Healthy eating
While watching the amount of calories you eat is important for your weight, there are also many simple changes you can make to your diet to help maintain your overall health.
Great tips for healthy eating
The following list gives some great hints about a balanced diet.
- Don’t go shopping when you are hungry
- Shop carefully, and divide your food into three meals and three snacks a day
- Limit takeaways
- Measure your ‘usual’ size servings once or twice to get an idea of how they fit into the pyramid serving sizes
- Try using a smaller plate, and eat everything in moderation. It is more important to control your serving sizes than to eliminate a food
- Don’t skip meals
- Choose a variety of fruit and vegetables and eat as many different colours in a day as possible
- Use canola and olive oil rather than margarine or butter
- Wait for toast to cool before you add the spread
- Use oil free salad dressings
- Choose low fat or no fat options, eg low fat milk instead of standard
- Cut visible fat off meat, and take the skin off your chicken
- Use cooking methods that don’t use much fat, eg boiling, microwaving, baking, stir frying
- Be careful of reduced fat foods, they may be lower in fat than their full fat counterparts but are not necessarily low in sugar and calories!
- Make sure protein foods are good quality – eat lean beef, chicken, lamb
- Eggs, soy protein, beans, lentils and whole grains are good sources of protein
- Eat fish at least twice a week, one at least oily fish, eg mackerel, sardine, salmon, tuna
- Don’t add salt to your food, use herbs and spices for flavour
- If you have high blood pressure watch out for hidden salt in pre-prepared foods, Asian meals and spreads (like peanut butter and vegemite)
- To get enough fibre in your diet eat plenty of vegetables, fruit, whole grains, peas and beans
- Limit alcohol to one or two drinks a day and do not binge drink
Tips while eating out
When eating out it is easy to let go of all your hard work, but there are some helpful ways to stay on top of your game.
- Choose smaller servings
- If main servings are large either order an appetiser or share with a friend
- Resign from the ‘clean your plate’ club, eat a sensible serving and ask for a ‘doggie bag’ or throw it out!
- Ask for salad dressing to be served on the side so you can choose how much to add
- Order from a menu rather than from an ‘all you can eat’ buffet
- If you eat out up to once a week, choose one item from the menu and enjoy it!
- If you eat out more frequently, be careful with your choice, ie low in fat, not too saucy, preferably more vegetables, legumes, lentils and less meat, chicken, cheese
