For women seeking to achieve or maintain a healthy and pleasing figure, their diet becomes a significant concern.
Eating and exercising becomes a math equation of how many calories in and how many calories out -- such an imprisoning way to live with food becoming your enemy!
When a woman who's out of shape or heavier than she feels comfortable with wants to lose weight, darling, she shouldn't diet, but instead look into a complete *lifestyle change* -- if one "diets" until they're at their ideal weight, they will most likely gain all of the weight back again once they stop or feel cranky and deprived.
I personally feel that for the feminine lady, there are no diets as much as *lifestyle changes* , changes that she will uphold for the rest of her life to maintain a feminine figure and good health.
The wise feminine lady knows, dove, that fad diets are going to extremes -- and are therefore useless, especially since most of the women who go on them gain the weight back as soon as they stop, since they never learned how to live a *healthy lifestyle*!
*What's more important is making a lifelong "lifestyle change" to help you go through the rest of your life as a woman conscious of her health and appearance.
I don't believe that healthy eating should be about deprivation, because deprivation is not healthy!
Healthy eating should be about health and happiness. *smile* So how does one start eating healthy in the way of a *feminine lady*, darling?
It's about substitutions and then only one kind of food that you should not touch!
The kind of food that you should not touched is processed food. Processed food is stripped of all of its natural nutrients and becomes unhealthy, lacking in nutrition, and bad for you!
*My only "don't eat" rule is to not eat processed food.
If you cut processed food from your diet, your skin, your hair, your teeth, your waistline, and your general well-being will thank you for it!
Now, lovely, how does one cut out processed food for good?
I use substitutions and small alterations to make sure that I avoid processed foods for good and this allows me to not deprive myself entirely of life's pleasures because I allow myself to indulge in a way that's smart and healthy. *smile*
Examples of such substitutions and alterations include (but are not limited to):
Replacing all white pasta and bread with wholewheat, and doing the same thing with rice on most occasions (although not when having Indian or Thai curry, which calls for my beloved white Jasmine or Basmati rice);
Instead of having an Oreo, having a homemade baked cookie;
Shunning all processed cakes, pastries, and doughnuts (such as Twinkies or Hostess products) in favor of homemade baked goods such as a pie, slice of red velvet cake, or apple tart;
Replacing the butter in a pasta with butter sauce with olive oil;
Choosing to dip my appetizer bread in a dish of olive oil with herbs instead of putting butter on it;
Using soy milk, almond milk, or rice milk in my black tea instead of creme or half-and-half;
Such substitutions are simple and easy to put in place and it allows you to eat healthily without depriving yourself or totally shunning all of the sweets and baked goods that you may love.
I was recently reading a healthy living book because I love the author, but when the author said that I have to give up everything with butter, I imagined my life without croissants and apple tarts (and 90% of French cuisine), and I knew that it couldn't be done after growing up with a Parisian mother and having her recipes on recipe cards. ;-)
What I do recommend, though, lovely, is limiting your intake of pastries and buttery foods so that you're living a *balanced* life -- and have a set idea of when you can indulge a little bit and when you should say "no"!
This allows you to avoid depriving yourself or going to extreme measures without compromising your healthy lifestyle. *smile*
What I recommend is having either a larger portion of dessert or indulgent food on one day only each week (like on the weekend) or allowing yourself an exceptionally petite indulgence each day.
For example, this could comprise of that whole wheat pasta dish with butter on Saturday night or a slice of red velvet cake after a healthy Sunday meal, or, like me, having a tiny sliver of tart or one petite scone every afternoon with my tea as I answer blog emails and work on new posts.
And if you're doing it my way and allowing yourself an extremely petite indulgence every day, make sure to eat it very slowly -- the size of the portion is small enough for me to eat it in less than two bites, and how unsatisfying would that be?
They key here, darling, is balance -- the point of allowing yourself one midsized indulgence each week or one extremely petite indulgence every day is so that you'll avoid overly indulging one day by eating an exceptionally creamy dish along with a large dessert.
Deprivation will heighten your chances of "breaking" and then going "all out" with your eating habits.
The feminine lady listens to her body and allows herself a bit of indulgence, however she knows how to limit her indulgence to make them reasonable and to portion them out so that she gets a pleasant little treat without sacrificing her health or feminine figure.
So, that's all for my post "The No-Stress Guide to Healthy Eating" -- I hope you enjoyed it. Happy portioning and happy indulging!
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1 comment:
Your healthy eating ideas sound very similar to Michelle Obama's 90/10 rule; 90% of the time you watch what you eat and strive to be nutritious and 10% of the time you can treat yourself and not watch so closely.
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