What are your Healthy Eating Goals?

While I was looking at some of our Iowa Avenue member sites, I came across an interesting question which, upon examination, I wanted to give further thought and insight toward.

Bill wrote a post that featured his goals. They were laudable, measurable and had a realistic timetable in which to accomplish them.

But he was stumped as to a specific, measurable goal regarding healthy eating, “Eat: Better (I need better goal than this “better” is too vague - ideas anyone?)”

I have a few potential suggestions:

1. Commit to eating vegetarian. I blogged about eating vegetarian for 30 days, and discovered just as Andrew did (although he is vegetarian now), that in order to eat vegetarian one must make a concerted effort to not eat unhealthy foods, which of course, defeats the main purpose of doing this.

Therefore, instead of eating vegetarian 24/7, I decided to eat vegetarian 3 days per week. For me, it’s a perfect fit for my lifestyle.

Goal 1 - Eat vegetarian 3 days per week

2. Another way to stay focused on healthy eating is committing to eating a salad a day.

Remember, not all salads are created equal. You need to take a look at the ingredients, especially the dressing. If the dressing is very fatty, then use it sparingly. And even if it’s fat-free, it still contains calories, so don’t overload your salad with it.

Currently I’m trying out the spray type of salad dressings. They’re convenient, assist you to use it with moderation, and it provides more than enough dressing for you to be satisfied. Just as important, I like it.

Remember that eating healthy doesn’t mean you have to eat foods you do not like or can’t stand. You do have options. As we have stated before, proper weight management is not about depriving yourself of foods, rather using them properly and in moderation.

Goal 2 – Eat a salad a day

3. Commit to eating a salad a day. You can’t go wrong with doing this and, in addition, you can start to increase the number of fruits and vegetables you eat daily which leads to the next goal.

Goal 3 – Eat at least 9 servings of fruits and vegetables every day

4. If you’re using some type of calorie counting system, setting a goal makes it easier to achieve. If you lower your calorie intake by 500 calories, you should be able to lose a pound a week.

To keep you up-to-date, Weight1Minute ™’s version 2.0 software application is going through a major overhaul and upgrade; free accounts are still available so what do you have to “lose” by signing up for one?

The traditional recommended daily calorie intake for most people is 2000 calories per day. But keep in mind this is only the recommended amount, because everybody is different so it may not be the exact number that’s good for you. Using this example, you’d subtract 500 calories and come up with a total daily calorie number of 1500 calories per day.

Goal 4 – Eat 1500 calories per day

In conclusion these four basic, realistic, and attainable ideas for your healthy eating goals are more than enough to get you started on a program. Some additional ideas could be to incorporate fat grams, fiber grams, or carbohydrate grams into the mix.

Whatever your goals are, here are some solid ideas to help you stay focused to accomplish them:

Make sure your goals are measurable
Make sure your goals are attainable
Set short term and long term goals
Set a timeline for your goals even if it’s something you want to do for a lifetime
Update your goals regularly
Look at your goals on a daily basis
Reward yourself when you accomplish a goal—not necessarily with food
Make accomplishing a goal fun

Eating healthy is an excellent goal, and being able to focus on them makes it easier to achieve them. Feel free to mix and match them for some fun and variety.

What healthy eating goals do you have?

Goal setting is food for thought, because,

After all, it’s about a healthy lifestyle!

Photo courtesy of urban_data

Tags: eating, fruits, goals, health, healthy, nutrition, salad, vegetables, vegetarian

Comment by Fit Bottomed Girls on June 20, 2008 at 9:36am: These are all really good suggestions. I have a goal to eat at least 5 fruits and veggies a day, but I usually am more in the 7-10 range. I really should bump my goal up to 9. I could do it 95 percent of the time.

I also try to cook at least two vegetarian meals a week. I focus on using tofu or beans as my protein, and I usually don't even miss the meat. I've even got my hubby liking and cooking tofu. It took some persistance, but it worked!

Comment by Lisa Newton on June 20, 2008 at 4:49pm: I try to do all of these, on varying levels through out the week. Beans are one of my favorite foods, adding them to salads, rice, pasta, and soup.

For me, in one big salad, I can get at least 1/2 to 2/3 of my fruits and veggie for the day..............:)

Comment by Susanna on June 20, 2008 at 5:08pm: Great suggestions! I will be doing some goal setting for developing better eating habits over the next week, so this post is very apropos.

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