Easy Food Swaps to Make Your Diet Healthier

Kate Bratskeir (2015) 12 Simple Food Swaps That Make Healthy Eating Easy

Want to eat healthily without cutting taste? Most people looking to improve their health and diet, but they are afraid of "joyless" substitutes. While many foods out there are lower in calories and some even calorie-free, the key to eating healthier isn’t to (always) reduce the calories in your diet, but to instead focus on higher-quality calories that the body can use more efficiently for fuel. Looking at your health this way is the most beneficial way to making a lifestyle change instead of seeing food as just a way to diet or gain weight. 

1.    Protein shake instead of bowl of cereal. 

Why it's better: A protein shake made with protein powder, milk or soymilk, and fruit will give you more protein, which gives your meal more staying power, and the fruit contributes vitamins, minerals and filling fiber. And, since you'll be drinking the milk - rather than leaving it at the bottom of the cereal bowl - you'll get a good dose of calcium, too. Start your Protein Shake today with Herbalife Nutrition, please contact +60163372754

2.    Plain yogurt and fruit instead of pre-mixed yogurt. 

Why it's better: You'll be getting more fruit (and more fiber), more protein and less sugar.

3.    Spinach salad instead of iceberg lettuce. 

Why it's better: A serving of spinach has three times more potassium, calcium and vitamin C, and 50% more vitamin A than a serving of iceberg lettuce.

4.    Beans instead of rice or pasta. 

Why it's better: Swapping in beans for a side of rice or pasta means you'll get more iron and more protein.

5.    Edamame soybeans instead of chips. 

Why it's better: A half-cup of shelled edamame soybeans (an amount about the size of a tennis ball) has about 9g of fiber, 11g of protein, and around 10% of your daily needs for vitamin C and iron - all for about 120 calories. Show me a chip that can do that! Also, it takes time to remove the beans from the pods, which slows down the rate at which you eat.

6.    Canned salmon instead of canned tuna. 

Why it's better: Wild-caught salmon (and nearly all canned salmon is wild) contains a higher proportion of omega-3 fatty acids compared to farmed salmon. Being a fattier fish, a serving of salmon has about twice the omega-3 fatty acids as a serving of tuna. 

7.    Avocado instead of mayonnaise or other fats. 

Why it's better: Avocado is a good source of monounsaturated fatty acids - similar to what's found in other healthy fats like olive oil and nuts.

8.    Berries instead of orange juice. 

Why it's better: Fiber is what makes whole fruits more filling compared with fruit juice, and berries are some of the highest fiber fruits around. Spend 50 calories on a serving of raspberries, and you get a whopping seven grams of fiber in return.

9.    Veggie burger instead of beef. 

Why it's better: You're getting your protein from a plant source, which means a lot less fat and saturated fat than what you'd get from the ground beef.

10.   Baked Sweet Potatoes Fries instead of French Fries

Why it's better: Frozen ones that are coated with corn-based fillers, refined or processed flours, added salts, sugars and preservatives. No matter how natural a brand may appear, most people would be surprised to see just how many ingredients these “healthy” fries have. Keep things simple and make your own: Chop up a whole sweet potato on a baking pan, sprinkle on your favorite seasonings 

Sources : Susan Bowerman, MS, RD, CSSD, FAND. Susan is a paid consultant for Herbalife. 

3 Reasons Why Diets are Challenging.

It is little wonder that we ask ourselves, " Why can't I succeed? What am i doing wrong? " 

However, shall we ask ourselves, "Are we having a proper HEALTHY DIET?"

• Challenge 1 : Dieters often drastically restrict their calories or food choices now but return to their old habits once they reach their goals. Permanent lifestyle changes are needed to achieve sustained ideal weight. 

• Challenge 2 : Fad Diets = Unbalanced Nutrition: Too often, diets focus on specific types of food or nutrients and disregard the importance of everything else, leading to unbalanced nutrition. For optimal nutrition, our bodies need a balance variety of nutrients, including the right types of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. 

• Challenge 3 : The High-Glycemic Trap: Eating high-glycemic foods can sabotage even the best of diets plans because the sesulting spike and subsequent drop in blood sugar leads to a more rapid return of hunger. A better approach focuses on low-glycemic carbohydrates, which help to moderate blood glucose levels, leaving you feeling full and satisfied longer.

5 Rules of a Successful Diet

1. You Must Eat Less

Some diets may focus less on calorie counting, but the truth is you must eat less if you really want to lose weight, also eat well. Losing weight starts with a simple calorie deficit. You can create a deficit by simply eating less total food, or by exercising more. A deficit of 500 calories per day over the course of one week is 3,500 calories, or one pound of fat! The more of a deficit you create, the more weight loss you will experience.

How do you know if you are eating less? Don’t just consider your exercise routine, but also the exercise you do outside of the gym— for instance if you walk to work, take the stairs or are active in your daily job. Contact your PERSONAL COACH +60163372754 JESSICA SEET today to be rewarded a WELLNESS SCAN and METABOLISM TEST.

2. Structure

Although some people don’t like the word structure when it comes to diet, every successful diet has some. Even flexible diets have structure. Whether it’s the amount of calories you are eating or the amount of each macro-nutrient you are taking in, these are parameters that will lead to success. By keeping track of what you are eating, including calories and the amount of protein, carbs and fats, you can make appropriate adjustments when something is not going right. Structure to a diet plan can also ensure that you stick with it.

3. More Protein, Healthy Fats and Fiber

A diet that is focused on building a healthy lean body should be high in protein, provide a moderate amount of healthy fats and at least 25 grams of fiber every day.

As a general rule, follow a diet that provides at least 1 to 1.5 grams of protein from lean sources that are high in all the essential amino acids, including poultry, whole eggs, lean cuts of red meat and non-fat dairy like whey protein. Protein is a necessary nutrient for building muscle, maintaining muscle and assisting in recovery. It is also highly thermogenic, which means eating it actually burns calories! As for Herbalife Shake which contains 18 Amino Acids as the balance meal for everyone. 

Many people think they should skip over the fat when it comes to a diet, but this is far from the truth. Fat is essential for balancing hormones and can even play a role in helping preserve muscle.

Lastly, a good diet will have a whole of lot of fiber. Fiber from fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and whole grains is important for maintaining a healthy gut, and removing toxins from the body. Diets that are high in fiber can also help reduce appetite and blood sugar levels. Most successful diets focused on building a lean body provide about 40 to 50 percent protein, 30 to 20 percent carbs and 30 to 20 percent fats.

4. Eliminate the Junk Food

The occasional cheat on junk food is a given when it comes to any diet, but the majority of the time junk food should be eliminated. Junk food doesn’t provide good nutrition because it’s loaded in sugar, fat or both, and not much of anything else, so it’s easy to see why junk food should not be included as part of your diet.

If you are new to following a structured, clean eating plan, don’t go cold turkey! Instead, ease off your bad eating ways by eliminating the junk food slowly. Limit yourself to once per week. Come your cheat day, don’t go overboard and eat back all the calories you eliminated. Instead, pick one or two of your favorites, or one cheat meal.

By giving yourself a treat here and there, you will be less likely to go off your diet completely, and feel much more satisfied with your new diet plan. It’s also been shown that the occasional bad eating can help increase your metabolism and keep it from down-regulating. This is called “adaptive thermogenesis,” which is when your body gets accustomed to the low calories you are eating and starts to plateau, slowing your metabolism and storing or maintaining your body in the same state. Busting out of this plateau can be as easy as having the occasional cheat meal, so don’t be scared to give in every once in a while.

Some people would choose to snack with cereal bar, chocolate bar, which it seems to be health, low in calories; in fact those are HIGH IN CALORIES, HIGH IN SUGAR, so we should choose wisely. Snacking with Herbalife Protein Bar which is HIGH IN PROTEIN, filling and able to become fitter.

5. Maintenance Plan for Life

The ideal diet should essentially become a way of life. It shouldn’t be so restrictive that it’s difficult to stick to or it makes it hard to maintain your results. When you first start on any diet plan, you will need to eat less and be restrictive with your choices, but once you have reached your ideal weight, it is possible to eat a little more.

It could be easy to lose weight, but the matter of maintenance program, this is why we still choose Herbalife Nutrition as our HEALTHY BREAKFAST, which is HIGH IN NUTRIENTS, LOW IN CALORIES, HIGH IN FIBER.

As for myself, I have lost 17kg and maintain my healthy body shape until now.

Get your HERBALIFE NUTRITION, PERSONALIZED MEAL PLAN with PROFESSIONAL EXPERT guiding, CONTACT +60163372754 Jessica Seet. 

Best Regards,
Jessica Seet
Herbalife Independent Distributor
+60163372754
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