Making Good Food Choices

I am often being asked for advice about making healthy food tasty. Sometimes it seems like people anticipate healthy food not being tasty, maybe you can relate to that.

There is a lot of press about being healthy and it feels like every other report contradicts the last one. Eggs are healthy, eggs aren’t healthy, egg whites are healthy, the whole egg is healthy if it comes from a chicken that gets to forage. What is a person to do?

I think we know a lot of what we are supposed to do already.
- We are supposed to eat natural foods that don’t have added sugars
- We are supposed to get a good amount of fiber in our diet each day
- We are supposed to drink mainly water
- We are supposed to eat a balanced diet containing protein, vegetables, fruits, and complex carbohydrates

One of the simple ways I think of a healthy diet is eating foods that are “close to the source.” In fact for me, I have a general rule that if a food looks like you would find it in nature I can eat as much as I want of it. If it has been modified in any way (except for being cut by a knife) that rule no longer applies. So for example, plain avocadoes, I allow myself to eat as many of them as I would like. Same goes for apples or oranges.

Think about flours, the same rule doesn’t apply because they don’t look like they do in nature. They have been processed. The farther away from its source that a food is, the less I allow myself to consume.

If that “rule” works for you feel free to borrow it.

Did you know that over 54 million Americans are pre-diabetic? WOW! That means that in the next ten years, if they don’t change their ways, they will develop the disease.

The next WOW is that 95% of these cases are preventable with a long-lasting lifestyle change.

You may have heard the statistics of Type 2 (often described as “Adult Onset”) has been diagnosed in children that are not even teenagers yet. This is a new development which is related to other unhealthy trends we are seeing.

Our goal at Quest is to save 20 lives this year. One way I will encourage you to make sure you are not in the “pre-diabetic” category is to consider your diet and if there are areas that you know are unhealthy, make a change for the better.

Try not to substitute unhealthy natural choices with man-made chemicals. For example, I recently stopped using sugar in my coffee. I no longer put ANY sweetener in my coffee because I have a mistrust of artificial sweeteners based on everything that I have read and heard about.

My father died of cancer this past June as you may know. Cancer grows on sugar and sugar has long been a weakness of mine. I have decided recently to greatly decrease my sugar intake. So far, so good. I am pleased with my progress. Having fresh oranges has really helped as they are in season right now and make a great evening snack.

Consider your diet and think of one area that you would like to improve and make better food choices. Make a commitment today to do so. There is no need to wait.

Donna Copeland is an Independent Shaklee Distributor who enjoys sharing what she has learned on her journey.  You can find more information about Shaklee at www.DonnaCopeland.MyShaklee.com (Donna is paid by Shaklee for sales that happen through her website or through her.)