We love to eat junk food. Many people can’t resist themselves from having junk food. Though we all know the disadvantages of eating unhealthy food yet we continue to eat something that is harmful for our body. One thing you must remember – our body is not the garbage can. Just a reminder – we eat to live. Do not think the other way around. Many of our health problems happen because of unhealthy eating or what we can say eating disorder. The most important point is we must take healthy food and discard what is not good for our body. Though it’s alright to have some junk food every now and then but remember we should take only as much as our body can afford to have. Given below are some steps for healthy eating habits that you may consider.
- Enjoy your food by eating slowly: It is very important to enjoy the food. Many of us do not enjoy the food when they eat. You may have noticed a lot people do work or talk to someone over cell phone while eating. This is a very bad habit. You need to taste what you are eating. For that, you have to eat slowly. When you eat slowly, not only you enjoy the food but also you feel satisfied with the less. Eating slowly reduces your appetite from the time you start to eat. On the contrary, when you eat fast you don’t enjoy the food and tend to eat more. Adding to that, fast eating is associated with obesity and increases your Body Mass Index (BMI).
- Make sure you are full not stuffed: Do you know brain takes fifteen to twenty minutes to start signalling the feeling of fullness? So give that time to your body. When you eat fast, you don’t understand how much you eat and most of the time consume too much. If you eat slowly, your brain gets that much of time to send you the satiety signal. This helps you to eat as much as your body actually needs.
- Prefer home made food: It is good to have home cooked food. Home made food reduces consumption of salt, sugar, and trans fat. Most of the popular junk foods contain trans fat. Foods like hamburgers, hot dogs, fried potato, cakes are biggest source for trans fats in our diet. So take out some time from your busy schedule and make your own pizza! Or whatever you like to have. Yes, this will take some of your time but then you are doing it for your better health.
- Avoid processed meats: Sausages, hotdogs, frankfurters are full of trans fats, sodium and preservatives. A toxic chemical, Sodium nitrate which is used as a color fixer in the processed meats (to give a fresh look) can be harmful for your body. If you are a meat lover, then try to cook it at home. Red meat is a good food but only when cooked in right way. Red meat provides zinc, iron, protein and vitamin B12. Choose lean cut of meats and trim any visible fats off the meat before cooking. It does not increase the cholesterol level. Use less oil and avoid cooking at high temperature.
It’s not good to cook meat at high temperature. Because when you do so (like frying, grilling etc.) it produces harmful chemicals called Heterocyclic Amines and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons. Use less oil and prepare meat with cooking methods like broiling, baking and stewing.
5. Do not drink Soda: This is as simple as that. If you want a good health and proper eating habits do not drink soda or soft drinks. An average 325 ml can of soda normally contains 8 to 10 teaspoons of sugar, 30 to 55 mg of caffeine, artificial food color and sulphite. You don’t get any benefit by drinking soda but it can harm your body. Soft drink can cause many problems like weight gain, tooth decay, erosion of gastric and metabolic syndromes.
Good eating habits can give you a healthy and better life. You’ll feel good and have a
disease-free body. You need to be little disciplined and cautious about what you are eating and when. If you eat healthy food properly and in a measured manner then you don’t have to go for a crash diet for having good body.
