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Healthy Eating: Guide to New Food Pyramids and Tips for a Healthy Diet

Healthy eating is not about strict dietary limitations, staying unrealistically thin, or depriving yourself of the foods you love. Rather, it’s about feeling great, having more energy, and stabilizing your mood. If you feel overwhelmed by all the conflicting nutrition and diet advice out there, you’re not alone. It seems that for every expert who tells you a certain food is good for you, you’ll find another saying exactly the opposite. But by using these simple tips, you can cut through the confusion and learn how to create a tasty, varied, and healthy diet.

IN THIS ARTICLE:

Set yourself up for success

Moderation is key

Fill up on fruits & vegetables

Eat more whole grains

Enjoy healthy fats

Put protein in perspective

Add calcium & vitamin D

Limit sugar & salt

Bulk up on fiber

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Healthy eating tip 1: Set yourself up for success

To set yourself up for success, think about planning a healthy diet as a number of small, manageable steps rather than one big drastic change. If you approach the changes gradually and with commitment, you will have a healthy diet sooner than you think.

Simplify. Instead of being overly concerned with counting calories or measuring portion sizes, think of your diet in terms of color, variety, and freshness. This way it should be easier to make healthy choices. Focus on finding foods you love and easy recipes that incorporate a few fresh ingredients. Gradually, your diet will become healthier and more delicious.

Start slow and make changes to your eating habits over time. Trying to make your diet healthy overnight isn’t realistic or smart. Changing everything at once usually leads to cheating or giving up on your new eating plan. Make small steps, like adding a salad (full of different color vegetables) to your diet once a day or switching from butter to olive oil when cooking. As your small changes become habit, you can continue to add more healthy choices to your diet.

Every change you make to improve your diet matters. You don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to completely eliminate foods you enjoy to have a healthy diet. The long term goal is to feel good, have more energy, and reduce the risk of cancer and disease. Don’t let your missteps derail you—every healthy food choice you make counts.

Think of water and exercise as food groups in your diet.

Water. Water helps flush our systems of waste products and toxins, yet many people go through life dehydrated—causing tiredness, low energy, and headaches. It’s common to mistake thirst for hunger, so staying well hydrated will also help you make healthier food choices.

Exercise. Find something active that you like to do and add it to your day, just like you would add healthy greens, blueberries, or salmon. The benefits of lifelong exercise are abundant and regular exercise may even motivate you to make healthy food choices a habit.

Healthy eating tip 2: Moderation is key

Harvard Healthy Eating Plate

People often think of healthy eating as an all or nothing proposition, but a key foundation for any healthy diet is moderation. But what is moderation? In essence, it means eating only as much food as your body needs. You should feel satisfied at the end of a meal, but not stuffed. Moderation is also about balance. Despite what certain fad diets would have you believe, we all need a balance of carbohydrates, protein, fat, fiber, vitamins, and minerals to sustain a healthy body.

The goal of healthy eating is to develop a diet that you can maintain for life, not just a few weeks or months, or until you've hit your ideal weight. For most of us, that means eating less than we do now. More specifically, it means eating far less of the unhealthy stuff (refined sugar, saturated fat, for example) and replacing it with the healthy (such as fresh fruit and vegetables). But it doesn't mean eliminating the foods you love. Eating bacon for breakfast once a week, for example, could be considered moderation if you follow it with a healthy lunch and dinner—but not if you follow it with a box of donuts and a sausage pizza. If you eat 100 calories of chocolate one afternoon, balance it out by deducting 100 calories from your evening meal. If you're still hungry, fill up with an extra serving of fresh vegetables.

Try not to think of certain foods as “off-limits.” When you ban certain foods or food groups, it is natural to want those foods more, and then feel like a failure if you give in to temptation. If you are drawn towards sweet, salty, or unhealthy foods, start by reducing portion sizes and not eating them as often. If the rest of your diet is healthy, eating a burger and fries once a week probably won’t have too much of a detrimental effect on your health. Eating junk food just once a month will have even less of an impact. As you reduce your intake of unhealthy foods, you may find yourself craving them less or thinking of them as only occasional indulgences.

Think smaller portions. Serving sizes have ballooned recently, particularly in restaurants. When dining out, choose a starter instead of an entree, split a dish with a friend, and don't order supersized anything. At home, use smaller plates, think about serving sizes in realistic terms, and start small. If you don't feel satisfied at the end of a meal, try adding more leafy green vegetables or rounding off the meal with fresh fruit. Visual cues can help with portion sizes–your serving of meat, fish, or chicken should be the size of a deck of cards and half a cup of mashed potato, rice, or pasta is about the size of a traditional light bulb.

Healthy eating tip 3: It's not just what you eat, it's how you eat

Healthy Eating

Healthy eating is about more than the food on your plate—it is also about how you think about food. Healthy eating habits can be learned and it is important to slow down and think about food as nourishment rather than just something to gulp down in between meetings or on the way to pick up the kids.

Eat with others whenever possible. Eating with other people has numerous social and emotional benefits—particularly for children—and allows you to model healthy eating habits. Eating in front of the TV or computer often leads to mindless overeating.

Take time to chew your food and enjoy mealtimes. Chew your food slowly, savoring every bite. We tend to rush though our meals, forgetting to actually taste the flavors and feel the textures of our food. Reconnect with the joy of eating.

Listen to your body. Ask yourself if you are really hungry, or have a glass of water to see if you are thirsty instead of hungry. During a meal, stop eating before you feel full. It actually takes a few minutes for your brain to tell your body that it has had enough food, so eat slowly.

Eat breakfast, and eat smaller meals throughout the day. A healthy breakfast can jumpstart your metabolism, and eating small, healthy meals throughout the day (rather than the standard three large meals) keeps your energy up and your metabolism going.

Avoid eating at night. Try to eat dinner earlier in the day and then fast for 14-16 hours until breakfast the next morning. Early studies suggest that this simple dietary adjustment—eating only when you’re most active and giving your digestive system a long break each day—may help to regulate weight. After-dinner snacks tend to be high in fat and calories so are best avoided, anyway.

Healthy eating tip 4: Fill up on colorful fruits and vegetables

Shop the perimeter of the grocery storeFruits and vegetables are the foundation of a healthy diet. They are low in calories and nutrient dense, which means they are packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber.

Try to eat a rainbow of fruits and vegetables every day and with every meal—the brighter the better. Colorful, deeply colored fruits and vegetables contain higher concentrations of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants—and different colors provide different benefits, so eat a variety. Aim for a minimum of five portions each day.

Ahhh beans! We love them for their versatility, taste, and nutrients! Beans are awesome for your kids because they:

Are abundant with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.

They are high in fiber- which keeps kids full longer.

They are a great source of protein and complex carbohydrates.

They have been shown to improve cholesterol.

One way to purchase beans is in the bags of multi-bean soups. This gives you a variety of beans that you may not be eating otherwise.

On Sunday, I poured the entire bag (about 3 cups) into the Slow-cooker before church. I added chopped onions, salt, and enough water to cover the beans by a few inches. I set it to high, and 4 hours later, the beans were cooked!

We then pureed the beans and added some seasonings like cilantro, cumin, and a little more salt. Our bean cream, though not pretty, looked like this:

It turned out like re-fried beans, except with 14 more beans! Having a variety of beans, gives you a variety of nutrients.

With your bean cream, you could make burritos:

Or, our favorite: Kids Mexican Sushi

To make the sushi, we spread the bean cream on a large, soft, tortilla. (I've tried it with whole wheat tortillas, and depending on the ones you get, they might be hard to roll up. Make sure they are soft when rolling, by microwaving for a few seconds. Then we spread some guacamole on top of the bean cream and rolled up the tortilla. Then, wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge! This is important if you want to be able to cut them without having them fall apart.

Top your sushi with chopped tomatoes and shredded cheese.

To add more healthy meals like this one into your meal rotation, consider signing up for our meal plan service!

15 Bean Kids Mexican Sushi

Instructions

3 cups 15 bean soup mix (or 7 or whatever your grocery store carries)

8 cups of water

1 onion, chopped

1 teaspoon of salt

Place all in slow cooker and cook on high for about 4-6 hours.

When the beans have cooked, drain while reserving the liquid. Pour beans into a big bowl, and mix with a hand mixer, or a masher. Add as much of the reserved water (and a little extra salt) as needed to attain desired consistency. For extra flavor add jalapenos, some pepper, or even cayenne if you like your beans more spicy.

If you store this, reconstitute as necessary if the beans get too thick upon sitting in the fridge.

To make the sushi use:

Tortillas

Bean Cream

Guacamole

Warm tortilla to be flexible. Spread with bean cream and guacamole. Roll up and wrap with a plastic wrap and chill. A few hours later, take out and slice like sushi. Add chopped tomatoes and cheese to the top.

2 Ingredient Grapefruit Slush

Every Winter my grandparents 'snowbird' in Yuma, Arizona. They usually come back sometime in March. On their way home they always stop by our house to share with us some of the yummy food they have been enjoying down there. The one thing they always bring us are large, juicy, delicious grapefruit. My husband seriously looks forward to it every year because you just can't find grapefruit like that around here. They aren't the dark pink grapefruit - they are more of a yellow color on the outside and a pale pink on the inside. When our supply of those grapefruit run out, we have to settle and buy the big bag of grapefruit from Costco. Some people have an evening tradition of eating a bowl of cereal or a bowl of ice cream. Pretty much every night I can count on my husband with a bowl full of grapefruit. My 2 year old has now caught on and they both love sitting and eating grapefruit together. Its actually pretty cute.

I love grapefruit also. My 4 year old doesn't love it. In fact she won't touch it with a 10 foot spoon. She does however love smoothies and slushies. And this is exactly how I got her to eat grapefruit. One of the reasons I think that she doesn't love grapefruit is because it is so tart. For this slushy, I combined the tart grapefruit with a frozen banana for sweetness and it was the perfect compliment.