How to discard processed foods from your diet?

processed foods

New Year has just started, you’ve made a resolution to lead healthy lifestyle or you are planning for your summer body. We are here to help you lead healthy lifestyle. The first way to start living healthy is to ditch processed foods. Learn how to discard processed foods from your diet.

Why ditch your favorites???

1. They are foods made in lab with men wearing coats. So, what do they do? They add up chemicals to prevent food to be rotten for longer period of time.
2. 90% of processed food contains soy and corn. If those foods do not contain organic soy or corn, they have been genetically modified.
3. According to research conducted, processed food has been prepared using several kinds of pesticides including warehouse fumigation and other residues.
4. They contain more of sugar and less of fiber. This encourages you to keep craving more of food without leaving you satisfied with the food that you’ve eaten.
5. Processed food prepared with high level of sugar, cereals and other preservatives makes you fill sick if eaten for longer period of time without leaving you satisfied with the food you’ve eaten. But with real foods like fruits and vegetables, you are loaded with optimal amount of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and fibers.
6. Processed food which is too sweet triggers the release of opioids, neurotransmitters in your brain’s pleasure center.

Wait!!
Do not discard all the processed foods at once?

It is seems easy to think and plan out of eating healthy foods. But, as the time passes, you find yourself struggling to get hold of this routine. Instead of ripping it right off, start to adopt this option of healthy diet slowly and gradually. It is quiet exhausting when you discard all your foods at once. They are other people around you who are gritting their teeth and getting angry because you are too picky on foods that you choose. So, think of practicing this option slowly till it becomes a habit and move on to next level of adopting healthy diet.

The best way to adopt healthy diet is to trash all the mess (processed foods that you have in your house) and replace it with wholesome foods (real fruits and vegetables). You also need to be careful when you are choosing any processed food from supermarket.

Here are some guidelines to help you with, while choosing foods from Supermarkets’:

Read nutritional label: Read the nutritional label from the packaging of the processed food that you’ve chosen and help you decide what to keep and what not to keep.

How to read it?

1. What the food contains is written in descending order in the label. So, if you see fat, salt and sugar at the center of the label, assume that this processed food is in question.
2. Look at the serving size. If you think of consuming any processed food look how much serving does the food contains. Also make sure, you look at calories per each serving size. 40 calories per serving is considered low, 100 are considered moderate and 400 or more is considered high. So, plan out your serving size accordingly.

• Look at the fat contained in that packet. Average people need no more than 56-78 grams of fat per day which includes 16 grams of saturated fat, less than 2 grams of transfat and less than 300 mg of cholesterol.

1. Make sure you get 100% of fiber, vitamins and minerals from that food that you have chosen.

Make sure you plan out what you will pick up when you visit the grocery store to re-fill your pantry. You must also train your brain not to pick up extras from the shelf of supermarket.

It takes a lot of time for few people to adopt this healthy habit. But, for other people it happens overnight. So, here are some tips to train your brain to adopt healthy habit.

1. Aim for colorful plate: Prepare colorful plate for yourself. Fill your plate with different colors of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Seeing colorful plate may please your brain and encourage you to eat healthy diet. Also you may sprinkle little bit of spices like chilly and salt to vegetables, nuts and seeds & pure honey and yogurt to fruits make it more appealing for you to eat. Also you can prepare dip (hummus) if you choose to eat carrots or you choose to have bread.
   
2. Engage in different activities: Sometimes, people sneak out on food on boredom and out of habit. Therefore, when a person craves for food, he/she can take a walk or do things that he/she loves just to forget his cravings.
3. Treat yourself in healthy way: When you are craving some sugar or desserts, treat yourself with fruits and water with pure honey to please your brain.
4. Prepare yourself with handy foods: Where ever you go, take some handy food such as carrot, fruits, nuts/seeds with you so that you don’t go out to the store and ask for processed food to fill your tummy. Also when in house, fill your pantry and fridge with healthy foods so that you pick those foods whenever you crave to eat something.
   
5. Eat slowly: When you eat something it takes about 20 minutes to transmit sign to your brain that you are fully satisfied. Therefore, if you eat too fast you add up more to your diet because you don’t know that you are full. Chew more than you eat. Also, know about foods that you eat, know about nutritional facts and calorie size. This helps you to keep yourself in track.
   Most of the people take a lot of time to adopt healthy lifestyle. Don’t feel discouraged if it takes a lot of time for you. Every good thing doesn’t happen overtime. Feel motivated with every single trivial effort that you’ve made to adopt healthy habit. They say there is no gain without any pain. Think that you cannot reach your goal unless you make small changes in the way that you eat.