5 Dietary Changes You Can Make to Improve Your Health

1. Don't eat after a certain time at night - For me, I don't eat after 10 because I know that only a few hours after 10 i will probably be going to sleep. The food that is often eaten just before bedtime never is burned by the body to be used as fuel (because your not physically active right before you go to bed) so instead of using this food as fuel - it is instead turned into glycogen by your body and stored as fat so that it can be used at a later time - and that is certainly not what we want. So it's better to have the majority of your carbs and fats earlier in the day and throughout the day to have less and less carbs/fat and more protein.

2. Don't drink soda (unless it's diet) - For me, it was a no-brainer. I was drinking several servings of soda a day. Each of these servings was more then 100 calories and had little-to-no nutritional value. Why not stop drinking these empty-calorie sodas and instead drink more water (or even diet soda is alot better). That way you can use those calories that you would have taken in from the soda to eat other things (with nutritional value).

3. Learn the amount of calories your body needs to run at your target weight - For me, my target weight was 185 so I calculated my required daily calorie intake (look up daily calcorie calculator, they're are many sites which have them including about.com) to sustain 185 pounds and adjusted my calorie intake accordingly. Now I know that if I eat less then 2500 calories a day I will lose weight, if I eat exactly 2500 calories a day I will maintain weight, and if I eat more then 2500 calories I will gain weight.

4. Learn % daily values - I know that a man on a 2500 calorie diet should have no more then 70 grams of fat a day. Once you know how much fat your allowed to have per day then maybe you won't be so quick to eat fattening foods. I use to love eating "Crunchwrap Supreme's" from Taco Bell, well one day I looked up the nutritional facts. This one crunchwrap has 27g of fat, thats more then 33% of my daily value of fat at the 2500 calorie level. It's also important to know roughly how many grams of carbs/protein/sodium/fiber you are ingesting also.

5. Learn the difference between Good fats and Bad fats - Yes, there are good fats and bad fats. In summary: fats from whole wheat, grain, nuts, legumes, and fish are all good fats. Our bodies require atleast alittle fat everyday and the best kind to intake are Omega 3 Fatty acids (fish is great source of this) which are scientifically proven to reduce levels of bad cholestrol and increase levels of good cholestrol. Bad fats (trans fat, saturated fat, etc.) are fried foods, meat that is not lean (beef, pork). Stay away from bad fats as much as possible.