I think everyone realizes that healthy eating is important. A healthy diet prevents heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, strokes, and a slew of other health issues.
(This article is for education purposes only; I am not a nutritionist or a doctor. This article is not intended to offer personal medical advice. You should seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding your specific medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking treatment.)
Eating a balance of proteins, carbs, fruit and vegetables can be very over whelming. There are so many diet plans to choose from and knowing where to start on a healthy eating journey can cause a lot of anxiety.
I struggle with two different health issues, that should have similar diet plans but they don’t always match up. One diet says to increase morning carbs and the other says to limit carbs or have smaller servings of carbs throughout the day. I have tried a variation of each diet, but following one diet explicitly throws my blood work off one way or another.
MyPlate
A good start to healthy dieting is reviewing the guidelines of the USDA MyPlate. There are pros and cons to their recommendations.
The guideline doesn’t break down fruits and vegetables to those that have higher carb counts to those that are lower in carbs. There isn’t a mention of choosing proteins that are lower in fat: chicken and fish as opposed to red meats.
The MyPlate is a simple view of what each meal should include and small changes can be made over time.
Another option to the MyPlate is Harvard’s Healthy Eating Plate (you can find more details about the plate here). This is the guideline that I tend to follow, I find that there is more focus on food choices that have health benefits, lean meat, whole foods as opposed to processed food, and water over sugary drinks. Also included in the Healthy Eating Plate is the recommendation of daily exercise.
Mayo Clinic
I have also followed the “real” Mayo Clinic diet. Since I wasn’t looking to lose a significant amount of weight I found the Lose It! Phase restrictive and I spent so much time meal planning to get everything correct.
What I have learned from trying and reviewing healthy diets is that you need to create meals that focus on fruits and vegetable adding proteins and grains in moderation. Most importantly you need healthy habits of exercise and portion control.
Eating Real Food
When choosing any healthy diet a key component is fruits and vegetables. This means eating real food and eliminating processed food from your diet. We know cake happens and it’s good to indulge a little here and there, but keeping to real ingredients has many health benefits.
In my journey to better health was introduced to the Food Lover’s diet that has you read labels and avoid canned or boxed foods that have more than five ingredients and should be ingredients you can pronounce.
Reading labels became a must and very enlightening to the contents of the food we normally eat, so many chemical ingredients in our food, yuck!
At this point I discovered 100 days of Real Food Lisa Leake’s website provided steps to cutting out processed foods. There are many articles and resources on her website that help make moving towards a healthier eating possible.
Wrap Up
A healthy diet has many benefits. It protects you from diseases such has diabetes, heart conditions and cancer. A healthy diet isn’t a cure for these conditions but it helps organs and tissues work effectively. There are 100s of articles on Google Scholar regarding the importance of eating healthy and the benefit to your body.
Have you had a healthy diet journey? Share what has or hasn’t worked for you.