Unlike cleaning the bathroom and vacuuming your living room...eating healthfully doesn't have to be a chore!
To give you a better idea, here's OMNI Medical Center 's Top 6 Ways to Change Your Eating Habits:
1. Never Skip Breakfast!
Yes, mornings are crazy. But they’re also our best hope at regaining our nutritional sanity. A 2005 study examined the impact of starting the day with a healthy breakfast. Here’s what they found: People who eat breakfast tend to have higher total calorie intakes throughout the day, but they also get significantly more fiber, calcium, and other micronutrients than skippers do (We always make sure we have high-fiber foods in the OMNI Medical Center break room for our staff to much on for breakfast). Breakfast eaters also tended to consume less soda and french fries and more fruits, vegetables, and milk. Additionally, breakfast eaters are approximately 30% less likely to be overweight or obese.
2. Snack With Purpose.
There’s a big difference between mindless munching and strategic snacking. Snacking with purpose means reinforcing good habits, keeping your metabolic rate high, and filling the gaps between meals with the nutrients your child’s body craves.
Chew on this piece of trivia: From 1977 to 1996, salty snack portions increased by a whopping 93 calories, and soft drink portions increased by 49 calories!
3. Beware of Portion Distortion
Snack portions aren’t the only things that have increased wildly in size. According to a nationwide Food Consumption Survey, since 1977 hamburgers have increased by 97 calories, french fries by 68 calories, and Mexican foods by 133 calories!
One easy way to short-circuit this growing trend? Buy smaller bowls and cups (OMNI Medical Center suggests you buy dishes made for child-size portions). Smaller dishes force you to nosh on...well, smaller portions!
4. Drink Responsibly
Too many of us keep in mind the old saying, “watch what you eat,” and we forget another serious threat to our health: we don’t watch what we drink.
According to research from the University of North Carolina, Americans now slurp up nearly 25 percent of their calories in liquid form—nearly double the rate we used to drink just 20 years ago!
One important strategy (to keep you hydrated and help with your weight loss results) is to keep cold, filtered water in a pitcher in the fridge. You might even want to keep some cut-up limes, oranges, or lemons nearby to jazz up your H2O!
5. Eat More Whole Foods and Fewer 'Science Experiments!'
Here’s a rule of healthy eating that will serve you well when picking out foods for yourself (and your family too!): The shorter the ingredients list, the healthier the food.
(One of the worst foods OMNI Medical Center has ever found is the Baskin-Robbins Heath Shake-- It has 73 ingredients—and, by the way, an astronomical 2,310 calories (yikes)!
6. Set the Table (Please and Thank You).
Research shows that families who eat together only once or twice per week are more than twice as likely to exhibit weight problems, compared with those who ate together three or four times per week. The OMNI Medical Center family tries to have lunch together at least twice a week...so we can hold each other accountable, and of course, split meals in order to control our portions!
For more nutritional eating tips or to find out more about the OMNI Medical Center medical weight loss program, visit our web site: www.omnimedicalctr.com.
Here's to sparing some change that makes....sense!
--The OMNI Medical Center Team
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