Healthy Eating – The Most Common Myths Surrounding Your Diet

#1: Skipping Breakfast is a Good way to Lose Weight,Skipping meals, especially breakfast, can have the opposite affect to losing weight. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and skipping this can leave you hungry and tired making you more vulnerable to snacking. A good breakfast such as oats, will provide you with long lasting energy and will keep you fuller for longer. Many people who have a good healthy breakfast generally tend to be healthier than those who skip this meal.,#2: Low Fat Foods Are Healthy,Many low fat foods are often compensated with added sugar, salt, or other preservatives. When choosing a low fat option, aim for natural foods that are rich in naturally occurring minerals.,#3: Low Sugar Foods Healthy,When processed food is packaged, it generally has a lot of additives added to it. These can be sugar, carbohydrates, salts, fats, and other preservatives. Just because sugar is out does not make it healthy. Be sure to check the label to ensure fat and salt content isn’t high.,#4: If you cook vegetables, you take away their vitamin content,Cooking vegetables does not take away any nutrients or drain their vitamin content. Cooking will actually make it easier for your body to digest and absorb all the needed nutrients. Boiling vegetables can have the opposite effect. Try steaming your vegetables as an alternative to boiling.,#5: Carbs are bad,This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Your body needs carbohydrates to operate and maintain energy levels. The problem is with how many carbohydrates are burned compared to those that are stored. It is a good idea to limit the amount of carbohydrates you are eating if you are struggling with weight and add some exercise into your lifestyle. The more carbohydrates you burn the less likely you are to gain weight.,#6: Avoid all fats,This myth is very confusing as there are so many foods out there being promoted with low or not fat content. What is a good fat? A good fat is one that comes from a natural source such as fish, plants, or animals. In their rawest form these can be good but due to amount of food being processed and pre-packaged, fats are changing and become unhealthy. There are three different types of fats; Monounsaturated, Polyunsaturated (Omega 3 and Omega 6) and Saturated fats. Each type of these fats in their natural state are the good fats and provide the body with some essential nutrients. Saturated fats are not heart healthy since they are known for raising your LDL Cholesterol (bad cholesterol). Unsaturated fats on the other hand can lower your LDL cholesterol and raise your HDL Cholesterol (good Cholesterol). Unsaturated fats are found in nuts, avocados, and olives.