 coups of fruit and 2 and /2 cups of vegetables per day. You ought to be able to meet that requirement fairly easily.

Set a weekly goal for yourself and continue to maintain your food diary. Weekly goals could be a simple as to order a salad for lunch instead of your regular French fries, or to bring a favorite flavor of yogurt to work every day.

Once you being to really think about your diet, keep the diary, make changes where necessary it begins to get easier to meet the new daily recommended requirements for a healthy diet.

A special note for those of us who have a sweet tooth is just simply limit how often you eat those "forbidden" types of food.
I live in an area where there is an excellent donut bakery shop. These donuts are fresh out of the oven by 5:30 a.m. and I want to tell you these things are absolutely delicious. The baker is one man who says he will take his recipe to the grave, will not even leave it behind for his only daughter, not that I wanted the recipe or anything. I was content filling the donuts, stacking them in the shelf, sneaking bites here and there. And the real treat was it was Saturday, the shop was closed on Sunday. Whatever was leftover this day we could all take home at closing. I took 100's of donuts home that year.

I worked for this donut shop about one year, and had so much fun getting fat and eating all those forbidden donuts.
It was fun while it lasted, but all good things seem to have to come to an end quicker than you want them to.

From the time this donut shop opened in my area when I was around 20 years old I wanted to work there. I never really could work in this little donut shop because I always had so much better paying and nicer jobs. There came a day, however, when I transferred into the same town where this little donut shop was and it was easier for me to at least work part-time there.

It was a Saturday morning job. I did not mind getting up at 3:00 a.m. to be there by 5:00 a.m. on Saturday morning because I knew first thing I was going to make the coffee and start sampling those delicious donuts. It was a very personal treat and reward for me for about a year. I only earned about $50 on this day. The treat was seeing how those donuts were prepared "in person" and getting to sample all of them. Boy did I have a good time in that job! I still want to go back to that Saturday morning job. I just still have other things more interesting to do and Lord knows at age 50 now I don't need the extra fat, sugar and calories. It would be too much of a temptation to overeat again and probably really get myself in trouble. I did end up with teeth that hurt more during that year I worked and ate at the Donut shop! I told my dentist, well the reason might just be this donut shop I been working at every Saturday.......Food is one of life's great pleasures.

In conclusion here, you can make simple enough changes to your daily diet to meet the requirements for a healthy eating pattern. That donut shop had the biggest, roundest, cinnamon rolls I ever saw.............and blueberry cake donuts just would melt in your mouth.........

Anyway, I am really on a personal journey now to turn myself around and eat healthier. You can do it too!

Author: Connie Limon. Please visit our collection of Nutrition and Health articles at http://nutritionandhealthhub.com Articles are for information, education and FREE reprints to your newsletter, website or blog.

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