It seems with every changing season, New Year, and school year there are ways to lose weight, eat better, and trim the waistlines of yourself and your family. These messages do have some positive points of how you can improve your health. However, when implementing a new way of eating there is a golden rule everyone should consider. Here it is:
Slowly introduce healthy eating for yourself and your family.
This may sound extremely simple but it reveals the truth of permanent weight loss; it takes time and it is not a quick fix. And speaking of simple, consider this; if you cut out only 200 calories a day for a year you could lose up to 24 pounds. With such a small number of calories you could lose the weight by just switching to healthy snacking. This weight loss doesn’t even take into account how much more you would lose if you incorporated light exercise and ate healthier meals.
So, if you or another family member is overweight or needs to improve his or her snacking habits, have a family meeting and let everyone know about the decision to eat healthier. Tell them over the course of two to six months you will replace every item of junk food in the house with healthier alternatives.
If you have 100% no knowledge of what a calorie is and think snacking on cookies and diet soda is okay on a daily basis then the Internet just became your new BFF. CalorieKing.com is an excellent website that allows you to search, for free, how healthy or unhealthy a food is. Each food item on Calorie King has a rating of up to four stars; one star means the food is unhealthy and four stars means it’s very healthy.
I strongly encourage you to use Calorie King before going to the store. It can serve as your crutch until you gain more knowledge about nutrition and food labels. To search for a food, simply type in a snack idea, such as “granola bar”, into the search bar or you can browse through food items. I would recommend selecting snack choices that have a three to four star rating.
It is also important to make the switch to healthy eating enjoyable for the entire family. Have your family come with you to the store and make a group decision about what healthy foods look good. Grocery shopping as a group may seem irrelevant but selecting healthy foods together educates everyone on how to select the right foods in the future.