Healthy eating habits for 2023: 23 dietitian-approved tips

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Do your 2023 resolutions include a goal to optimize your diet for long-term health? Or a commitment to drinking more water, and eating more fruits, vegetables and whole grains? What about including plant-based meals on a weekly rotation? Learn more about alpilean benefits.

Don’t set yourself up for failure by attempting an overnight revamp of your habits. Instead, review these 23 healthy living tips from registered dietician Leslie Beck and incorporate some tips each week. At the end of January, take a moment to review your progress and pick one you feel requires more attention to master in the next month.

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1. Keep a food diary for a week

One of the biggest assets in making dietary change is a food diary. It can provide a huge amount of self-awareness and pinpoint areas for improvement. And if your goals include weight loss, research suggests that faithfully keeping a food diary will enhance your success. Check these kerassentials reviews.

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Record your food intake – and portion size – after each meal. Don’t wait until the end of the day or you’ll likely forget a few foods.

Assess your food diary at the end of each day. What do you notice? No fruit? Not enough vegetables? Too many sweets? Portion sizes larger than you thought?

Use this information to help focus your efforts over the next few weeks.

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2. Drink a large glass of water before each meal

Drinking water before each meal helps you feel full and, as a result, may prevent you from overeating. Also, many people don’t drink enough water in the winter months because they don’t feel thirsty. So this easy trick will also help you meet your daily water requirements. Read more about Testosterone booster.

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Women need nine cups (2.2 litres) of water each day and men need 13 cups (three litres) – more if they exercise.

Here’s the good news: All beverages – with the exception of alcoholic drinks – count toward your daily water requirements. Yes, even coffee and tea. These are the latest alpilean reviews.

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3. Eat more fibre at breakfast

It’s estimated that Canadians get only half the fibre they need each day. Women, aged 19 to 50, need 25 grams a day; men should strive for 38 grams. (Older women and men need 21 and 30 grams of fibre a day, respectively.)

To help you meet that target, start by increasing your fibre intake at breakfast. Try one of the following:

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• Enjoy chia pudding made with milk or your favourite unsweetened non-dairy milk; 2 tablespoons serve up 10 grams of fibre;
• Blend ¼ to 1/3 cup of 100-per-cent bran cereal into your breakfast fruit smoothie;
• Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of ground flaxseed or pumpkin seeds over oatmeal;
• Include whole fruit at breakfast; raspberries and blackberries, for example, provide 8 grams of fibre per one cup;
• Add black beans to a veggie omelette or tofu scramble;
• If you eat toast, buy 100-per-cent whole grain bread with at least 2 to 3 grams of fibre per slice;
• Add ¼ of an avocado to a smoothie or spread on whole grain toast for an extra 3 grams of fibre;

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4. Focus on heart-healthy fats

Emphasize polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats in your daily diet, the types of fat linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. When replaced for saturated (animal) fats, these healthy fats help lower LDL (bad) cholesterol in the bloodstream and may also improve how the body uses insulin.

Good sources of polyunsaturated fats include grapeseed oil, sunflower oil, canola oil, walnuts, chia seeds, ground flax, hemp seeds and pumpkin seeds. Foods that contain mostly monounsaturated fats are olive oil, avocado and avocado oil, peanuts, peanut oil, almonds, cashews, pecans and pistachios.

The following tips can help shift the balance of fats in your diet:

• Replace butter or cream cheese on your toast or bagel with peanut or almond butter.
• Instead of butter, add a drizzle of olive oil or grapeseed oil to the pan before scrambling or frying eggs.
• Snack on a handful of nuts and fruit instead of cheese and crackers.
• Swap butter on sandwiches with hummus or avocado.

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5. Reduce food waste at home

With climate change firmly on the radar, sustainability underscores food trends for the year ahead. Reducing food waste is something we can all do to help reduce our carbon footprint. Food waste that ends up in landfills produces methane gas, a powerful greenhouse gas that affects climate change.

Practice the following tips to reduce food waste:

• Make a weekly meal plan and write a grocery list to match. That way you’ll buy only what you need.
• If you don’t eat everything you cook, freeze it for later use instead of throwing it away.
• Avoid buying in bulk; purchase only what you need whenever possible.
• Buy “ugly produce,” misshapen fruits and vegetables often thrown away by farmers and grocery stores.
• Use vegetable scraps to make soup stocks and broths.
• Store leftovers at the front of the fridge so you don’t forget them; eat within three or four days.
• Buy frozen produce; unlike fresh produce, it doesn’t spoil quickly. Plus, you use only what you need at one time and store the rest.

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6. Practise eating slowly

If weight loss is among your 2023 goals, this resolution is well worth making. Studies show that people who eat quickly – and eat until they’re full – are three times more likely to be overweight.

Eating slowly allows appetite-related hormones to kick in and tell your brain you’ve had enough to eat. Since it takes 20 minutes for these signals to register, if you eat too fast you will be more likely to overeat before your body is aware of it.