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Old 05-14-2004, 01:03 PM   #1
Friscochick
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Changing Your Diet-Beginners Guide to nutrition

Changing Your Diet-Beginners Guide to nutrition
Getting started


If you are a person who has never paid much attention to what you eat, making changes in your diet or using a special diet plan that has been recommended to you may seem overwhelming. Or, if you are a person who has tried many different diets, you may be frustrated because you haven't been able to stick to them. The following are the most important things to remember:

Make small changes. Don't try to change your whole diet at once. You are more likely to be successful in making small changes and sticking with them for the long term.
Any positive changes you make will improve your health. Your diet doesn't have to be an "all or none" affair. If you go back to old eating habits for a meal, for a day, or for a week, it doesn't mean you have failed and should stop trying to make improvements in your diet.
Try some easy ways to improve your nutrition.

Setting goals

Keep track of your progress. Write down your goals. When you reach your first goal, reward yourself! Then set a new goal. Periodically go back and check your progress. Small successes can add up quickly and make a big difference in your life.

Make only 1 change at a time. For example, you may want to work on improving what you eat for lunch, or you could try to eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Pick a change that will be easy for you to make. Or try making a single change that will have a big impact on your diet, such as reducing the number of meals that have red meat as the main course to only 3 per week.

Add something to your diet instead of taking something away. Try to add foods that you think you need more of, like fruits and vegetables. Taking things out of your diet (for example, foods that are high in fat or sugar) may leave you feeling deprived, which may make it more difficult for you to make a change. Chances are, if you are trying to eat more fruits, you will sometimes reach for fruit instead of chips or cookies, and your diet will end up being lower in fat and sugar anyway.

Choose more of the healthy foods that you enjoy. Look at the foods you like (make a list) and see how you can change them to make them healthier. For example, make pizza at home using fat-free pizza sauce, low-fat or nonfat mozzarella cheese, and lots of fresh vegetables. If the foods you like are already good for you, find ways to eat them more often.

Only tell people about the changes your are making if they will be supportive of your efforts. Wait to tell people who might be less supportive or make you feel embarrassed about your effort if things don't go as planned.

Avoid setting goals that compare you with someone else. When you are starting out, comparing yourself with someone else can be disappointing. First, no two people start with exactly the same situation. Also, comparisons can cause you to try to make too many changes at once. Compare yourself only with your past efforts. Do you feel better about your diet today than you did last week?


Motivation

Getting motivated to change your diet is essential, but hard to do. Motivation problems may have gotten in your way in the past. Try not to let bad experiences and attitudes from the past stop you from becoming motivated now.


Barriers to eating well

Even when you know about the benefits of eating well, you may find it hard to change your lifestyle until you deal with the reasons you give yourself for not eating well. Barriers to eating well often include valid reasons for why you aren't eating well and excuses you make to avoid something you dislike or fear. It can be hard to tell the difference between a valid reason and an excuse, and it may not be important. It's more important to face these barriers and find solutions.

Recall the last few times you thought about improving your diet but didn't follow through with it. What held you back?
Examine the choices you make each day. Try this each day for a week: Take a minute to write down your reasons for not improving your diet. Then for each of your reasons, write a response that helps you reconsider your choice. Look at this list of reasons and responses whenever you are about to make a choice about what to eat.
Fear is the reason many people avoid change. Consider the following list of reasons not to change your eating habits. Do any of the reasons sound familiar to you? Follow the links to learn what fears may be behind your reasons, and learn about possible solutions to these barriers to change.

I have no time. (Or, I'm too busy at work; I always feel rushed; I have more important things to do).
I don't like healthy foods. (Or, I don't like vegetables or low-fat foods; I crave sweets and high-fat foods too much; what if the changes I make don't make me feel better or become healthier?)
People will make fun of me if I start eating healthy foods. (Or, I don't want to draw attention to myself by ordering special foods; I'm just too fat to make a change like this).
Perhaps the greatest fear that holds people back is the fear of failure. People put off making all kinds of changes in their lives because of this fear. The most helpful approach to overcoming the fear of failure is to carefully define "success" and "failure" using realistic goals. If your goal is simply to eat better than you do now, it will be hard to fail. If your goal is to lose a certain amount of weight, to "cure" a disease, or to eat "perfectly," then the fear of failure is likely to hold you back.


Tips for getting motivated

Record your efforts. Circle the days on the calendar when you meet a nutrition goal. Record the healthy things you do in a notebook or journal. Use a food record form to record your food intake. These records will increase your awareness of your success. Look over your food record forms or journal when you begin to doubt yourself or your abilities.

Reward yourself when you are successful. Rewards encourage you to continue your efforts. Make each reward tied to a specific, measurable goal, such as eating 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day for 1 week. Avoid the temptation to reward yourself with unhealthy food. If you dearly love an expensive healthy food, such as papayas, use them as a reward. Also avoid setting your goals around weight loss. Weight loss is not a good measure of an improvement in your eating habits, partly because it may be too gradual.

Buy yourself a new cookbook or magazine. Find books or magazines that contains healthy recipes. This could be a reward, but it doesn't have to be. It might be a good jump-start to your efforts to change.

Take a healthy cooking class. These classes can provide you with a consistent approach to planning and preparing healthy meals. Once you get to know the people in the class, healthy peer pressure may help you to show up and continue. (Healthy peer pressure focuses on participation, not competition.) Call a local hospital or your local health department to find out about healthy cooking classes in your area.


Maintaining the lifestyle

The 2 things you need to make a long-term commitment to changes in your diet are staying motivated and making good nutrition a routine, pleasant part of your life.

Staying motivated is central to maintaining your new lifestyle. The motivation section can help you become interested in good nutrition. But what it takes to maintain your commitment to eating a healthier diet may be different than what it takes to become motivated in the first place. Here are some ways to keep yourself motivated when your interest in a healthy diet starts to fade.

Add some variety. Be adventurous! Try some new foods. Try a new recipe once a week or once a month. Try a new restaurant. Ethnic restaurants often have very healthy foods.

Make it fun. Join a healthy cooking class. Start a healthy cooking dinner club. Invite friends over for a healthy vegetarian (or other theme) meal.

Make it a habit. Until your new diet becomes a habit for you, the effort needed to stay committed may seem too great to keep up for a lifetime. Here are some tips for making it a habit:

Try to stick with changes for at least 3 months. For some people, 3 months is not long enough to form a habit. Changing seasons and holidays may also interfere with your efforts to form a new habit. Keep it up until you don't think about the changes you've made as an extra part of your day.
When you're first getting started, try to make some new routines. You can make variations later, but creating a habit requires repetition. For example, add some fruit to your breakfast, such as a banana on cold cereal or dried fruit on hot cereal. If you've never been a breakfast eater, try eating a piece of fruit to help you start a breakfast habit.

Tracking your progress

One way to evaluate your progress is to record your food intake for several days when you first start to make changes in your diet, and then do it again in a few weeks or months. You can do this every once in a while to track your progress. Compare your early records with more recent ones. Have you met your goal(s) or improved your diet? (See the food record form.)

Pay attention to how you feel. Can you notice any difference when you are eating better? Or do you notice any difference when you sometimes eat poorly?

Have your food preferences changed? We like what we are used to, and as we change what we eat, we learn to like new foods. You may find you don't like some of the foods you used to eat before you started making changes in your diet. And you may have learned to like new foods that you thought you didn't like.

If you are following a special diet, you may notice that lab tests ordered by your doctor have improved.

Blood sugar tests will tell you whether your diet is helping to control your diabetes.
Periodic blood tests can measure your cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
You or your health professional can measure your blood pressure to see whether dietary changes are improving it.
It is more difficult to determine whether your diet is reducing your risk of diseases such as cancer. However, the evidence that proper nutrition can prevent disease is very compelling. It may be helpful for you to reinforce your belief in your efforts by reading information about how nutrition can prevent disease. See Other Places to Get Help for resources that provide information about good
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Old 05-14-2004, 03:57 PM   #2
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Very well written and informative article.
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