07 Jan A year’s worth of healthy eating tips for 2010

Everybody knows there are 12 months in a year, and that’s a lot of time to make yourself look and feel better in 2010?
Here are random healthy eating tips for each of those months to make this a better year for you.

1 Eat a good breakfast – It will start you off to a productive day and actually help you eat less the rest of the day.

2 Don’t go to the grocery store hungry – You’ll make a lot smarter shopping decisions if you’re well-nourished before shopping. It will be a lot easier to leave the potato chips and Ho-Hos on the shelf. Seriously, it’s embarrassing to think about what my shopping cart has looked like on some visits in the past when I was hungry – and not on any type of diet plan.

3 Don’t keep junk food in the house – This follows up No. 2. If you shop smart, and there’s no junk food in your house, it will be a lot harder to be tempted to eat food that’s bad for you.

4 Put your fork down between bites – If you slow down eating, you’ll consume less calories. It takes 20 minutes for the brain to get the signal from the stomach that it’s full. So come up for air and talk more during dinner.

5 Drink eight or more glasses of water a day – The benefits are really almost endless – including it will help fill you up.

6 Reduce salt from your diet – You’d be shocked how much salt is in food we eat. Lately my wife and I have been looking at labels and choose items that have less salt, which can lead to high blood pressure. Even seemingly healthy frozen food meals can have huge differences in salt levels.

7 Cut way back on sugar, too – Sugar produces insulin, which causes the body to store fat.

8 Stop drinking soda, including diet pop – The biggest and easy sugar source to cut out is soda. It’s been tough, but I’m trying to do it here in 2010.

9 Don’t eat out at restaurants more than a few times a month – Here’s your stat of the day: restaurant meals average about 750-850 more calories than meals cooked at home.

10 Limit alcohol to weekends – This is a good habit to start and will really help you trim up.

11 Drink a sparkling water in between alcohol – When you do drink, if you mix in something non-alcoholic, like sparkling water or water, it will cut the calories about in half.

12 Get plenty of fiber– Eating high-fiber will help fill you up – and also stay regular. And we all want that.

At Home Fitness consultant Aaron Dorksen’s blog deals with a variety of fitness topics, ranging from workout tips, motivational ideas and feature stories on how exercise impacts people’s lives. E-mail him with comments, questions or ideas for future blogs at aaron@athomefitness.com