12 Ways to Eat More Vegetables and Fruits

Deciding what to eat is one of the best ways to control your destiny. 

It shouldn't be necessary to talk about the importance of eating more vegetables and fruits, but as I shop for food and casually look in the shopping carts of others in the supermarkets, I have concluded that it is necessary.  

To get your health in better shape, change your diet by following these 12 steps:

 1.      Include a small salad with one of your main meals each day.

2.      Add banana, strawberries, or another favorite fruit to your cereal or yogurt at breakfast.

3.      When eating a full meal, work on your vegetable portions right away, rather than reserving them for the end after you finish the other items.

4.      Use fresh fruit and fruit sauces as toppings on desserts and pancakes.

5.      Liven up your sandwiches with vegetables such as tomato, lettuce, onion, peppers, and cucumbers.


6.      When you have a craving for chips, have a small handful with lots of fresh salsa.

7.      For dessert, have baked apples, grilled pineapples, or a small bowl of berries or grapes.

8.      Make a fruit smoothie by blending fruit with low-fat yogurt or skim milk.

9.      Dip partially cooked vegetables (carrots, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower) in cottage cheese, hummus,  low-fat ranch dressing, or yogurt dip.
  
10.  Cut fruit in slices or halves and dip the pieces in low-fat cottage cheese or yogurt.
 
11.  Incorporate fruits and vegetables and your diet with other foods or recipes.  Add vegetables to a your favorite soup, green peppers and onions to your pizza, include  fresh fruits with your morning cereal, and stir fruit in with yogurt or cottage cheese.
 
12.  If you don’t care for raw vegetables, lightly cook them and see if you prefer them with a softer texture. Sprinkle them with herbs for flavoring.

Go to 15 Ways to Eat Well, Keep your Energy Level Up, and Your Weight Down for more useful information.  

What do you have to share about eating healthy? Leave your comments below.

The Benefits to the Body of Specific Types of Physical Activities

Aerobic Exercising

If several of your close blood relatives have had heart at­tacks before the age of sixty, you're likely to have one too unless you eliminate all the other possible risk factors. 

Don't have a fatalistic view about heart disease because so many of your close relatives died young from heart attacks. 

Chances are your ill-fated parents or siblings smoked, were overweight, were diabetic with poor sugar control, had el­evated cholesterol levels, and rarely exercised. Genes are only part of the story. 

Regardless of your genetic vulnera­bility, correcting any obvious abnormalities will improve your outlook considerably.

Regular exercise, that's sufficiently rigorous, protects the coronary arteries. However, you've got to pay attention to the other risk factors as well. Dr. William Castelli, the di­rector of the Framingham Heart Study, estimates that half the doctors running in the Boston Marathon have abnormal cholesterol levels—and don't know it!

You're most likely to stay with your exercise program if you enjoy it. Few people will continue for very long with a regimen that they find boring. Brisk walking for thirty minutes a day or vigorous gardening are enough. If you prefer, you may also run, jog, dance, bike, or swim, pro­vided your doctor has cleared you to do so. Walking briskly for about three miles (you can pick any other form of ex­ercise) was found to reduce the risk of a heart attack by 64 percent in male Harvard alumni. (Graduates of Princeton, Yale, and Cornell can probably expect the same good re­sults.)

Aerobic exercises such as walking or running (as opposed to stretching and weight-lifting) exert their beneficial effect in several ways:
a. They lower your resting heart rate and blood pressure, thus easing the burden on your heart.
b. They reduce cholesterol and triglycerides, raise the good HDL and lower the bad LDL.
b. They drop the blood sugar in diabetic.
c. They help prevent osteoporosis.
c. They decrease the proportion of body fat.
e. And, they reduce stress and improve mood.
All in all, exercise is a good prescription against heart attack.

Finally, besides improving your physical health and increasing your longevity, exercise can have short-term and long-term psychological benefits. Physical activity can reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression and improve mood and well-being.