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Six Tips To Help You Get Started On A Healthy Diet

Posted by Catherine Morgan on March 12, 2007

SIX TIPS TO HELP YOU GET STARTED ON A HEALTHY DIET — by Catherine Morgan

Do you want to lose weight, feel healthier, or just start eating better? Jumping off the junk food band-wagon isn’t easy. Making the decision to give it a try is a great first start. But, quiting cold-turkey is generally a bad idea. Sometimes making small changes, and working up to more, is a better way to do it. Make one change in your diet today, and keep it up for a week. Then in a week, make another change. Keep adding to your healthy eating changes week after week, until eating healthy is just what you do.

Here are a few places you can start.

1. Eliminate or limit your intake of refined sugars, (ie: cookies, cakes, candy, soda, etc.), nature sugar from fruits are o.k.

2. If you don’t eat vegetables, start eating one serving a day, if you already eat one serving a day, try to start eating two….(you see where I am going with this, right?). Not all vegetables are created equal, for instance; spinach, broccoli, green beans, are really good for you, corn, potatoes, iceberg lettuce, just so so…..but better than nothing.

3. Increase your “lean” protein intake, (ie: chicken, fish, pork, lean beef). Wild Salmon once a week is a great idea, and you can now get it in frozen, single portioned packages. I find this helpful because buying “fresh” goes bad fast. And most “fresh” is actually Atlantic Salmon (code name for farm raised with chemicals).

4. Replace all (or most) soda intake with water. There is nothing about soda, diet or regular, that is good for you. If you are drinking it for the caffeine, coffee is better for this purpose than soda.

5. Eliminate or cut back your use of processed foods, (ie: frozen dinners, anything with a powder packet, anything with “sulfite”, etc.)

6. Increase your intake of fiber, oatmeal in the morning is good for this. I admit, I do cheat and use the “instant” variety of oatmeal, it’s just easier.

These are just a few ideas. Obviously there is much more to good nutrition, but we need to start somewhere, taking baby steps is better than not taking any steps. Don’t do it all at once, make small changes, and gradually work your way into eating a healthier diet. You will begin to see that you feel better when you eat healthier than you do when you are eating junk, this will then become your motivation to keep it up.

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You might also find an article I wrote titled “Can What We Eat Make Us Happy?” helpful. Also see: The All You Can Eat Diet

I also like the book, “YOU on a DIET”. You can find this and many other books and links at my site on Healthy Living and Healthy Dieting .

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ALSO SEE:

Empowerment

Forgiveness

Kindness

Love

Music

Happiness

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13 Responses to “Six Tips To Help You Get Started On A Healthy Diet”

  1. All great tips! I recently got the book You on a Diet, it is definitely a worthwhile book to have – it summarizes all the good info. for health and diet in one place and its done with a bit of humor too. I wrote a review also. Lady Rose

  2. Excellent tips.

    I was very glad to see #4 about replacing soda intake. There is no nutritional value to soda at all. It’s nothing but chemicals and water.

    I know one thing that helped me with my own weight loss was the realization that food is nothing but fuel for the body. With that in mind, proper fuel does mot include diet soda, low fat potato chips, etc.

    Thanks for the great tips.

    Brian

  3. “Lady Rose” — Thanks for your comment. I also like how the book “You on a Diet” adds a bit of humor…..and I like how it talks about dieting in a non-judgmental way.

  4. “Brian” — I agree, if you can begin to think of what you are eating as “fuel” for your body, it becomes clear that certain foods are far from “fuel”. Thanks for your comment, I’m happy you like my tips.

  5. I like your graphic. And definitely agree about getting MORE veggies – I love mine roasted. And making changes one at time is good advice too.

  6. “thedietpulpit” – Thanks for the comment…I’ll have to check out your blog.

  7. goldenferi said

    These are great tips. I see people trying to diet throwing down sugar sodas and red bull. If they jsut cut out that they’d do so much better. When I started cutting back last August and exercising I cut all junk sugar from my diet. I have heard older women can’t lose weight. Not true. It can be done but it takes work and you have to change what you eat.

  8. goldenferi said

    Here are a couple tips I use as well.
    1. Don’t sit and stare at your body. Try to keep it under wraps as much as possible. It will discourage you until things start happening and you will give up.
    2 Throw out your scale. People get on scales every day and wait for a miracle. It will come, you will feel the clothes getting loose.
    3. Don’t join a club right away unless you really need to. It’s too easy to watch what someone else is doing and get discouraged. When I started working out, I could only do 20 situps. So do 20 for a week and then 25 and then 30 and so forth.

  9. “Goldenferi” — These are all great tips, thanks for sharing them.

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