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Healthy Diet Plan Article
from: The Healthy Diet Plan: Savvy Strategies for Healthier HabitsAre you serious about switching to a healthy diet? Would you like to find a healthy diet plan that motivates you to replace bad habits and unhealthy food with a new world of taste and pleasure? Would you also like a healthy diet plan that is compatible with a fast, busy lifestyle? With a little creativity you can have both.
Of course, anything that requires replacing old habits with new ones is challenging—because it leads to a new life. Are you ready for that? If you are, the healthy diet plan strategies that follow will shake things up and get you programmed to buy, prepare, and eat healthier food.
Make room for change
Get into your pantry, refrigerator, freezer, and cabinets. Throw out, clear out, and clean up as much as possible. The goal: make plenty of space for healthy food and tools and supplies that are essential to implement your healthy diet plan.
Get supplies and tools
Before you bring home groceries, make sure you have measuring cups, spoons, and plenty of small and large storage containers. A healthy-diet plan requires lots of de-packaging and preparing items for ready use or transit. It also requires some formal (cups and spoons) or informal (palmful and dashes) measuring. It cannot be said enough: serving size and portion control matter—enormously.
Develop the mindset
Make some quick-reference cards with tasty sauces, dips, and dressings. A healthy diet plan relies on healthy ideas that you don’t have to dig for. The goal for sauces, dips, and dressings should be a few ingredients low in calories and high in taste—or high in calorie and high in taste, if used sparingly. For example:
• Dress an avocado salad with mustard and Balsamic vinegar
• Dress a lettuce and fruit salad with orange juice concentrate whisked with pear juice and a touch of sour cream.
• Make a tasty gravy for meat or rice with vegetable or chicken stock whisked with a touch of sour cream or milk in a pan of hot oil and drippings.
Think mix and match. Whether you are eating in or grabbing food to go, your healthy diet plan must be based on a healthy-diet pyramid and easy to put together. Even better, see if you can become creative enough to make everything you buy multipurpose in your menus.
• Train yourself to look at every item you buy and think of four different ways you can use it. Flip through recipe books or web sites for ideas and ask for tips from friends. Think about this for a healthy mix-and-match lunch: a small amount of whole-grain angel hair pasta with chopped red, green, or any color peppers, chunks of chicken or tuna, tossed in a light mix of olive oil and seasonings. Now think about replacing the pasta with rice or the peppers with celery, squash, cucumber, tomato, or some other veggie. Keep the creative juices flowing.
• Never underestimate the taste value of a small amount of healthy oil and tasty nuts, seeds, cheeses, and fresh or additive-free seasonings. A little goes a long way and can mean the difference between loving your healthy diet plan or becoming bored with it.
Look ahead and stay ahead
Your healthy diet plan will work with a busy life only if you de-package and prepare food to move easily from storage to final preparation to serving.
• As soon as you bring in the groceries, start removing the packaging, chopping veggies, and dumping bulk items into square storage containers. Chopped veggies keep well in ice water and will be ready to use. Square containers stack compactly in the refrigerator, freezer, or pantry and make scooping fast and easy.
• Separate and store in the freezer anything that you want to use later. The trick is to freeze items in convenient quantities. For example, if you live alone, package and freeze single servings. Learn which foods freeze well and for how long. You may be surprised how many meals you can make ahead and freeze to enjoy later.
The possibilities are endless
Your healthy-diet plan will be unique. The strategies here merely scratch the surface. The possibilities for a no-fuss healthy diet plan that you can love are endless.