Healthy Diet Book: Dieting Recipe Selection

Healthy Diet Book

Dieting Recipe Selection

Minnie Phillips and Cassandra Wise

Copyright © 2013 Minnie Phillips and Cassandra Wise

All rights reserved.

Introdution

What does it mean to eat a healthy diet? All health issues are directly affected by the foods we eat. The old saying you are what you eat holds true. If you put junk into your body then your body will react by showing symptoms of ill health conditions. One of the biggest health conditions caused by eating junk food is obesity. Obesity causes a host of issues that if the weight weren't on the body the health concerns would not be there. Other health conditions are aggravated by eating junk food aside from weight gain.

Other health conditions that may be aggravated by eating junk food are hypertension, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and immune issues. If a patient comes to the doctor with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or high blood sugar one of the first things the doctor may prescribe is a change in diet. Often, they will tell patients to give a diet change about six weeks, coupled with exercise, to help lower the levels of blood pressure, cholesterol, and or blood sugar naturally. They do this because more often than not the prescription of a change of diet and exercise will help the levels of those conditions to come down to a normal range.

Okay, so you go on a diet to help make you healthier. Do you think that going on the diet long enough to bring about the desired results, be it lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol levels, lower blood sugar, or weight loss will work if you stopped doing the diet? The answer is no. Dieting for health reasons and then going back to your old habits once you reach those goals will not work. If you diet to lower blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, and or lose weight and go back to old eating habits the health issues will come back. For weight loss, you will gain the weight back just as fast. All the other health issues may eventually come back. Probably the reason you have some of these issues are from your bad diet.

So what should you do? You should go on a healthy diet to correct the health issues and stay on the diet to maintain your improved state of health. In other words, you must make this a lifestyle change. Think of it this way, if you make this lifestyle change and you help to correct health issues you know it's also doing something else. It is helping to strengthen your immune system. This is a big one. A weakened immune system will cause the body to become sick. If your immune system is strong you may be able to fight off germs and infections including devastating conditions like heart disease and cancer. This reason alone should spark anyone to wanting to eat a healthier diet.

What if you have a junk food habit that is hard to break? Junk food is as addictive as smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol. It grabs hold and keeps you captive wanting more and more of the substances that are bad for you. If you stop eating junk food suddenly (if you have a true addiction) you will go into withdrawals. This reason alone is why so many fail at diets. They will stop the junk food suddenly and go on a healthy diet without properly weaning off the junk food. When this happens the body may react by having bad headaches, moodiness, and intense cravings that are difficult to ignore. It is a painful process, which is why so many give in and give up on the dieting. Instead of setting up for certain failure, take the time to wean from the junk food and set up for success.

A successful wean from a junk food addiction will take about three weeks. Take the first three weeks of the new healthy diet to wean off the junk food in order to have good success and results. The first week eat junk food just two times per day and the remainder of the meals and snacks eat healthy foods like the recipes from this book. The second week eat you can eat the junk food just once per day, making sure to eat healthy meals the remainder of the time. The third week will get a little tougher as you will skip a day and you will eat junk food just once every other day. By the end of the third week you should be weaned from the junk food addiction. If you still find you have cravings try eating it just one time per week. Eventually your body will stop craving it and you will instead want to eat the healthier foods.

In addition to weaning off the junk food you should add an exercise routine to your schedule. Exercise works hand in hand with dieting in helping the body to become healthier. If you wish to make a complete lifestyle change for the healthier then exercise is a must. Exercise is not time consuming or too hard. All you need to do to make a big difference is to exercise for just half an hour every other day. The exercise should help you to break a sweat to make it work. You can choose what to do the whole point is to be physically active. You can walk, jog, run, swim, ride a bike, and do aerobics, workout on gym equipment, dance, or play sports. If you lift weights make sure to include all the muscle groups. By working out until you break a sweat you help the body to release a substance called endorphins. This substance is released when runners run and they call it obtaining a runner's high. This substances gives the body extra energy. It helps to fight back depression. It makes you feel good enough that you will want to do it again.

Seek the advice of your healthcare physician before trying any new diet or exercise routine. Then stick with it to achieve a healthier body.

Section 1: Dieting Cookbook

Is losing weight easy? Well, the answer to that question depends a lot on how you define the word ''easy.''

Many do want to take the easy way out and this is rarely a good idea.

If you are looking for a diet that can help you shed 15lbs in a month, there are no easy answers. Then again, that statement can be amended slightly. You can lose quite a lot of weight in a month if you take advantage of fad diets that entail starving yourself via calorie restriction. No one will deny those diets will help you lose weight. Granted, the weight you lose will be mostly water and muscle. Anyone looking to target fat will find these diets do not deliver on expectations.

There also is that nasty little thing about crash diets leading to binge eating. Of course, once you go on an over the top binge, you will find yourself gaining all that weight you tried to lose in the first place, plus more on top of it.

No, none of these dietary strategies is a good one and they do not contribute one iota to losing weight for the long term and keeping it off. If long term weight loss is your real goal, you will want to eat healthier. That means you want to eat good food that is low in calories and fat.

Healthy recipes are where it's at! This is the true path to smart and, dare it be said, easy weight loss.

At this point, you are probably mentioning the well-worn cliché that doing so is a lot easier said than done. There are not exactly many healthy food choices available to those wishing to drop weight. Super markets are loaded with processed foods that do not actually do a body good.

There is certainly quite a bit of truth to that statement. No honest person would ever note that processed, sugary and fatty foods do not crowd supermarket store shelves. Sure, those items are there and they are joined by a lot of healthy selections. All you have to do is take these selections and make your own diet healthy and conscious food choices.

NO, it is not all that difficult to cook breakfasts, lunches and dinners that are good for you and can help you lose weight. Even those that are not well versed in the art of gourmet cooking can make scores of amazing food selections. Tons of these recipes are easy to prepare and, generally, do not take very long to cook. Some of these recipes do not even need to be cooked!

Whether you are interested in the traditional low fat diet or the popular low carb diet, there are recipes here for you. Do you want breakfasts or even desserts to help you lose weight? You have a number of them to choose from. Are you considering flirting with muscle building, raw food or the Paleo diet, this book offers a small glimpse into a few of those recipes.

So, if you want to lose weight and never get bored eating or cooking in the kitchen, you can let your journey to a healthier (and funner) life begin...

Chapter One

Low Fat Recipes: The Basic Weight Loss Recipes

Without a doubt, low fat diet recipes are among the most common and popular ones for those wishing to lose weight. This should not come as too much of a surprise. Fat is loaded with calories and if you eat a high fat diet, you are likely to pack on a lot of unwanted and unnecessary weight. Food selections that are low in fat generally are safe bets for those wishing to shed pounds.

(And then there is the little matter of a low fat diet being good for the heart)

There are only three things food can be comprised of: fat, carbohydrates and protein. The lower the fat amount, the higher the protein and the carbohydrates will be. Now, you do not want those carbs to be bad ones. Bad would be defined as carbs made of refined sugar. You will want natural carbs and those that are low in overall calories. Food selections such as these will help you maintain the overall calorie levels required to help you lose the weight.

Low fat foods are generally light and, quite honestly, often easy to prepare. Even if you are somewhat new to cooking, you will find quite a few of these recipes to be easy to make.

They are also commonly very healthy for you and that is a good thing when you are concerned about weight loss. Losing weight is not just about how you