Keeping Healthy

Between the soda ban in New York, the CDC declaring an obesity epidemic (over 35% of American's are obese), your doctor telling you that you have high blood pressure, diabetes, ect, and then on top of all that, you have advertisements where the women are impossibly thin, its difficult not to at least want to watch what you're eating. I disagree with being obsessed with your weight. If you are healthy, it is wise to stay healthy, if you have a medical problem (regardless of how big or small it is), its good to keep an eye on what you are consuming. 

But how do you know what you are really eating? I worked at McDonald's for over two years, so let me inform you as an insider. Nothing you can eat there is good for you. In my two years working at McDonald's I did a LOT of menu scrutiny. The menu is on the back of the tray covers by the way, and you can also ask an employee for a calorie chart if you want. Here's the thing, a lot of people ordered sandwiches without cheese, but one slice of cheese from any sandwich on the menu has only 20 calories. If you get a quarter pounder without cheese, you're only dropping 40 calories off a sandwich that is over 500 calories. It really doesn't make that big of a difference. 

One of the managers was trying to be healthy, she ate a salad everyday for lunch. The only salad worth eating to be healthy is a side salad, WITHOUT dressing, it is  20 calories. Just take a minute and think about this: all the other large salads START at 250 calories with GRILLED chicken. Switch the grilled chicken for crispy chicken (which is more popular than grilled), and you're adding 150 calories. Add one package of croutons, 50 calories. Drizzle a package of ranch dressing on top, adding another 170 calories. What started out as a healthy, 230 calorie lunch, ends up being over 600 calories. You can eat an Angus burger for that! You can eat two McDouble's and a small french fry for that, and still have calories left over. My point is, food is deceptive. 

So how do we know what we're eating? You have to faithfully keep up with what you eat, and not just the calorie content. If you have medical problem (that sounds awful in words, I just mean anything small like high blood pressure, diabetes, ect.) then you can look up the problem on mayoclinic.com, click on Health Information, and Diseases and Conditions. They are listed alphabetically. They typically will list foods that will help, and if they list a vitamin (such as vitamin C), you can go to Vitamins and Supplements and look up that vitamin, and they will list foods that you can eat to get that vitamin naturally. Then you know what foods will help, and hurt your problem. If you don't have a problem, that great! The most common problems tend to be high blood pressure, diabetes, and arthritis, so you could simply look those up, and eat foods to help prevent those conditions.

The other option you can use is myfitnesspal.com. This is a free website that I use occasionally. I don't have time to use it on a daily basis, but if you have internet on your phone, I would encourage you to try to keep up with it. You will notice a difference in how you eat if you are keeping up with what you eat. The main purpose I use my fitness pal for is to check calorie/fat content of meals. For example, my most typical breakfast is two maple sausage links, and a bagel with cream cheese, the calorie content of this is about 400 calories. If I have fruit, sometimes I'll eat fruit with it. 

I do not think that it is healthy to be obsessed with your health/weight. I do, however, think that it is important to be careful of what we put into our bodies. Believe me, I eat ice cream, I LOVE cheese, and I have potato chips and pudding in my cabinet (and a chocolate cake mix!), but its having the self control to eat these in moderation that is important. I will have a post soon about tips for eating healthy when you are gone constantly like I am. I will also be posting more recipes on here, because cooking at home is a great way to be sure that what you are eating has the least amount of preservatives as possible! Happy eating! =)