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We recommend that you consult your physician before considering participation in this or any dietary plan, especially if you have serious health concerns. For instance, diabetics may need to limit or avoid sugary fruit, but may still benefit from other parts of the Best Choices Healthy Diet.
Take a look at some dietary Best Choices
The link above is a simplified list of some of the good vs. bad choices. We have studied the proven benefits of the Mediterranean Diet, the DASH Diet, and plant-based (vegan) whole foods diets. All have impressive histories of success in providing optimal nutrition and facilitating weight loss. Our Best Choices Healthy Diet combines the best of those three plans, with some additional guidelines.
But is that what will help people live healthy lives and control their weight—another "diet plan?" The reality is that most people want to be healthy and lose weight, but it is very difficult to make sense of the confusing health and diet "facts" that seem to change every day.
There are many reasons why we don't make the best choices when it comes to health and weight control. The most common reason is misinformation. There are powerful economic forces at play that rely on creating the perception of healthy choices. These powerful food industries, pharmaceutical industries, and trade organizations depend on your continued bad choices. Restaurants and grocery stores are often complicit in promoting those bad choices.
In fact, nearly all of the messages the typical person receives concerning good health is in the form of an advertisement for a food product or drug with deceptive, incomplete, or inaccurate health claims. Why? Unhealthy food just happens to be very profitable.
Obesity is the result of a perfect storm of factors beyond bad food choices, including changing lifestyles, less education, less exercise, and economic disparity, as well as economic and political deception, manipulation, and greed of the highest order.
What each of us still has is choice: the ability to choose what we eat, and perhaps most importantly, what we don't eat.
In our forthcoming e-book, The Best Diet Choices for Reversing Obesity and Improving Health, we will reveal how our current disease and obesity crisis is both fully understandable and reversible.
We'll examine some of the barriers to this reversal and explain how we can make some profound changes in our diet and our behaviors that will put us on the right track to good health and weight control. This e-book will cost less than your morning latte, and there are no products to buy or meetings to attend.
Here are a few things we'll discuss in detail:
* What type of calories you consume does matter. Diets based solely on calorie restriction are extremely hard to maintain and often are detrimental to good health. While losing weight is almost always healthy, how you lose it really does matter.
* Some of our favorite foods, commonly thought to be essential to good health, are both unhealthy and unnecessary.
* On the other hand, some fats are especially healthy, including one that is a form of saturated fat. (It is actually given to hospital patients in certain circumstances for its health benefits).
* Fresh fruit is always a best choice, but fruit juice and dried fruit are not. We'll tell you why.
* All LDL cholesterol is not equal; one kind is particularly dangerous and it is linked to sugar, not fatty food. Do you have high triglycerides? The solution is less sugar, not less fat.
And finally, we leave you with something you can do right now to improve your health and fight obesity—eliminate excess sugar from your diet. Restricting added sugar* in our diet is the single best choice we can make to improve our health and control weight. The fructose in sugar, not dietary fat, is most likely to produce the most dangerous fat in your body, visceral fat-that which surrounds the vital organs.
The fructose in sugar is addictive and uniquely harmful to our health when consumed in larger quantities. Sugar is present, often in large quantities, in nearly all of the packaged and processed food we eat. Sugar may be labeled as high-fructose corn syrup, evaporated cane juice, nectar, sucrose, honey, or a host of other products that are all forms of sugar.
Our recommended limit for daily added sugar* is similar to the American Heart Association's limit. For women, that is 100 calories (6 teaspoons or 25 grams), and for men it's 145 calories (9 teaspoons or 36 grams.)
Moreover, with diabetes, the glucose in sugar is also a problem. It is imperative that diabetics follow their physician's advice regarding sugar consumption.
You can start making better choices today; see our healthy diet best choices. Watch for our e-book for more complete guidelines and our Best Choices Healthy Diet in detail.* Added sugar is any sugar contained in the foods or beverages we consume, other than that which is naturally found in fresh fruits and vegetables.
I'm sure you've heard of super foods (or superfoods), and you've probably seen lists from time to time. To clarify, because no legal definition seems to exist, superfoods are commonly thought of as being especially rich in nutrients, especially phytonutrients. Phytonutrients refers to the phytochemicals that occur naturally in plants, such as beta-carotene, lycopene, and selenium. Although scientific evidence linking phytonutrients to protective or curative abilities is scarce, plenty of evidence exists that eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables every day offers tremendous health benefits, in comparison to a typical contemporary diet of highly processed foods, refined grains, and sugary beverages.
If we're going to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, it's a good idea to choose those with the most nutrition: hence, this series. Each month we will choose a food with lots of nutrients, explain a little about it, and provide some ideas of how to use it. Not all the foods we feature will be fruits and vegetables. Nuts are among superfoods, as are oily fish such as salmon, tuna, mackerel, and sardines. But we'll be equal opportunity superfooders and give them all a chance.
So take a look at our growing list of super foods!
One tip for maintaining a healthy diet is to cook at home. Eating out is fun until you step on the scales. With rare exception, restaurant portions are too large, and that's after you have found an entreé that doesn't load your plate with fats and sugars. Cooking at home is a proven money-saver, and it can be a pound-saver, as well. Fresh, nutritious ingredients taste better and you can control what you put in the recipe.
Following is a collection of recipes that feature basic, healthy ingredients that are easy to put together. They feature simple food, especially soups, all of which freeze well. Divide the batch into meal-sized portions, freeze, and you have a low-calorie, low-cost, nutritious lunch or dinner that can be ready in five minutes.
You're thirsty. What do you reach for? Your options are many: water, soda, fruit juice, coffee, tea, and the list goes on. Chances are that you choose several of these at different times and in different circumstances. Which of these are best for you? Which should you avoid? This article does not rank beverages, nor is it all-inclusive of benefits and drawbacks. But perhaps it will start you on your way to better choices.
[Read more about the best beverage choices]
