Just found this great slide show on WebMd on what smoking does to your body. It shows what happens to your appearance because of smoking. Granted you shouldn’t smoke to begin with just because of what it does to your insides but here’s another reason if you still need one to quit.
Skip the Fast Food
Do you watch a lot of TV and think that fast food is a good alternative? Well you are not alone according to a the recent study Heavy TV watching leads to unhealthy perceptions of fast food health risks.
If you are in that group then let me make it easy for you, most fast food is not very good for you. It is either high in sodium, fat or sugar.
It can be difficult to eat on the run but there are several options out there. For instance if you must have fast food try a salad. Skip the high calorie dressing and go with the lite italian. Toss the croutons and most of the cheese to help keep useless calories and fat down. Another good choice is the Oven Roasted Chicken Sub at Subway on the 9 grain wheat (not the honey wheat). Top that with all the fresh veggies and skip the sauces and you have a home run.
Another option for a healthy lunch is something I have started doing recently when needed. Find a grocery store and hit the produce aisle. For about what you would pay for that value meal you can get several filling servings of fruit and vegetables. They will give you most of the micronutrients you need for the day and will fill you up nicely. Add the fact that there is no added sugar or salt and you have a home run.
Why you should cut Soda from your diet today…
MSN.com just posted 10 great reasons why you should cut soda from your diet today. One of my favorites besides all the great metabolic reasons, is the fact that it can be a huge help in losing weight. For instance, a 20 oz Coke has 240 calories in it. If you are consuming two a day then you are putting on an extra 3360 calories a week. A pound is only 140 calories more**. So you are practically adding an additional pound a week just from drinking that sugary soda. Thats 52 pounds a year. If that’s not a good enough reason to quit drinking soda today then check out the article for 9 other ones that are.
**There are 3500 calories in a pound.
Bet you didn’t know sugar’s addictive..
Recently I have read that sugar is actually addictive and you can suffer withdrawal from it. Here’s a first person account that is interesting reading…
This is what happens to your brain when you stop eating sugar
Too Much Sodium
Recently Popular Science had an article called “Your Sandwich is a Sodium Bomb“. It explains how many take out sandwiches are full of sodium and how in many cases they can exceed the recommended daily allowance of 2300 mg for someone in good health. If you need to restrict your sodium due to a medical condition then it is only 1500 mg. Since I started really watching what I was eating I found the exact same thing. I used to be a big Subway eater. However, I quickly found that many of their sandwiches are full of sodium as well. However, if you look you can find sandwiches that don’t blow your RDA. In the case of Subway their 6″ Oven Roasted Chicken sub only has 610 mg. This is without cheese or dressings. Be careful with those as they can pack on a lot.
Eating out is not the only place you have to watch for too much sodium. It is also in many of the foods we take for granted in the home. Take for instance Progresso Light Beef Pot Roast. At first look it looks like a very healthy alternative with only 80 calories a serving (2 servings per can). However, those 80 calories pack a whopping 470 mg of Sodium. For an average adult that is almost a fifth of their recommended daily allowance of sodium in only 5% of their calories. The numbers just don’t work.
One easy way to address the problem of too much sodium is to cook from scratch. I have found that by making my own soups and stews I can get the sodium way down. I also cut out all processed foods. Now instead of regularly taking in 4000 to 5000 mgs of sodium a day, I barely get 1000 mg. I also feel a lot better. I have also found that I don’t miss the canned and process stuff either. In fact, on the rare occasions I do eat them, I can now taste the abundance of sodium in those foods and they are way too salty for me.