Healthy Eating Habits
Five lifestyle factors found to affect both total life expectancy and incidence of chronic diseases: smoking, physical activity, alcohol intake, body weight, and quality of nutrition. Studies have shown that smoking, inactivity, poor diet quality, and heavy alcohol consumption contribute up to 60% of premature deaths and 7.4-17.9 years’ loss in life expectancy. Most of my patients made a lot of efforts to stop smoking and reduce alcohol intake. The biggest struggle is to improve the diet habits and reduce weight.
In this interesting study, authors concluded that it’s never too late to start healthy habits. A healthy lifestyle not only decreased the risk of incident cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes but also improved the survival after diagnosis of those diseases.
Today during the group class “Art of healthy eating after 50” we discussed
Seven Practical steps for changing to healthier nutrition habits:
Plan your meals as atool for health
Get into the habit of reading ingredients
Cut the sugary drinks and drinks with sugar substitutes
Balance protein, fat, and carbohydrates
Reward yourself by 80/20 principle
Preserve good food ( leftovers)
Avoid unhealthy ingredients of processed food ( trans fat, artificial dyes, nitrates and nitrites in preserved meats, artificial preservatives, and sugar substitutes)
Helpful websites:
How to maintain healthy weight for life
Photo by Elle Hughes from Pexels
