Lifestyle Choices

Good food and good health can go together in everyone’s daily life. Don’t throw away all those lovely cookbooks you’ve collected over the years. Almost every recipe can be easily adapted to give more nutritional value and better, more natural-tasting dishes at the same time. Even if you are not on a diet, the following hints will help to retain the vitamin and mineral content in the food, lower the quantity of unnecessary fats, sugars and salts on your plate, and let the fresh taste of your food make mealtimes a pleasure for the entire family. (more…)

Every season the shops fill up with new clothes. Winter coats, short and swinging last year, are long and dragging along the pavements this year. Wedges and platform soles are so last year — this year’s shoes are flat and bright. As the trends change, last season’s must-have items look so unappealing and dowdy. The magazines are full of the latest, hottest, most up-to-date fashions and consumers feel obliged to keep up if at all possible. (more…)

The first step in fat control is establishing realistic goals.

Too many teens and adults, both men and women, establish unrealistic goals for their physical appearance. Fat weight, and body proportions are all factors that can be changed, but people often set standards for themselves that will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. It is important that goals be set for fat and weight control that can be accomplished for both the short term and the long haul. This necessitates developing an understanding of your own body proportions as well as your body fatness. Unrealistic goals may result in eating disorders (see Concept 20), failure to meet goals, or the failure to maintain fat loss over the long haul. The measurement procedures used in Labs 13A and 13B should help you establish realistic goals.

Goals that emphasize the behavior of eating less and exercising more are more effective than those emphasizing a specific outcome such as weight or fat lost (or gained).

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