by Abbi Sharp

Created on: October 12, 2009   Last Updated: October 16, 2009

Modern tools make it so easy to track statistics about your body. So much information is available that it becomes overwhelming to prioritize the most important aspects of your health and to select the best way to keep track. The most important thing to monitor is the nutritional quality of the food and nutrients we take into our body. Our efforts to exercise will be better when our bodies are energized with the right types of food. Also, the long-term effects of monitoring the quality of our diet will lead to Diabetes and Heart Disease prevention.

Servings

Making healthy food choices is easier and more productive when you count servings first and calories last. Monitor the amount of servings you get of the best foods, and make sure that you eat more servings of them per day than the worst food choices. The American Diabetes Association (ADA) says that the best advice for choosing the best foods involve eating non-starchy vegetables and whole grain foods. (http://www.diabetes.org/food-nutrition-lifestyle/nu trition/what-can-i-eat/healthy-food-choices.jsp) It's easy to keep track of serving sizes because the numbers are smaller. You can use a notebook to write down what and how much you ate.

Nutritional quality

Keep track of the nutritional information. This would include fat grams, carbohydrates, protein, vitamins and minerals your food contains. The FDA requires that prepackaged food list these. Know the difference between good and bad fat, and good and bad carbohydrates and make sure your food has an appropriate balance of good fat, good carbohydrates, and protein. This might be better to do with a spreadsheet, but rounding and estimating can be just as effective. Using online resources, such as the official Zone Diet website, is a convenient way of keeping track of a proper ratio."The Zone Diet can best be described as a moderate-carbohydrate, moderate-protein, moderate-fat diet that has approximately one gram of fat for every two grams of protein and three grams of carbohydrates (the Zone 1-2-3 Method). These ratios represent the newest dietary recommendations from the Joslin Diabetes Research Center at Harvard Medical School for the treatment of obesity and type 2 diabetes." (http://www.zonediet.com/EATING/ZoneDietExplained/ta bid/81/Default.aspx)

If you buy fresh food these may not be listed, so you can search the web for general nutrition information. Fresh food is far healthier than pre-packaged food, so you are probably making healthier choices when

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