The New Series About Healthy Eating as a Lifestyle

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Consistently maintaining healthy eating habits is not nearly as difficult as it sounds. Yes, there are temptations everywhere that can make you fall off the proverbial wagon. When you eat out or travel, it can be especially hard to stick to your ideal diet. As a dietitian and health counselor who also travels extensively, I had to develop my own strategies to always eat healthy and stay fit and do as I preach to others. I don’t deny the difficulties, but it gets easier over time, especially when you have a plan.

Designing a Health-Conscious Life

As soon as people find out what I do for a living, they ask me without fail the same question: “What should I eat?” Everybody seems so confused these days about nutrition, dieting, fitness, food safety, food politics and so on and so on. The reasons for this are obvious. We are constantly bombarded with news about nutrition studies, breakthrough diets, food contaminations, product recalls and ever-changing dietary guidelines – the stream of often conflicting and contradictory messages never ends.

Still, maintaining a healthy lifestyle should not have to be so complicated. Yes, it can be hard to restrict one’s diet to fresh organically grown produce and other high-quality food products, especially when you want to stay within a reasonable budget. But that doesn’t mean you have to give up on feeding yourself and your loved ones in a health-conscious way. In this new series, I will talk a lot about smart grocery shopping strategies that give you the biggest bang for your buck without having to resort to less than desirable food choices.

Home cooking will be another issue of great interest. Don’t expect a cookbook or recipe collection in this part of the blog  – you can find these under the postings called “Eating Lighter – Eating Smarter” and “Recipe Modifications.” Here, I want to talk about the importance of making tasty and healthful meals from scratch. It is a sad fact that home cooking is rapidly going out of fashion, especially among young professionals who are constantly pressed for time and whose diet consists of little else than restaurant food and take-outs.

As I mentioned before, I also travels extensively, both for business and pleasure. That is the time when even my eating habits face considerable challenges. It took me quite some time to develop workable strategies to always eat healthy and stay fit and do as I preach when I’m on the road or in the air. If you are interested in travel- and health tips, you may find some of my reports in the Travel & Health section quite helpful. Of course, I’m always keen to hear about your experiences too.

Having sounded off enough warnings about restaurant food, I also must confess that I love dining out once in a while. Whether it’s pizza, Chinese or French gourmet, it all has its place, as long as it’s done in moderation. I have written numerous restaurant guides in my professional life and there is a good selection in the “Dining Out” section of this blog. But I’m not a food critic. Instead of handing out “stars” for taste, service and ambiance, I put up warning signs where you should tread carefully and give my thumbs up where the territory is safe – I’m strictly speaking from a dietitian’s perspective, of course.

There cannot be any meaningful conversation about healthy living without involving the utmost importance of a regular exercise and fitness routine. But I’m no Jane Fonda. You’re not going to see me jump up and down in leotards and calf warmers (so nineteen-eighties), just to show you that I mean it when I say that you must move your body to stay healthy.

Last but not least, I will talk more about stress management and sleep hygiene as essential components of a healthy lifestyle. Both topics also relate closely to the improvement of one’s eating habits. Many people can’t get their weight under control because food can be such a great comfort when they’re anxious or exhausted.

The way I would like you to read the “Eat Like a Dietitian” section is not so much as a blueprint for health-conscious living and the likes, but rather as a personal diary of someone who struggles as much as you do with making the right choices – but who also has some good insights how to do better.

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