Eating Healthy for Weight Loss

Six Tips to Eating Healthy

Are you looking to lose weight and start a healthy eating plan?

Then these tips will help you build your perfect menu.

Healthy eating is a lifestyle change and should not be a short term diet.

Small changes in your daily habits can help you achieve your health goals.

Eating right can help you feel energized, fit and healthy.

Below are six tips that can help you get started today.

Eating Healthy Tips

Eating Healthy Weight Loss Tip #1

veggies Choose Whole Foods

If you are like me, you want a piece of bread now and then. 

I used to eat white bread until I started reading up on what types of foods are healthier, and guess what; white bread wasn’t one of them.

Make sure it is 100% whole wheat bread. When you read the ingredients, it should say whole wheat and not processed whole wheat. 

If it is processed, then it is no longer 100% whole wheat. 

In addition to selecting the right foods you need to watch portion sizes.  Too much of anything can be a bad thing so monitor the foods and portions.

Eating Healthy for Weight Loss Tip #2

Keep it Natural

Similar to making sure you are getting whole foods, all your foods should be in it's natural state or as close to natural as possible.  

Foods that have been processed lose some of the nutritional value and often times increase the calories or fat content during the process.

A good example would be tomatoes versus tomato sauce.  A medium tomato has only 22 calories, no fat, 5 g carbs and 6 mg sodium  

However 4 ounces of tomato sauce (approximately the same serving size as the medium tomato) has 36 calories, no fat, 8 g carbs and 587 mg of sodium.

The same can be said for fruit and veggie juices. Check out this article on why you should eat your fruits and veggies instead of drinking them.


Tip #3

Create Healthy Recipes

We all want healthy recipes, but don’t always want to give up our favorite recipes.

Take a look at your recipes and see how you can alter them to make it healthier. For instance, do you fry your chicken? 

Try baking instead sprinkled with some of your favorite spices or try to find a healthy alternative to cooking in oils. Here's an article on ways to reduce fat through cooking methods.

Same goes for baked goods. Replace the oil with apple sauce. This will keep that cake moist but without all the fat. Try using sugar substitutes as well.

Switch from whole milk to 1% or fat free skim milk. When I first switched to skim milk I wasn’t thrilled about the taste. But now, I can hardly tell that its fat free.

Here are a few ways to reduce fat with different cooking methods.

Find your favorite healthy recipe on this site. Be sure to search this site for recipes using this custom search tool.


Eating Healthy Weight Loss Tip #4

Less sugar

Candy hearts

Switch from regular sweetened drinks to diet drinks. Also, be careful of the amount of fruit juices you drink. 

A glass of juice has as many calories ounce for ounce as a soda. So limit your juice to just one 8oz glass a day or dilute it with water.


Read the labels and watch out for things that are high in sugar. Try the sugar free or reduced sugar alternatives for these foods.

Sugar gives you no real benefits and is just empty calories, so reduce your sugar intake where you can.

You must reduce your calorie intake for weight loss, so make the calories count by adopting a healthy eating weight loss plan.

Here are even more ways to cut calories to lose weight and eat healthy.


Eating Healthy Weight Loss Tip #5

Don't Drink and Diet

Dieting and drinking are not a great combination for losing weight. But, there will be occasions where you want to celebrate and have a drink.

Just remember, the best way to lose weight is to keep everything in moderation. This includes your alcohol intake.

Some alcoholic drinks rate better than others as far as calorie content is concerned. Always read the labels to know how many calories you are consuming, even in your drinks.

Check out this article Diet friendly alcohol choices on sparkpeople.com

Eating Healthy Weight Loss Tip #6

VeggiesAdd Fruits and Veggies

Are you getting enough of your fruits and vegetables?  Recommendation from the experts is to get 5 – 9 vegetable and fruit servings a day, so eat up.

In fact, when eating from the different 5 food groups, your fruits and veggies should make up half your plate according the the USDA

"MyPlate" guidelines.

Fruits and vegetables are a great addition to your healthy weight loss plan for a few reasons. 

One, they tend to make you feel more satisfied as you can eat a larger volume of these foods (especially the veggies), secondly they give you fiber and thirdly, there are many medical benefits.

Before you pile on all the goodies on your salad, check out this article on healthy salads. 

Make your fruits and vegetables colorful and varied. This way you get lots of vitamins and other valuable nutrients.  For instance, try pumpkin for a great change of pace.  

There are many health benefits of pumpkin and pumpkin seeds. 

Did you know that certain fruits and vegetables also help boost your metabolism. Check out all these metabolism booster foods for your new eating healthy lifestyle.


Additional Articles

Nutrition Calculator
Look up your favorite foods with this free online tool. Use the nutrition information to track calories, carbs or even fats for your diet.

Quick Weight Loss Tips
If you are looking to lose weight fast the healthy way, then check out these tips.

Flat Belly Diet
Before spending hours doing abdominal exercises be sure to read this article.