Healthy Eating Tips
There are two main factors to consider in helping you to make healthier choices to contribute to your healthy eating diet.
Healthy Balanced Diet Factor 1: The amount of food you eat depends on how active you are and how many calories your body uses.
Healthy Balanced Diet Factor 2: Eat a Healthy Balanced Diet from a range of foods.
Tip 1.
Include Carbs and Starchy foods in your meals. These are important to provide a source of energy and are an excellent source of essential nutrients. Try to make sure you include things like potatoes, bread, pasta, cereals and rice in your meals (ideally wholegrain if you can get it, which is full of fibre) as these contain low amounts of fat and can help keep you full and snack free for hours.
Carbs, unlike what some popular myths claim contain only half the amount of calories as fats!
Tip 2.
We know you know this, but eat as much fruit and vegetables as possible. Aim for five portions a day – See our healthy eating plan section to find out more tips on how to get fruit and veg into your daily meals.
Remember fruit and veg comes in many forms, you don’t need to buy fresh veg only, you can also stock up on tinned, frozen, dried or even fruit juices.
Tip 3.
Fish, Fish, Fish – Eat more, especially oily fish such as mackerel, salmon, trout, sardines and tuna (not tinned). These are a great source of vitamins, essential fatty acids and omega oils to help maintain a healthy heart. Tinned sardines and mackerel and a great cost-efficient way to get oily fish into your diet without putting a whole in your wallet, although saying that Mackerel are one of the cheapest fishes to buy fresh from your local fishmonger.
Tip 4.
Avoid Saturated fats.
Try to remember this:
Unsaturated Fats = GOOD = Lowers cholesterol
Saturated Fats = BAD = raises cholesterol
The labels on foods will tell you how much fat there is in your food, a high fat product (in general) contains more than 20g/100g of food and a low fat is less than 3g/100g of food.
A high saturated fat product contains more than 5g/100g, and a low fat contains less than 1.5g/100g.
Word of warning – Don’t eat more than one portion of shark, swordfish or marlin per week as these contain high levels of mercury.
Tip 5.
Low sugar is healthier. Sugary foods may increase your chances of tooth decay and can also turn into fat stores if you are not active enough. Rememeber sugar has many names such as sucrose, glucose, fructose, maltose, invert sugar, corn syrup, honey and others.
High sugar = more than 15g/100g
Low sugar = less than 5g/100g
Tip 6.
Try to eat less than 6g of salt per day – 75% of the salt we need is in our foods we buy.
Low salt products = less than 0.3g/100g
High salt products = more than 1.5g salt/100g
Tip 7.
Be active, – Walk, Jog, Run, Swim, Jump, Row, Bike, Play sports, Go to the gym. – if you don’t exercise, eat less. If you do exercise eat as much as you need depending on the level of exercise. For example if your a keen rugby player and train twice a week for 2 or more hour intensive sessions, then you will need more food than someone who goes for a 30 minute jog 2/3 times a week.
Exercise is great for our health, so be as active as possible – every little helps and it all adds up.
Things to try:
- Take the stairs instead of a lift/escalator
- Walk short distances instead of driving
- Carry a baskey around the supermarket if you only have a few things to buy instead of getting a trolley
- Take the dog for a walk or walk a friends/relatives
Tip 8.
water Water water – Drink Plenty keep your body and mind hydrated. Anything around 1 litre of water a day is fine.
Tea is more hydrating than coffee and squash with water is even more hydrating as our bodies can absorb the liquids easier when they contain a small amount of sugar.
Tip 9.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day – It helps to get our digestion and metabolism going and burning calories. It will also help to wake you up and help to control your weight. Rememeber try to keep it as healthy as possible – A handful of crossiants make a great treat, but it’s not a very healthy eating start to the day!
