Simple Everyday Tips for a Healthier You

With health information and diet books everywhere we turn, we all know what we're supposed to eat and that we need to exercise. So why do we continue to make the wrong choices and push the scales upward?

Maybe we're just confused. Between deciphering the food pyramid, decoding food labels and figuring out serving sizes, planning healthy meals can be a full-time job.

Here are some practical tips to make it a little easier to eat healthy and lose weight:

• Change your environment. Unfortunately, willpower is no match for today's food-obsessed environment. We're bombarded with food cues everywhere we go — we can pretty much get anything we want, anytime we want. To fight back, change your environment. 
  • If ice cream is your temptation, don't keep it in your house.
  • Rearrange your cabinets to make it harder to get to the goodies.
  • If you're in the habit of hitting the vending machine every afternoon, change your routine or take a quick walk instead.

• Take small steps. Forget the all-or-nothing diet. Limit but don’t eliminate. Make small changes to your diet like drinking one less soda a day or skipping the mayo and cheese on your burger. These little changes make a huge impact over time. It's unrealistic to say you'll never have a certain food ever again. Everything in moderation.

• Move it. Try as we might, you can’t get around the importance of activity in weight loss. The more muscle mass you have, the more calories you'll burn — even when you're resting. Do little things like taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Incorporate the Slimplicity™ Weight Loss System's "Step-by-Step" Walking Program, which challenges you to increase your exercise and enhance your weight-loss effort by taking 10,000 steps each day. Make physical activity a priority for you and your family.