How to Improve Your Diet

Taking a well balanced and healthy diet is very essential. If the food is right, it keeps the body fit and healthy, even in one's old age! A balanced diet ensures that the important organs of the body such as brain and heart function well. These days, due to the lack of time, people often resort to eating foods that are easily available, which may not necessarily be healthy. Fast foods, high sugar foods and packaged foods, if taken everyday, can contribute to many lifestyle diseases such as obesity, heart disease and even cancer! That's why, it is important for people to improve upon their diet, so that they can lead a disease-free, healthy and happy life.


Tips on How to Improve Your Diet

• Water aids in digestion, flushes out the toxins from your body and at the same time, suppresses hunger pangs. So, drink a gallon everyday to enjoy these benefits and to keep the body hydrated.
• Do not skip your breakfast. It should be the healthiest meal of the day as it supplies the body with energy to carry out various physical activities throughout the day. Cereals, low fat milk and mixed fruit salad is the ideal breakfast.
• Take the dinner two hours prior to sleeping and also, take a light dinner. This will ensure that the food gets digested easily and does not cause fats to accumulate in the body.
• One of the steps to improve your diet is to take five to six small meals in a day, instead of three big meals. This will keep you away from snacking on unhealthy chips and fast foods in-between meals. It will bring down your overall food intake too, thus helping you to maintain the right weight.
• Include lots of fruits and vegetables in your healthy balanced diet. Fruits and vegetables, compared to other foods, are lesser in calories and high in nutrients, vitamins and minerals. They will keep your body healthy, at the same time, ensure that you do not gain weight.
• Include lean meats, egg and fish in your diet as they supply the body with proteins, which are very essential for building muscles.
• Complex carbohydrates such as those found in wholegrain breads, brown rice and potato are a must-have in daily healthy diet menu as they energize the body, without causing it to gain weight.
• One of the important ways to improve your diet is by giving up on unhealthy, fatty foods and beverages, such as, pizzas, burgers, soft drinks, alcohol, cakes and pastries.
• Do not give up on fats altogether. Instead, meet the fat requirements of your body by including healthy fats such as those found in olive oil and fish, in your diet.
• Minimize the intake of processed or packaged foods as these are not as healthy as fresh foods and contain certain harmful chemicals too, which can have negative repercussions on the body.
• Choose healthy snacks. Nuts, almonds, low fat yogurt and fruits make for some good snacks items. So, keep them in your bag at all times. This will check your tendency to snack on unhealthy foods.
• Use salt and sugar sparsely while you cook meals. Use iodized salt in small quantity so that you do not suffer from iodine deficiency. Another alternative is to season your foods with herbs instead of with salt. As for sugar, you can use honey and stevia in its place as they add lesser calories to the body and taste almost the same.
• Limit the intake of caffeine beverages such as tea and coffee. Two to three cups is more than enough or if possible, switch to herbal tea or green tea. Caffeine hampers the absorption of many essential nutrients such as iron, if taken immediately after a meal. So, for those who want to know, "how to improve your diet nutrition?", an important tip is to not take any caffeine beverage, within two hours of after having a meal.
• If you are prone to emotional eating i.e. eating high-fat and high-sugar foods to make yourself feel good, one of the healthy diet tips is to control your stress levels by undertaking stress-management techniques such as yoga, meditation or breathing exercises everyday. Even if they are done for ten minutes, these can elevate your mood and stop you from binge eating caused by stress.

For a fit body, along with eating a balanced diet, exercising everyday is essential too. So, make a routine of undertaking cardiovascular exercises such as running, cycling, swimming, dancing or aerobics everyday. Combine these with flexibility, resistance training and weight training exercising and you will have the most fittest, toned and healthiest body!
By Aastha Dogra