by Heather Hamel

Created on: March 11, 2010

Maintaining a healthy weight can be easy with a little willpower and knowledge. Surprisingly, you actually need to eat enough food to stay at a healthy weight. Note that I said “enough” because food like everything else needs to be in moderation, not “too much”. If you don’t take in enough of the proper ( nutritious ) calories, your metabolism will slow down because it thinks it is starving. That is when you stop losing, and often start gaining. If you eat healthy small portions every three to four hours, you will feel less hungry and keep your blood sugar at a healthy level.

A good habit is to start looking at not just the health label on any packaged or prepared food, but also the ingredient list. If you don’t recognize ingredients because they are chemical preservatives, you shouldn’t eat it. You should get your calories from real food, it’s much more nutritious. It is thought that the body will pack on weight with all the chemicals it is exposed to on a daily basis, so they should not be ingested.

Prepare as much of your own food as possible. With some planning, this is healthier and less expensive in the long run. This way you are in control of the ingredients you put in your meals and snacks, and you can learn to substitute healthy ingredients whenever possible, for example if you make your own pizza, substitute in the crust whole wheat flour in place of half of the white flour, less or low fat cheese, add veggies, and now you have a healthy pizza, with no preservatives, and less calories per slice. Use whole grains whenever possible. Keep your portions small.

Eat as many salads and vegetables as you can because these will add fiber to your diet, which helps detoxify your body. Learn about herbs, they pack a nutritional punch with no calories. Use salad dressing sparingly, use an olive oil based type and experiment with different vinegars.  If you add some protein to every meal, it will help you stay full longer. Good lean protein could be lean beef, fish, poulty without the skin, nuts, seeds, egg, or low fat cheese.

Breakfast is often skipped, but this is needed to start your metabolism. If you skip breakfast, your body starts its starvation mode. Even a small breakfast will work, preferably with a little protein in it to sustain the body, like a piece of whole grain toast with cheese, peanut butter, or an egg. Don’t start your day with anything sweet, this will just get the cravings going for the rest of the day, and you want to avoid both sugars and their substitutes as much as possible. If you must use a substitute, look into stevia, or agave nectar. Avoid aspartame, it is bad for you.

Exercise a little each day, even if it is incorporated into housework, or parking further away from your destination, taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Try to make a conscious effort to take as many steps through the day as you can, do some situps and stretches every day. Build a little bit of muscle, more muscle mass burns more calories.  Soon, with these habits you will find yourself feeling fit and healthy.

Learn more about this author, Heather Hamel.
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