VOLUME 1 ISSUE 3    February 2006 VIEW ARCHIVE

Ten Steps to Healthy Living Improve your lifestyle and health by Shereen Jegtvig It can be difficult to know where to begin when you need to transform your unhealthy lifestyle into a healthy lifestyle. Here are ten steps that you can take to improve your diet and lifestyle: Step 1. Look Back   Think about your diet and lifestyle for the last year or so.  Did you eat healthy foods every day or once a week? How much exercise did you get? In order to set goals and make improvements it is very important to understand where you right now.  Consider these thoughts: How does your weight compare with a year ago? Do you feel healthy and have a lot of energy or are you tired all the time? Do you take vitamins or other nutritional supplements? Do you eat at home most of the time? If so, what types of foods? Whole fresh foods, boxed foods or TV dinners? If you eat in a restaurant, what types of restaurants do you go to and what types of foods do you choose? How physically active are you? Do you exercise regularly? Do you eat healthy size portions, or do you stuff yourself with every meal? Do you smoke? How much alcohol do you drink each week? Step 2.  Set Goals What do you want to achieve? Do you want to lower your cholesterol, reduce your risk for chronic disease and fit into your “skinny” jeans again? You may want to choose long-term goals like losing 50 pounds and short-term goals like losing 5.  Other goals might include eating 5 servings of fruits and vegetables every day, exercising for 30 minutes 5 days per week, smoking cessation or reducing high blood pressure. Write your goals down so that you can look back on them while you progress. Step 3.  Determine Your Dietary Needs What do you need to be healthy? If you are overweight, you need to choose a lower calorie diet. If you have high blood pressure, you may wish to reduce your sodium intake and increase your exercise. If you have diabetes, you need to watch your carbs. If you have a health condition, be sure to speak to your doctor, a dietitian or a nutritionist. He or she can help you understand how your diet affects your health. Decide how many calories you need each day, plus the amounts of fiber, carbohydrates, fats and proteins, or a combination of the nutrients you think is important. www.MyPyramid.gov and www.nutrition.about.com both have resources to help you determine your nutritional needs. Step 4. How About Nutritional Supplements? Nutritional supplements are a great way to ensure that you are getting all of the nutrients you need each day. A high quality multi-vitamin is great, plus omega-3 essential fatty acids and a good calcium supplement like Adora Calcium.  Step 5. Design Your New Diet Consider these thoughts when you design your new diet: How do your eating patterns fit your lifestyle? Do you feel better with 3 large meals per day or 5-6 smaller meals per day? Will you continue to eat in restaurants often? What types of fruits and vegetables do you like? Your eating patterns are important too. Do you hate breakfast? Skipping breakfast isn’t a good idea, but it doesn’t need to be a mammoth meal, either. A small bowl of cereal, a whole grain muffin, or one hard-boiled egg would all be better than no breakfast at all.  Are you a late-night snacker? Many people watch their diet successfully during the day and lose it at night. Be prepared. Have low calorie, highly nutritious foods on hand. Fresh green beans with a little bit of your favorite dip are much healthier than greasy chips. Berries and nuts are healthier than ice cream and taste just as sweet. Do you eat in restaurants often? Instead of an appetizer and a main course, choose soup and salad, or an appetizer and salad. Many restaurants serve giant-sized portions, so if you do choose a large meal, take half of it home, or share it with a guest. Also, avoid greasy fried foods and choose meats that are baked or broiled instead. Step 6. Healthy Shopping and Cooking When you are at the grocery store, stay away from the snack food aisles and the prepackaged foods aisles as much as possible. Buy fresh meats, fresh vegetables and fresh fruits as your main food items. Take a shopping list with you and don’t shop when you are hungry. When you are hungry, you are more likely to succumb to the temptations of the junk-food aisles. Cooking methods are important for healthy nutrition. Sautéing is better than deep-frying your foods. Frying foods adds fats and calories and doesn't add any nutrition. Steam your vegetables instead of boiling them to mush. Steaming will preserve more of the vitamins found in the vegetables. When you cook your healthy meals at home, be sure to make a little bit extra to save as leftovers to take to work or school as a healthy lunch the next day. Other healthy cooking methods include grilling, baking, broiling, and pressure-cooking. The shorter the cooking time, the fewer nutrients lost. Step 7. Keep a Food Diary Keeping a food diary is crucial to success. Just like we have to balance our checkbooks, we need to keep track of our calories and nutrients. First write down your calorie and nutrient needs. Then, every day, down everything you eat.  Record the amounts and the time of day as well. At the end of the day, go back and count up your calories, carbohydrate grams, fiber grams, fat grams or whatever nutrients you want to track. Each week, you may want to total up your numbers and see if you are doing what you need to reach your goals. Step 8. Exercise and General Health Goals Good nutrition is just part of a healthy lifestyle. If you lead a sedentary lifestyle, you need to get out and get moving. Walking, running, aerobic exercise and weight lifting are all great exercises. If you want to loser weight, it is important to increase aerobic activity like walking or running. If you need to increase your strength, then you need to start resistance training such as lifting weights. There are health clubs, gyms, personal trainers as well as at-home equipment to get you fit and healthy. If you smoke, it is time to quit. If you drink more than one alcoholic beverage per day you should cut back. Remember that one serving of wine is only about 4 ounces.  If these are problem areas for you, speak to your doctor to get some help. Step 9. Reduce Stress Stress is detrimental to your health. Stress includes daily events like constant deadlines at work, long drive-times with excess traffic, more activities that time to do them, as well as emotional trauma like death or divorce. Exercise is one great way to deal with stress. Another way is to get organized.  Keep a schedule and learn to say “no” when you don’t have time.   Step 10. Motivation and Maintenance Keep short-term goals that you can measure to keep yourself motivated.  Reward yourself when you achieve your goals. Buy yourself a present or take a day off to cuddle up with your favorite book or hobby. Try not to use food as your reward.  It is too easy to go in reverse by doing that. Read health and diet books to keep you motivated.  Another fun way to keep on track is to use the buddy system and work with a friend or spouse.  Enjoy your healthy new diet and lifestyle.  At the one-year mark, you can go back to step 1 and be proud of yourself for your great accomplishments!   About the author: Shereen Jegtvig is the Nutrition Guide for About.com. Her tenure includes 16 years providing chiropractic health care and nutritional consultations as a Certified Nutrition Specialist in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Shereen graduated with a doctorate in  chiropractic from Northwestern College of Chiropractic after undergraduate work  from North Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota. She attained her Certified Nutrition Specialist status in 2000 and currently uses her health care experience and enthusiasm to write about nutrition and diet information. Top of Page

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