How did you LEARN to eat healthy?

SouthGippyGirl

Also, listen to the free podcast, "fat2fitradio.com"...very informative...

Thank you for this link!

AliciaHollywood

I just started reading labels. If it says organic, it's OK. If it has chemicals, it's not. I also tend to keep up on research involving various anti-oxidants, coconut. (which is now considered HEALTHY), watch Dr. Oz lol, and shop mostly at Whole Foods or Trader Joes.... Growing up,my mother was always keeping up with health trends, so it was just natural for me I guess... Also you can just google "nutrition value of...." to compare various foods so you can get he most nutritious bang for your buck (calories!)

Sabine_Stroehm

Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food" really got me thinking about my diet and how to eat healthier. His book points out that a lot of what we eat isn't even food, and is likely the reason why we are so sick and fat today.

Habits take a long time to change. I would try to eat all natural foods, but since I was not used to preparing everything from scratch, I would fail. A lot.

I had to unlearn how to prepare meals and how to shop. My family was not too keen on the whole "made from scratch" thing either, because that meant that they couldn't just pop open a box of something and have something to eat moments after they decided they were hungry. For some reason, waiting 40-50 minutes for a healthy meal was intolerable for my husband and son, so they would either go out for a "snack" or fix an instant meal in the microwave. Mostly, they were too full to eat the healthy foods I prepared. It was frustrating.

Now I have banned all junk food from the house. I still need to figure out how to eliminate cold cereal, pasta and bread from my diet. But I am doing much, much better!

Ditto. I learned a ton from his book.

abrahamsitososa

Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food" really got me thinking about my diet and how to eat healthier. His book points out that a lot of what we eat isn't even food, and is likely the reason why we are so sick and fat today.

Habits take a long time to change. I would try to eat all natural foods, but since I was not used to preparing everything from scratch, I would fail. A lot.

I had to unlearn how to prepare meals and how to shop. My family was not too keen on the whole "made from scratch" thing either, because that meant that they couldn't just pop open a box of something and have something to eat moments after they decided they were hungry. For some reason, waiting 40-50 minutes for a healthy meal was intolerable for my husband and son, so they would either go out for a "snack" or fix an instant meal in the microwave. Mostly, they were too full to eat the healthy foods I prepared. It was frustrating.

Now I have banned all junk food from the house. I still need to figure out how to eliminate cold cereal, pasta and bread from my diet. But I am doing much, much better!

I've read this book! Ever since I read this I've always wondered what "duck fat" tastes like lol. I'm a vegan now so I'll probably never know. This book inspired me.

catcpe

I am going for 'everything in moderation' and 'if in doubt, don't.' And I am staying away from sweets/desserts.
That seems to be the hardest since somewhere along the way, I learned to reward myself with food/sweets.

Kymmu

I put a little sign up in the cupboard that says " don't reward yourself with food- you are not a dog"....:laugh:

pkw58

You know, I am 54 and still learning. I do know that each of us how to figure it out for ourselves and make a plan that optimizes our health and leverages our budgets.

I did just download "Fooducate" on to my iPhone. I am in to eating the most "bang for my buck" this year in food. I can scan the upc code or look up the best options available while shopping. I have started using the scan option on MFP on my iPhone as well. Great stuff.

What is amazing was the reading at the Airport Friday night. I was at a small regional airport and decided to buy a "nutrition bar" .. I had to scan like 7 of them before I got to one with a "B" rating on fooducate. I will never look at a power bar the same ever.

JesterMFP

I'm assuming if you are on here are trying to lose weight like I am, then you have not always eaten the best, most nutritious foods in the proper amounts, also like me.
If you have changed the way you eat, added or deleted certain foods from your diet, or modified the way you prepare foods, where did you get the ideas to make those changes?
Did you read books, research on the Internet? Watch documentaries? Talk to a nutritionist?

I am having a bit of confusion on what exactly is HEALTY and what is not. I feel safe with, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and meat). But what about dairy? Wheat and grain? Good carbs and bad carbs? Sugar?

The more I research, the more contradicting theories I see. So I'm just wondering if you have a source that you believe in that you base your healthy eating habits on. Sell me on how your diet is the right one. But please don't bash anyone else's way, we are all working towards the same goals in our own ways. There are some types of diets that are not right for me, I could never be a vegetarian, but I'm interested in how vegetarians chose that way.

For me, it was (and still is) a slow process. I started off on MFP just by paying attention to calories. I ate what I wanted, but made sure that it fit into my calorie goal. I knew I had to do it that way if I was going to stick with it. I knew an overly restrictive diet wasn't going to be for me. Over time, I've started paying more attention to macronutrient goals, and other aspects of my diet, and gradually making changes. For a while, I worked on getting more protein, and then I worked on getting more vegetables. I still eat all the things I like, but my diet overall is much more nutritious than it was a year ago. I make an effort to get the nutrients I feel my body needs.

As far as cutting things out - there are so many different viewpoints on diet. It is impossible to follow all the nutritional advice that is available. You need to work out what is important to you. Personally, I wouldn't cut anything out just because I heard it's bad for you, unless you want to cut out all meat, dairy, grains, sugar, processed food, caffeine, cooked food... etc etc. You could really drive yourself crazy with defining "healthy" food, and could end up with very little "acceptable" or "safe" food. Notice the effects that certain foods have on you and your family, and if there's an issue, look at reducing or cutting them out.

That's my opinion anyway. I guess my diet is the "moderation" diet, and I know that's not for everyone, which is fine. You mentioned that you want to teach your son to eat healthily too. Obviously, parenting styles are just as varied as opinions on nutrition, but for me, I would think that it's important to teach children appropriate portion control, to nourish the body with nutrient-dense foods, not to rely on food for emotional comfort and to just be relaxed about food and eating. Based on my own experiences, those things are more important than identifying certain foods as "good" or "bad". I think if you teach your child to have a healthy attitude towards food, that will have a more significant influence on his long-term health than making sure he never has sugar, or bread, or whatever.

Firefox7275

I'm assuming if you are on here are trying to lose weight like I am, then you have not always eaten the best, most nutritious foods in the proper amounts, also like me.
If you have changed the way you eat, added or deleted certain foods from your diet, or modified the way you prepare foods, where did you get the ideas to make those changes?
Did you read books, research on the Internet? Watch documentaries? Talk to a nutritionist?

I am having a bit of confusion on what exactly is HEALTY and what is not. I feel safe with, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and meat). But what about dairy? Wheat and grain? Good carbs and bad carbs? Sugar?

The more I research, the more contradicting theories I see. So I'm just wondering if you have a source that you believe in that you base your healthy eating habits on. Sell me on how your diet is the right one. But please don't bash anyone else's way, we are all working towards the same goals in our own ways. There are some types of diets that are not right for me, I could never be a vegetarian, but I'm interested in how vegetarians chose that way.

My work background is hospital pharmacy and research laboratories, so I had a head start when I started researching fitness and nutrition. I quickly realised how much utter rubbish is in many magazines, commercial diet books and websites, so reverted to the science and eventually retrained/ qualified in lifestyle healthcare.

There is far more pseudoscience and unproven theories out there than actual nutrition/ dietetics science. Be selective about your sources - choose websites and proper textbooks written by people with reputable scientific qualifications AND referencing a wide variety of studies published in peer reviewed journals, expect many pages of refs. Ask yourself why a commercial diet book was not published by a better publishing house and look for reputable debunking sites.

There is decent stuff on websites of not for profit fitness or diet organisation including charities and professional registration bodies, universities, governments, UK National Health Service, World Health Organisation. These are all websites you could use if writing a degree level paper, despite many being 'easy reading', you could not use Wikipedia or many commercial or alternative nutrition sites because the quality, depth of research and understanding is poor or patchy. Some of these sites are only referencing blogs, opinions, magazines or a single small scale study but presenting it as scientific fact!

The standard food pyramid/ plate will get you the minimum requirement of every macro and micro nutrient and discourages overeating of junk foods. Not to say it's perfect or supplies optimum nutrition (far from it) because the recommendations for many countries have been tempered by what is realistic for the general populace. Find out what nutrients are in each food, if you want to quit a given food group you can easily replace the nutrients if you so choose - say switching out grains for beans, lentils, nuts and seeds. That is a massive mistake many make - replacing meat with vegetables or grains with fruit, replacing dairy or fish with nothing and ending up with a nutrient deficiency.

You didn't mention oily fish in your safe list: a great source of protein, essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals (especially if you eat the bones in the canned stuff). There is absolutely reams of research supporting the positive role of anti inflammatory long chain omega-3s in a raft of health conditions. There is also plenty of research showing the detrimental effect of blood sugar peaks and troughs on the body (sugar and high GI carbs) - just think of the damage it does to diabetics in terms of vision, cardiovascular system, kidneys, feet and male impotency.

This series of factsheets is decent
http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfessional/
PubMed or Google Scholar for finding abstracts of published research papers from many journals
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
http://scholar.google.co.uk/