All of us pretty much know what food and drinks aren’t great for our health, yet we still over indulge and make poor decisions from time to time. The information that circulates about health and nutrition can be overwhelming, contradicting, and constantly changing. We want to share some helpful tips that you can use as a guide when making decisions about your diet!
- Lower your carbohydrate intake. Most carbohydrates should be supplied by fruits and vegetables. Try to significantly limit carbohydrates from breads, chips, pastas, and foods that use traditional flours.
- Avoid corn, wheat, soy, and sugar as much as possible. All of these are filler ingredients in most processed foods and can lead to health complications, from fatigue to leaky gut syndrome.
- Limit dairy consumption. Dairy can cause inflammation in the body which can further lead to other health issues, such as GI upset and headaches. Note: pasteurized dairy is safer to drink but is linked to everything from allergies to heart disease. Raw dairy has a better nutrition profile but has been linked to harmful bacterial ingestion because it was not pasteurized to kill germs. Overall consider the quality of the dairy you’re consuming, if it has a ton of preservatives then its probably not the best choice. If you do decide to drink raw milk then make sure it’s from a healthy cow that wasn’t fed a bunch of hormones and antibiotics.
- Lower or eliminate grains, most people have trouble digesting grains so this leads to intestinal bloating and metabolic diseases. From a nutrition standpoint there is nothing positive about refined grains, they are low in nutrients, fattening, and harmful, and most of us are eating way too much of them.
- WATER- aim for 4 Liters a day, not including other beverages like tea or sparkling water. Water is important for survival, every cell, tissue, and organ in your body needs water to work properly.
- Avoid sweetened beverages, especially if it contains artificial sweetener. Decreasing consumption of sugary beverages will automatically decrease the amount of calories you consume on a daily basis- leading to weight loss in the long run! You’ve heard the old saying, don’t drink your calories.
While there’s more information about diet and nutrition out there, we wanted to keep things simple and show you that making a few little changes would be the best place to start on a path to a healthier you! Even if you can’t follow all of these guidelines right away or all at once, start with implementing just one into your life. If you don’t drink enough water everyday then start there, if you have no problem staying hydrated then start working on lowering your carbohydrate intake. The best part is that almost everyone can benefit from these guidelines as part of a healthy lifestyle.
