Hello, dear readers! This is my first post for Steemit. I hope it will be useful to you.

We realize the importance of a healthy diet only when we grow older and face health issues. We are forced to follow a strict regimen to lead a healthy life. Life will be miserable without our favourite dishes and with all the dishes once we never dared to touch. Do you want that to happen?. I hope none would want that. You can easily avoid such a condition by following a healthy diet.

What is a healthy diet? Food habit which consists of eating food with essential nutrients, drinking correct amount of water and avoiding non-nutritional food items. To follow that, you must know few things about your current food habit and must continue reading to know the mistakes you do in your eating habit.

No Nutrition, But Complication

If you know that something doesn't contain any nutrients, simply don't eat that. They are known as "non-nutritional/Junk foods". Some of them are French fries, potato chips, fried chicken, ice cream and pizza. The first step in avoiding them is, not storing ready to eat food items at home, because when we are hungry we never give a second thought, if something is healthy or not. These foods not only adds up to your calories but also keeps you away from taking the nutritional foods.

How to choose Packed Food ?

There is a famous saying "Good things come in small packages", but with food you must know that "Even bad things come in small packages". Consumption of packed food items has increased a lot and we eat them without knowing, what exactly they contain. Though it is mandatory for the manufacturers to print the ingredients and nutritional information on the packages, most of the terms used by them are incomprehensible. Try to develop a good knowledge about the terms used for the ingredients and always look for foods which contains more nutrients. Next time when you are in a super market picking a loaf of bread, take the one, which reads "whole wheat" instead of a white bread. The term "whole" means that content is the major ingredient.

      

Consume Real Food

Those that nature gives us, plants, roots, fruits, nuts, seeds, meats, eggs, milk are "natural food" or "real food". When I mean natural, it has to be natural till it is consumed. The modern methods help preserve these real foods for longer duration which is unhealthy. Also, these methods produce real foods which are very low in nutritional value. You must not label these foods as "real foods". For instance rice is rich in carbohydrates and free from cholesterol, but polished rice does not contain any nutrients. Similarly tinned fruits and frozen foods are real foods which are full of preservatives which makes it non-nutritional. 

There are few things you can do:

• Always buy fresh fruits and veggies
• Eat a meal with more vegetables
• Prefer whole grain variety in rice
• Avoid food which contains preservatives

Avoid Liquid Calories

 Calories consumed in the form of liquid is called "liquid calories". They are soda and other sugar sweetened beverages. They contain lots of empty calories and they don't give any energy to you instead adds up to the calories and make you fat. When consumed regularly soda not only makes you fat, but leads to health disorders like diabetes, kidney failures and even cardiac arrest. There are substitutes for these colas but you can go for fresh juices and water. Water boosts your metabolism. Another fact about the fruit juices sold in the market labelled "real fruit juices" is that, they contains preservatives and sweeteners. So, go for freshly prepared juices.

Now that you know what to eat and what not to, start making changes to your food habit slowly, you will feel the difference very soon. It is a healthy diet and physical exercises that make you healthy. Try to be wise in eating and be physically active.