Healthier Eating: 8 Tips

NOTE: The advice below is intended for peeps who are already in decent physical health. I'm no doctor, so if you've got special physical/dietary/medical needs, a chronic illness, an eating disorder, or anything related/similar, talk with your smart, credentialed, doctor-types before you change anything up.

Have you noticed the huge onslaught of weight loss and diet and I-used-to-be-morbidly-obsese-but-I-ate-that-thing-Ronnie-from-Jersey-Shore-likes-and-now-I'm-skeletal commercials? Maybe it's because the advertising industry knows that we're days out of the holiday season, aka a time of eating and celebrating and eating and rejoicing and ohmygod so much more eating.

I can't speak for the rest of the world, but as Americans, we're kind of conditioned to party and devour our way through the last few months of the year. Then, the shame spiral begins. By December 31st, we feel amazingly gross about our bodies, and so we make vastly unreachable New Years resolutions about health and weight loss. ("I will run 15 miles today and do Pilates 10 times in a row powered by the mere fuel of this rice cracker! Resultingly, I will fit into these fetus-sized nanojeans and Ryan Gosling will be all, 'Hey, girl, I loved you even before you were a stick figure, but now I love you more.'").

Sparklers, there's a better way, I swear. It takes a little work, but it'll save you from that awkward moment where you discover that you're always sick from January through April and your "bigger" pants aren't quite big enough. (Not that this has ever happened to me.) (Except that it totally has.)

1) Don't eat stuff out of a box, wrapper, or jug. If the food you're eating goes through a factory, has chemicals added to it, and gets dehydrated, rehydrated, enriched, amalgamated, colored, or otherwise majorly fussed with, it's not going to be nearly as good for you as something that comes straight from the farm. (Plus, who knows what goes into that factory-made stuff? I don't think you'll ever hear anyone say, "Could you pass me more of that delicious high fructose corn syrup and that tasty ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid? MMMmmm. Just like Gramma used to make!" ) Add more whole foods and vegetables into your diet, read labels, rule out overprocessed junk, and you'll naturally give yourself access more nutrients and better flavors.

2) Cook more. No—ramen doesn't count. (I know. I'm sorry.) When you get your hands on the aforementioned whole foods and cook them yourself (or with your folks), you'll get to be more in control of the amounts and kinds of fats and spices that go into the dish. Home-cookin' from scratch doesn't have to take a long time, and it's a heck of a lot better for you than the "cheez" substitute you're putting on those "corn-style" chips, where the ingredients lists are a series of -oses and -ates. If you can pronounce and identify every ingredient in your meal, you're on the right track.

3) Don't wait until you're starving to eat. If you're more ravenous than a Hungry Hungry Hippo between meals, you're not doing yourself any favors. Instead of having extremes like "so starving I could murder someone for a Tic Tac" and "so full I just hurt myself with eating," shoot for steady satisfaction. Never overfull, never underfull, always just right. Think of yourself as the Goldilocks of nutrition.

4) Eat six meals a day. ...and speaking of not starving between meals, a bunch of people think that "three squares a day" deal is kind of bunk. Depending on your metabolism and other factors, it can be good to have three medium-sized main meals and three smaller snacks under 200 calories total in between.

5) Hydrate. Duh. You know this. Drink lots of water. It's good for you—promise. If you hatehatehate water, try adding a squeeze of lemon or lime. Or go for unsweetened tea—which comes in all kinds of delicious flavors—or seltzer.  Go easy on sodas (and that includes diet ones, because as you might have guessed, artificial sweeteners are still artificial), pre-made iced teas, energy drinks, vitamin-type waters, and fruit juices (which are often only a little juice and a whole lotta sugar).

6) Stop when you're full. Contrary to the bylaws of the Clean Plate Club, you don't have to devour every morsel on your plate. Also, it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to know that your stomach is full, so eat slowly, and hold off on dessert until you give your belly a chance to figure out what's what.

7) You don't have to avoid food groups. I know everyone's like, "carbs are the devil," and "I only eat low-fat peanut butter fudge chunk cookies," but for the love of Mike, please don't banish whole food groups from your life. Instead, eat good carbs, healthy fats, and lean proteins in reasonable amounts. (For example, did you know that the recommended serving size for most meats is a four-ounce portion? That's about the size of a deck of cards, and about a quintillionth of what they'll give you at your local rib joint.)

8) It's totally normal if a diet works for everybody else but not you. There are a jiggityjillion eating programs out there, and yes, lots of people spend money on them and have good results. Thing is? The programs are pretty broad, and while many people can follow 'em and do well, these diets aren't specifically made for you, your body, or your specific metabolic quirks. If you've tried some of the more popular systems, lasted a week, and been like, "Forget this—how I've missed you, metric ton of sandwich cookies!", it's not because you're wrong or bad; you probably just need a different plan. Set up an appointment with a good nutritionist, and work with them to figure out the eating plan that's most suited to you and your awesome, unique body.

Are you vowing to eat healthier in 2012?

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