Oxygenfit News Letter: Lifestyle for Results December 2007
By: Karla Adams
Did you make a nutrition plan yet? Need a good place to start?
Research is the first place to start! There are many great nutrition plans on the market. I recommend finding one put together by a professional that you work with or in a book. Either way “Stick to the Basics!” Pick a plan that consists of mostly, if not all, natural foods. Our bodies are made to function on foods in their natural state. Grains, fruits, vegetables and lean meats are some examples of natural food. Prepackaged foods should be kept to a minimum in your daily nutritional routine because they normally contain too much sodium, MSG and other ingredients that are unhealthy when eaten too often.
Look for a plan that the whole family can do and enjoy. Enjoyment is very important when it comes to life style programs. Your family is more likely to keep doing something they enjoy. If they are dreading the program it’s not going to last long.
Use different recipe books and educate yourself and family on what you are trying to accomplish. There are many different good recipe books in stores that not only give you a meal that taste good but do this with healthy foods, especially when it comes to dessert, learn how to keep the sweets healthful! One book I like to find ideas in and still keep it healthy is “The Eat-Clean Diet” by Tosca Reno. She has great recipes for healthy lifestyle eating.
I would buy several recipe books. When it comes to a lifestyle plan you need lots of ideas. This will keep the plan real. You need to learn all the great healthy foods available to you. There is a lot of information available; it’s just not marketed as much as most of the bad stuff.
Think about this project as a class, if you will. In this class, you are teaching yourself and your family about your healthy lifestyle plan and how it applies to you and your family. Be specific to the needs of you and your family.
How social trends in our society can impact living a healthy lifestyle:
We are bombarded by thousands of advertisements every day. Whether you realize it or not these advertisements affect the way you think and influence the social trends in our society. Your brain is very programmable. When you are watching TV or listening to the radio your brain is being fed lots of ideas by companies that want to sell something. That is a huge part of any successful businesses marketing plan. Marketing can have both a positive and negative influence. Look at the Lopers, they promote exercise and being fit! That’s great! That is telling you that you need to exercise to take care of yourself. This is true and will only make you feel better after the fact.
On the reverse side, advertisements that are marketing bad foods have a negative effect on the way we take care of ourselves. It is now normal to have a huge part of nutrition come from food that should only be considered “entertainment foods.” Our kids (and some adults) are now spending more time playing video games instead of outdoor sports. Spending time together it great but if your health is being affected by the way you spend time together something needs to change! What is considered normal in this day and age does not produce or promote optimum health.
One of the major influences that the social part of our society has on our kids is a large part of our society thinks when it comes to kids that “kids don’t like the healthy stuff, they just want junk”. There is truth to that but most of the bad habits kids have are because they were taught bad habits from a young age! Whether it was from a parent, school or the millions of advertisements targeting kids, we need to teach our children to be healthy! If you feed them all the junk at a young age they get use to thinking about the junk foods in their minds and then the pallets in their mouths will crave what they are use to eating. Our children are strongly marketed to when it comes to “entertainment food”. Don’t get me wrong, entertainment foods have a place in a nutritional program. They are just not meant to be lived off of!
With all this said, make sure that you have a healthy, influence of information coming in to the home, it is very important. Let’s raise the next generation of healthy kids!
