A healthy eating and fitness plan can help you feel and look better. Whether you seek to lose weight, or simply improve your overall health, even small changes in your diet and fitness routine can help. Build your plan around manageable strategies that do not require a lot of extra effort or time, and over time, they will become part of your regular routine.
Healthy Eating
Healthy eating calls for a diet focused mainly on plant foods, with less emphasis on meats, processed foods, and saturated and trans fats. Fresh fruits and vegetables, legumes and whole grains form the foundation of most meals. If you choose to eat meat, poultry and fish are the healthiest choices, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. About 20 to 35 percent of daily calories should come from fats, primarily the unsaturated types found in plant oils, such as safflower, olive and soybean, nuts, avocados and fatty fish.
Fitness Recommendations
To stay healthy, the American College of Sports Medicine recommends, at the very least, 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise equivalent to a brisk walk five days per week. Alternatively, you can undertake high-intensity exercise such as running for 20 minutes, three times per week. You can also combine higher- and lower-intensity exercise during the week to fulfill these cardiovascular exercise recommendations. Strength training helps preserve lean muscle mass and your ability to perform daily functions, especially as you age. ACSM advises most adults to perform strength training twice per week. Each session should address all major muscle groups of the body -- abdominals, legs, back, chest, arms and shoulders -- with a total of 8 to 10 total exercises. Each exercise should be performed for a minimum of 8 to 12 repetitions with weight that leads to fatigue.
Considerations
A healthy eating and fitness plan produces results if you are consistent. Depending on your age and physical fitness level, it may take several weeks or months to experience noticeable results. Even if a healthy eating and fitness plan causes you to lose just 5 to 10 percent of your body weight, you are likely to experience significant improvements in your blood pressure, cholesterol levels and blood sugar.
Misconceptions
Simply choosing healthy foods is not enough to help you lose weight. If you eat too much of any food, healthy or not, you will gain weight. Pay attention to portion sizes. Consider weighing proteins on a food scale and measuring grains and oils for a few days to get an idea of how much you are eating. A typical portion of meat, fish or poultry is 3 to 4 oz., about the size of a deck of cards. For grains, stick to ½ to 1 cup at meals, and oils should be limited to just a teaspoon or two at each sitting.
Sample Plan
A healthy fitness plan might include a 30-minute walk on Monday, a 30-minute swim on Wednesday, a 20-minute jog on Thursday, a rest day on Friday and a family bike ride for an hour on Saturday. Sunday can serve as another rest day. On Tuesday and Thursday, do one set of 8 to 12 squats, push-ups, tricep dips, bicep curls, abdominal crunches, forward lunges, back rows and military presses.
A healthy eating plan might begin with oatmeal, soy milk, berries and chopped almonds for breakfast, a roast chicken sandwich on whole grain bread with baby carrots and red bell pepper strips for lunch, and a dinner of grilled salmon with brown rice and a large green salad dressed with olive oil and lemon juice. Snacks such as fresh fruit, yogurt, 1-oz. servings of nuts, whole-grain cereal with skim milk and air-popped popcorn round out a healthy meal plan.
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