Free Guide To Healthy Eating
This page encapsulates my current ideas into a simple and Free Guide To Healthy Eating.
Eventually there will be links here to other parts of the site to expand on any area you need more information on.
Doing the research and personal exploration for this weighty topic (pun intended:)!) has brought a surprising uniformity of thought, at least in my mind, out of a seemingly diverse array of material.
I've put my thoughts in a flow chart below to show you what steps to take to get full advantage from this free guide to healthy eating.
Step 1. Have a vision of a healthy you.
Take an active interest in your health and wellbeing and support that with reading and personal experimentation to find what works best for you. Get support if you need it.
Decide what is important to you in terms of your health and wellbeing. What are your two top goals for yourself for the next 6 months?
1. __________________________________
2. __________________________________
As well as creating a vision of success and reviewing your vision regularly, make a commitment to making your goals happen and follow through on that by personally mastering this free guide to healthy eating.
On a daily basis the optimum is to feel a balanced energy throughout the day along with mental clarity and focus along with no food cravings or bloating.
That's the short term. The longer term view is to eliminate the inflammatory process in the body so that you can drastically reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke as well as cancer and a whole raft of other problems. To read more about this and the early warning recommended specific medical tests I'd recommend ordering and reading this heart surgeon's ebook.
Step 2. Be aware of where you are at:
i) Understand and work out your healthiest BMI. You can also work with body fat percentages. If you are going to a gym you may already have done this. For a very rough rule of thumb stand up, grab your flesh an inch or two out from your navel between fingers and thumb. Take a good chunk getting as close to the muscle as you can. How far apart are your fingers and thumb? More than an inch? You have work to do. Sorry, but at least that's that bad news over with. But do run through the BMI page and clarify for yourself your healthiest BMI.
ii) Create a food diary and record what you are eating and drinking?
iii) Also record when do you eat and how you feel 1-2 hours after eating.
Healthy food combinations should leave you feeling like you have great energy and mental clarity. There should be no hunger, food cravings or bloating.
Unhealthy food combinations can leave you feeling like you have too little or too much energy and unable to concentrate along with a combination of feeling hungry or wanting to snack, craving a particular food and feel bloated.
Continuously have a reality check with yourself.
iv) Are you at your ideal BMI with good mental-emotional-physical energy levels between meals, which is the ideal situation and the one you are aiming for by eating healthy.
v) Or are you over your ideal BMI and do you have meals that don’t leave you satisfied or make you either jittery (too much carbohydrate) or sluggish (too much protein & fat)?
Step 3. Take on the journey of exploration to see how you can improve by learning to master what I call the 3 core competencies of healthy living; drinking, eating & moving.
i) Drink water to keep your body hydrated. Try drinking when you feel hungry until you can tell the difference between hunger and thirst.
ii) Drink a Liquid Minerals like Body Balance daily.
iii) Experiment with eating to see what ‘fuel mix’ of protein, good fat and low GI carbohydrates gives you good, lasting energy.
Breakfast:
If you tend to store fat on your stomach and have problems with carbohydrate cravings try a protein based breakfast rather than a carb based one. You can eat a version of dinner (fish, meat or chicken with salad) or try a protein shake (My personal favourite is egg with or without protein powder, various low GI fruits, nuts/flaxseeds soaked overnight in water. If you must use milk and for a while I would suggest you don't, then pay attention to this: {if you prefer red meats you will probably feel better on full cream, if you prefer white meats you will likely feel better on reduced fat milk}) for breakfast and just protein and above ground vegetables for lunch and dinner.
Snacks:
If you need to snack - low GI fruit and maybe a few nuts The nuts particularly if you prefer red meat, fruit on it's own may not work for you.
Lunch & Dinner:
If you prefer red meats and the legs of chicken and turkey try eating meals that are just that and above ground vegetables, eating your meat first.
If you prefer lighter meats and the chicken/turkey breast try eating some meals just with that and above ground vegetables, eating your vegetables first.
If you don’t have a preference try both ways to see what works best.
If you prefer eating vegetarian try meals with just vegetables and legumes or go very light on grains. Don't make the mistake of thinking cheese is protein. It's 90% fat so if you are going to eat any cheese, choose a low fat cheese like cottage cheese.
Ongoing
If you are comfortable with this, carry on with it until you are down to the BMI or weight that you want to be at, or you can simply do this for a week to ten days. Then try adding in whole grains or starchy vegetables (start with just 1/4-1/2 slice of bread or 1 tablespoon of cooked grain or starchy vegetable like sweet potato at a meal) paying attention to your energy levels after and up to the next meal and adjust your proportions as necessary.
If you don’t tend to store fat on your stomach and don’t crave carbohydrates then you may be able to have more whole grain complex carbohydrates in your ‘fuel mix’. But if you need to get your BMI down pay attention to the quantities of food you are eating.
And for everyone it's good to increase the quantity and variety of vegetables and fruits in your meals and snacks, eat more raw foods and learn to sprout. This will automatically mean you are eating low GI foods. The richer colour the fruits and vegetables are the more nutrients they will generally have in them.
(iv) Learn to eat like the Japanese - until you are 80% full. How you do that is you pay attention to when the sense of hunger leaves and use that as a cue to put your knife and fork down and plate aside. Don't wait until you feel full to do that because your brain doesn't get you're full till at least 20 minutes after your stomach is. And you can overeat plenty in that 20 minutes:)!
If you are eating the right fuel mix for you this will be an easier thing to do as you will find that the right fuel mix is very satisfying and therefore you will end up consuming less calories.
(v) Exercise!
If you are not already moving and exercising try 30 minutes of walking in 1-3 chunks.
Work up to moving daily.
Then explore other flexibility and resistive movement that is fun and enjoyable for YOU and over time, if you can, work up to 60 minutes a day.
Or you can look at shorter interval type training where you alternate 2 mins of activity with 2 mins of rest increasing the intensity each time (70% then 80-90% then 100% of capacity) doing various exercises using your body weight for resistance. Sprinting is also good for this framework.
Here is my favourite recommended form of exercise which is not only time efficient and effective but will make your body more resilient if you do have a heart attack so that you have a better chance of surviving than 50:50. Start strengthening your heart and lungs now with as little as 12 minutes a day.
One last thought on this free guide to healthy eating.
Choice has exploded over the past few centuries and particularly in the past 50 years. With that comes responsibility. My thought is that we either take that responsibility and choose to invest our time, energy and money in creating a healthy life now or we will more likely be forced to spend our time, energy and money coping with an unhealthy one in the future.
The choice is yours - choose well;)!
To your health and wellbeing,
Darag
Return to Liquid Minerals 4 You