Every five years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture updates the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which form the basis for health and diet ideas nationwide. The 2010 guidelines stress that poor diets and lack of physical activity are the two biggest challenges facing Americans. If you follow a few basic health and diet principles, you can overcome those challenges and reduce your risk of joining the national overweight and obesity epidemic.
Physical Activity
Think of exercise and regular physical activity as essential to your health as eating or taking your blood pressure medicine. In fact, you may be able to reduce or eliminate that medicine by exercising more. Some physical exercise is better than none, and more vigorous exercise such as very brisk walking is even better. Exercise helps you lose weight, improves your mood, helps your heart and lungs function to their utmost, improves your balance, keeps your blood sugar levels in check and helps reduce your risk of developing serious diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and some cancers.
Quality Foods
Improve your health and reduce calories by eating nutrient-dense food. These foods contain a high percentage of vitamins and minerals and other nutrients compared with the amount of calories. For instance, most fruits and vegetables have lots of vitamins and minerals, but leafy green vegetables, such as kale, spinach and collard greens, contain even more nutrients with fewer calories than celery or zucchini. Likewise, fish contains more than the amount of protein your body needs without the excess calories found in ham or fatty cuts of beef.
Dangerous Foods
High-calorie foods, with lots of saturated fat, sugar and sodium, reside at the other end of the spectrum from healthy, nutrient-dense foods. To improve your health and to lose weight, cut back on the amount of soda you drink and potato chips or pizza with extra cheese and sausage you eat. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studied eating habits from 1985 to 2006 and found that if you reduced your diet by 56 calories each day, you could lose about 5 lbs. each year.
Overeating
To reduce the amount of food you eat to help you lose weight, buy smaller dinnerware and reduce the amount of time you spend watching TV. Researchers at Cornell University discovered that people unconsciously eat more when their bowls or plates are bigger. And numerous research studies document that some people overeat based on their TV habits. For these people, reducing their TV time resulted in fewer calories consumed.
References
- U.S. Department of Agriculture: Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010
- MayoClinic.com: Aerobic Exercise -- Top 10 Reasons to Get Physical
- Harvard Health Publications: Getting Your Vitamins and Minerals through Diet
- "Nutrition Perspectives"; Unhealthy Foods Become Less Popular with Increasing Costs; March/April 2010
- "Journal of the American Medical Association"; Super Bowls: Serving Bowl Size and Food Consumption; April, 2005
- American Council on Exercise: Couch Potatoes Arise
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