Diet Dos and Don’ts: Principles for a Healthy Eating Plan

There are loads of superfoods and special extras that can help enhance a healthy diet, but what are the basics you need in place to support your wellbeing? Let’s take a look at the main advice you need to get your wellness in order:

 

1. Base your meals on starchy foods: Of all the foods you eat, starchy foods – including potatoes, cereals, pasta, rice and bread – should make up roughly a third. Carbs and starch have gained a bit of an unfair reputation in the dieting world, with most of us worrying about our waistlines. However, gram for gram, starchy foods contain fewer than half the calories of fat, so try to include at least one starchy food with each main meal.

 

2. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables: They say you need to eat your five-a-day, and so many of us feel good about ourselves if we approach the three or four mark. However, you need to eat AT LEAST five portions of fruit and veg every day to guard your wellness against chronic diseases. Try to get a few more portions in place by chopping a banana over your breakfast cereal, drinking a glass of 100% unsweetened fruit juice or swapping your usual mid-morning snack for some dried fruit.

 

3. Eat fish more often: Of your recommended two portions of fish a week, at least one portion should be oily fish. As well as containing the protein, vitamins and minerals found in all fish, oily fish is packed with omega-3 fats, which may help to prevent heart disease. Try to get a variety of oily fish in your diet – including salmon, mackerel, trout, herring, fresh tuna, sardines and pilchards – as well as a variety on non-oily fish like haddock, plaice, coley, cod, tinned tuna, skate and hake.

 

4. Eat saturated fat less often: While you do need some fat in your diet, the amount and type of fat you’re eating is very significant. If you consume too much saturated fat – found in foods , such as hard cheese, cakes, biscuits, sausages, cream, butter, lard and pies – you can increase your blood cholesterol level, which, in turn, raises your risk of developing heart disease. Replace saturated fats with healthier, unsaturated versions, such as vegetable oils, oily fish and avocados.

 

5. Eat sugar less often: While we’re on things to avoid, if you live in the UK it’s likely that you eat too much sugar – we all do! Sugary foods and drinks, including alcoholic ones, contribute to weight gain and tooth decay, so cut down on sugary fizzy drinks, alcoholic drinks, cakes, biscuits and pastries, and focus on the sugars that are found naturally in foods such as fruit and milk.

 

6. Eat less salt: The chances are that you eat too much salt, even if you don’t add any to your food. Eating too much salt can raise your blood pressure, which eventually increases your risk of developing heart disease or having a stroke. Cut down with the help of trusty food labels; if there’s more than 1.5g of salt per 100g, the food is high in salt and should be avoided. Anyone over the age of 11 should eat no more than 6g of salt a day. Younger children should have even less.

 

7. Drink lots of water: To keep from getting dehydrated, you need to drink about 1.2 litres of fluid every day. While all non-alcoholic drinks count, your best options are water, milk and fruit juices. As sugary soft and fizzy drinks are high in added sugar and calories, why would you bother?

Categories: alcoholic drinks, cakes biscuits, developing heart, Fish, fizzy drinks, foods, Fruit and Veg, heart disease, oily fish, Starches, starchy foods

How to Keep Going All Day with a Fatigue-Free Diet!

Is there anything more precious than a good night’s sleep? Perhaps it’s all the more precious because, let’s be honest, you rarely get one. Once you reach a certain age, you can’t even remember a day in which you weren’t tired but does that make the daytime drag inevitable, or is there something you can do to guard your wellbeing against tiredness? Aside from getting those blessed seven to nine hours a night, you can actually support your sleep wellness through your diet – who knew?

 

The first thing to remember when eating to beat tiredness is to have a healthy, balanced diet that contains foods from the four main food groups in the right proportions. If you can’t think back to when you did the four food groups at school, here’s a little refresher:

 

1. Potatoes, bread, rice, pasta and other starchy foods

2. Fruit and vegetables

3. Dairy foods

4. Meat, fish, eggs, beans and other non-dairy sources of protein

 

However, not only do you need to keep regularity within your meals, but within the times you eat them. Although it’s not always possible to eat at the same time every day, eating regular meals allows your body to work out when the next meal is coming and prepare for it. This helps you to manage your feelings of hunger (which is good for weight loss as well as banishing tiredness) and you also sustain your energy levels more effectively. The best method is to eat three meals a day and limit your intake of in-between meal snacks, especially if they’re high in fat.

 

Speaking of meals, it’s important not to neglect the most important one of the day; that’s right, breakfast. You need breakfast if you want any chance of getting the energy you need to face the day. Still, according to the British Dietetic Association (BDA), up to a third of us a regularly skipping breakfast – no wonder we’re all so knackered! The best breakfasts contain healthy options (obviously) so stick to porridge with fruit, a nice vegetable omelette or wholemeal toast with low-fat spread or jam. If you really can’t face food first thing in the morning, it’s far better to take a high-fibre snack to eat on the run, rather than snacking on high-sugar or high-fat foods when the mid-morning hunger pangs strike.

 

A good snack to choose would be fruit and vegetables, as these are good sources of vitamins, minerals and fibre, which are essential nutrients that your body needs in order to work properly. It doesn’t matter if you get your five-a-day through juices, or if the produce is fresh, frozen, tinned or dried; it all counts. Similarly, starchy foods or carbohydrates are also vital for helping you maintain a range of nutrients in your diet. Moreover, potatoes, bread, cereals, pasta and the like are a good source of energy, and so if you want to stave of tiredness starchy foods should make up about a third of everything you eat. However, not all starches are created equal; you need to go for slow-burning whole grain or wholemeal varieties, as they provide energy in a gradual way.

 

Finally, there are a few foods that you simply need to avoid to stay alert throughout the day. You’re probably good at telling your kids to go easy on the sugar, but do you take that advice yourself? Sugar steals your stamina, as well as rotting your teeth and ruining your waistline. It’s impossible to eliminate sugar from your diet, but cutting down on foods with lots of added sugar, such as sweets, cakes, biscuits, non-diet fizzy drinks and chocolates, is always advisable.

Categories: breakfast, diet, Food Groups, foods, high, nbsp, potatoes bread, Regular Meals, starchy foods, Sugar, tiredness