Healthy Eating
Made Easy

When that happens, the choices may not always be the best ones. You may eat more foods from one group than another, simply because you prefer that food group. That leads to getting to much of some nutrients while perhaps not getting enough of another.

Healthy Eating with Superfoods

• meat and poultry
• dairy
• fruits and vegetables
• grains, such as breads and pasta
• fats and sweets

Plan your meals

To eat healthy you need to do some planning to try to include a variety of foods in your meals and snacks, especially if you are dieting or trying to lose weight. If you are counting calories you might find you aren't getting enough nutrients because you don't get the recommended number of servings from each food group.

Track Your Food

To monitor what you eat and don't eat, start keeping a weight loss journal where you can track everything you eat and drink. After a week or two, examine your choices and determine what food groups you need to eat more of. Make any changes you need to ensure that you're eating a good variety of foods from the list of healthy food.

There are easy ways to increase your intake of any food group that you are not getting enough of. Slice some strawberries or a banana on your cereal, or eat a yogurt as a mid-morning break. To increase your fiber intake, try snacking on raw vegetables with low-fat dressing instead of chips.

Some foods are considered superfoods since they're the healthiest foods we can eat. With these foods, the more you eat, the better! They are all low in calories and taste delicious.

Serving Sizes

Portion control is an important part of healthy eating guidelines as well as weight loss. You may be surprised to learn that the portion size that you are used to eating may be equal to two or three standard servings. You may find it helpful to use common everyday objects to help estimate serving sizes.

Here are a few handy tips:

• 1 teaspoon of margarine of oil is about the size of your fingertip to first joint
• an average cupped hand is about 1/2 cup of fruit, vegetables or cooked rice
• an average palm is about 3 ounces of meat or poultry

Healthy eating means making changes to your diet that you will be able to live with over time. It's an important step on the road towards a healthier, happier life.

You can find out more by going to the Harvard School of Public Health Department of Nutrition.

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