Health
How to Create a Healthy House
Are your cupboards filled with junk food? Is your exercise machine being used as a clothes hanger? Do you hire someone to cut your grass, clean your house, and wash your car? Then, you are creating a unhealthy house, a house conducive to weight gain. You are making it easy to be unhealthy.
Living a healthy lifestyle starts by creating a healthy house. Give yourself the tools and the reasons to get exercise, eat healthy, and make good choices. It's not just about losing weight and looking great. Creating a healthy lifestyle will make you feel great as well. Your whole family will have more energy, have clearer, healthier skin, and a better attitude.
Clear out the Junk
First of all, don't even think of "going on a diet." Diets are temporary and they only lead to temporary weight loss. You need to reinvent your diet. You need permanent change.
The Five "C" Words
Look in your cupboards. Do you have any of these "c" words in your kitchen: Crackers, Chips, Cookies, Cake, and Candy. These are the five dirtiest words in the English language. And none of them belong in a healthy household on a regular basis. Save them for parties and holidays.
| Snacking is actually very good for you. It helps control your hunger so you don't overeat at meals, but you need to snack on small servings of the right foods. Grab a piece of fruit, a handful of nuts, or a small dish of yogurt. |
Crackers, chips, cookies, cake, and candy are fat-laden, high in sodium, high in calories, and nutritionally void. They do not provide you with anything helpful and should not be consumed more than once a month.
Check out How to Save Money on Food for ideas on how to cut down on your food costs.
Soda Pop
Another food that doesn't belong in a healthy house? Soda pop. If you are drinking soda (or pops) instead of water, you are doing so many wrongs to you body. First of all, sodas are laden with sugar. If you are drinking sodas every day, you have been inundated with so much sugar that you've probably become desensitized to it. You don't taste how sweet it really is, because you need so much more sugar to taste the sweetness. Sodas are also loaded with preservatives, chemicals, and caffeine.
What about sugar-free sodas? Well, health providers are starting to see that the body reacts the same, whether your soda is sweetened with real sugar or fake sugar. Your body's insulin level rises, even when you are consuming fake sugar. So, even sugar-free sodas can cause you to gain and retain weight.
Energy drinks, "flavored water," fruit juices, and sweetened iced teas can be just as bad. Check your labels carefully. None of these sugary drinks belong in a healthy house. Again, save them for holidays and special occasions.
Processed Food
When it's time to cook dinner, do you reach for a box? Sorry, but that's not a healthy dinner. Even if it's a meal designed to be "healthy" or "low in calories," if it is processed food, it will:
- Be higher in fat than homemade
- Be higher in sodium than homemade
- Be higher in calories than homemade
- Contain preservatives and endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which cause weight gain
Boxed pizzas, prepared dinners, frozen lasagna, frozen sandwiches, anything that's already been "prepared" needs to be purged out of the kitchen. It's time to learn how to cook yourself some simple meals. They are less expensive, healthier, and taste a heck of a lot better than anything out of a box.
Right now, go to your kitchen and get rid of all these unnecessary foods. Make your kitchen a place where health happens. Clear out all the roadblocks in your quest for better health.
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