
#1
Diet: read the labels
Common sense? Stating the obvious? I would think so, but it's easy to let slide. I admit I did it only casually for the longest time if that and it's so easy to think "I don't eat that bad, it's not like I'm eating fast food every day or chugging down sodas." Then I took a closer look and bumped it against the recommended daily max for such things (esp salt, sugar and saturated fat)...advertising and marketing people are REALLY good at making things sound better than they are, esp with terms like "organic" or "all-natural" or "fat free" etc. Don't be fooled, read the labels. A 20 lb sack of sugar is "fat free" - that doesn't mean it can't cause you to gain a lot of weight and be bad for you in other ways. And things that don't seem so bad on a glance can be. The good news is it can go both ways; sometimes things aren't as bad as they can be made out. For example, I found that (generally speaking), crackers, even those considered somewhat "healthy," are often no worse than potato chips for salt and fat content. So I chose crackers more carefully and didn't stop eating chips (just not as often or as much). Another example: frozen meals. These are often blasted as so horribly bad, and some are...but some are not. They vary, a LOT. I have these for lunch at work sometimes and the diff in them can be massive. So I'm just careful which I buy.
In general I found I could made a huge diff in getting better at reading labels and noticing how much the bad stuff could sneak in there, yet still could enjoy things like chips and desserts and whatever, as long as I was aware how much of this or that they had. And again common sense...eat "bad" things sparingly, not frequently, and be careful of amounts.
I don't know if this has any value to anyone but FWIW. Read labels on basically everything, know how much is considered acceptable for a healthy diet, and it can make a big diff.
In general I found I could made a huge diff in getting better at reading labels and noticing how much the bad stuff could sneak in there, yet still could enjoy things like chips and desserts and whatever, as long as I was aware how much of this or that they had. And again common sense...eat "bad" things sparingly, not frequently, and be careful of amounts.
I don't know if this has any value to anyone but FWIW. Read labels on basically everything, know how much is considered acceptable for a healthy diet, and it can make a big diff.