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What’s in it for me? Why eat nutritious foods?
Have you ever taken a minute to reflect on your motivation for living a healthy lifestyle?
As I see it, most people fit into one (or more) of these three categories:
1. Reach specific goals
2. Manage disease and damage control
3. Prevention
Reaching specific goals.
These are the people that want to lose weight, tone up, run a 5k, compete in a competition, look their best for a reunion or some other special event… The list goes on. For these people, they will try the most extreme diets, but are they making healthy lifestyle changes? They want to reach a specific goal but what happens after that? Hopefully they make new goals and keep striving for something. I had a client tell me that I always have something up my sleeve. Maybe he was right, as a dietitian and personal trainer, I always want to see my clients improve and make healthy habits a way of life, not just to meet one goal.
Managing disease and damage control.
These are the people that had a wake up call! Some have been told by their doctor that they are at high risk or others waited until it’s too late and have been diagnosed with a disease. The good thing about many diseases is that nutrition and a healthy lifestyle play a huge part in management and minimizing complications. For example: medical nutrition therapy for diabetes, heart disease, congestive heart failure, obesity, high cholesterol levels, kidney problems, GI issues, etc. These people are motivated to make changes and realize they “are what they eat”.
Prevention
These are the people that realize early on what you eat and how you live today, effect’s your life down the road. This is where I fit in. I watched my mom fight breast cancer, and realized at a young age that nutrition played a HUGE part in fighting, but more importantly, preventing disease. She was in remission after winning the battle against breast cancer then later diagnosed with bone cancer. After being told she didn’t have much longer to live, we, as a family, made the decision to change our diet and lifestyle completely. She lived for years after the doctors said she would. Although she isn’t here today, I couldn’t feel more blessed and grateful for the extra years we had with her. Maybe it wasn’t just the lifestyle changes, but this played a huge part in her surviving longer than anyone said she would.
Maybe your story isn’t exactly the same as mine, but you know someone that has a preventable disease. Why wouldn’t you do everything you can today to make sure you live to see your kids have kids or grow old with your loved ones? What can you do???
5 Steps to Prevent Disease
1. Find out where you stand.
Participate in a Health Screening to determine your current total cholesterol, HDL, blood glucose, body fat percentage, and blood pressure. Once you know where you stand, you can target the areas that are putting you at high risk for preventable disease.
2. Achieve or maintain a healthy weight.
More than two out of three adult Americans are overweight or obese. Obesity is associated with many different preventable diseases such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and many cancers (breast, uterine, ovarian, esophageal, colon, kidney, and pancreatic). Healthy eating is 70% of weight loss, the other 30% is exercise. You can’t out exercise a
bad diet.
3. You are what you eat: be consistent!
Do you want to know the secret to weight loss? Consistently fueling your body with quality foods! Load up on the colorful fruits and vegetables, stick to lean protein (organic and grass fed meats), whole grains and healthy fats. Here’s another secret: Breakfast IS the most important meal of the day. Kick start your metabolism with a balanced breakfast.
4. Incorporate Superfoods on a daily basis!
Superfoods are the powerhouse foods that are high in macro and micronutrients. Many superfoods help reverse the aging process, and have anti-inflammatory factors because they are high in antioxidants. Examples of superfoods are blueberries, chia seeds, quinoa, greek yogurt, walnuts, almonds, wild salmon, and kale.
5. Cut out the processed foods.
Processed foods contain additives and preservatives to make them last longer and taste better. Companies use cheap ingredients to make their profit margins higher. Key words to beware of: artificial sweeteners, artificial flavors, and preservatives.
GET INFORMED! Let the nutrition and fitness experts at Healthy Steps educate you on how to make health a way of life. We conduct health screenings and design customized meal plans for clients to meet their health and wellness goals.
Contact us today to set up an appointment.
Nicole Marchand, Registered Dietitian
www.myhealthysteps-nutrition.com
386-547-8695
Office in Boca Raton, FL
