is it just the cals, or is it what you eat?

Depends on the person I guess. Restaurant food generally causes water weight gain for me because it's usually higher in sodium than anything I make at home. I would say aim for getting your 3-5 fruits and vegetables and your 2 servings of dairy and fill in the rest with healthy carbs and proteins.

Your body performs better and is healthier , the healthier foods you eat.

I don't know about you, but I'm here to get healthy. Not to lose weight and still have clogged arteries.
I want to change my life for the better.
Or should I say I have changed my life for the better.
To be honest, besides Subway, I haven't even thought about going to a fast food place in years.
My body wouldn't even know how to process that food, and let me tell ya, it would let me know in a hurry that I was eating crap food.
But - that's just me.

It can be expensive to eat healthy, that's for sure! From a weight loss stand point,, calories in, calories out seems to be the right way to go. I went thru the drive thru today, too. I tried to pick the better choices. I a 1/2 of a kid size fry. I started my slow change 2 yrs ago. 1st I quit smoking, 2nd I started eating healthy and exercising, now I'm stepping up the exercise and counting the calories.
I guess the futher I go, the more healthy stuff I incorporate.

The changes I made were egg whites instead of whole eggs, whole wheat instead of white bread. Skim milk instead of 2%. Brown rice instead of pre-packaged or white. Instead of regular pasta I use the ones like Barilla plus w/ omega 3. I use lean beef and ground turkey, even turkey sausages. At dinner, I rarely eat a carb, unless it's spaghetti night or sometimes a red potato with a steak. I use Ragu sugar free spaghetti sauce. When I oven fry chicken I process Fiber One cereal instead of using bread crumbs.I'd just start out with 1 change each week, like switching your bread.

I think it does matter what you put in your body, I would say heathy is important. I hope this helps! Good Luck!

Smart choices- weigh think about it...a piece of chicken dipped in batter and fried in grease or a skinless boneless breast sprinkled with seasoning and grilled. Eat out occasionally but check the fat and carbs and sodium and not just the calories. Even having a salad can add up, learn what not to have in it and the better dressings

I know how you feel, my family was the same way. My mom used to have us go to McDonald's like 3 or 4 times a week, and when she cooked, it would be mac & cheese, hamburger helper, or one of those TV dinners. Now my parents still don't eat very well, but since I became a vegetarian, they have been more willing to let me choose what I eat. It's still hard to eat healthy, when my parents have just meat and potatoes for dinner, or meat and pasta, because that is mostly fat and carbs. I'm not saying that meat is bad, but it is one of the reasons why Americans diets are so bad. You're only supposed to have about 2 or 3 servings of meat a day, and most people make the meat their main dish and don't have the right portions! So be careful with that... I try to eat potatoes and pasta scarcely, even though pasta is my alltime FAVORITE!

One trick is that I usually try to pick my dinner based on what food groups I had for breakfast and dinner, that way I get a wellrounded set of meals that day.

It also helps if you look at your other nutrient groups on your food diary. On mine, I have calories, fat, sugar, fiber, protein, and vitamin C, this is a wide range of nutrients, and I get them from different foods, so it helps a little to eat some of every food group. It all depends on each person. I am a vegetarian, so that's why I keep protein on there.

I'll actually look at my food diary before I get a snack to see what I should have. For example, the other day I was a little over in sugar, but lower in fat and fiber, so I decided to have popcorn. Make sure you change which nutrients show up on your food diary so that it helps you the most!

It's always good to avoid processed foods if you can. Anything organic is obviously going to be better for you (even if it has a little more calories), because preservatives and artificial sweeteners are not that great for you!

One other note is that the more complex sugars are better for you because they keep you full for longer, as opposed to simple sugars. What I mean is that bread and pasta have more complex sugars and will be better for you than the simple sugars in candy and a lot of fruits. This stuff gets confusing sometimes to me and hard to balance in my diet, but every little change you make and habit you set will help you in the long run!

Well I hope I was of some help to you! These are just a bunch of little notes that I use in my diet and hopefully some of it will help you a little. Good luck!

Don't forget to treat yourself every once in a whle though! Don't banish your favorite foods from your diet, have some occasionally.

This may sound a little weird, but I am just going to share my experience with this. I find that if I eat foods that are unhealthy and loaded with simple sugars, it puts me into craving mode and makes it much harder to make healthy choices for the rest of the day. It makes me think that somehow my body is addicted to these foods - weird I know, but that's just how it feels. Also, if I eat those types of foods, it makes me feel really gross. I recently took my kids to the Yarmouth Clam Festival here in Maine. It was tons of fun, but I made some poor food choices. I ate fried clams and french fries. I didn't even eat that much of them, but it was enough. When that fat hit my stomach, I felt so gross, I had to sit down and not move for a little while. My body really didn't know how to digest that grease and fat. Even my eyes hurt. Also, as my body digests those simple sugars, I go from being happy to cranky and tired. If I eat too much of it, I've even had sugar hangovers. It's not fun.

The moral of the story is - everything in moderation, but when a choice presents itself, choose healthy. If there aren't any healthy choices available, make sure you always have something healthy in your purse or car so you can still choose healthy. It really does matter to your body.