The 2 x 3 + 1 Rule: A Simple Way to Improve Your Diet

Diet and nutrition advice tends to get complicated, doesn't it? Eat this, don't eat that, drink this, don't drink that, try this, avoid that. It sometimes feels like a healthy diet requires more time, energy and attention than we have to give. We want to eat well, but we also want to get on with our lives. Fortunately, those of us who are too busy to sort through complicated nutrition information or follow complex eating plan, can follow one simple healthy eating strategy. I call it the 2 x 3 + 1 Rule. If you follow it, you'll end up following many of the complicated nutrition "rules" and improve your diet without even trying. Are you ready for it? Here it is: The 2 x 3 + 1 Rule - Eat 2 fruits or vegetables 3 times a day (i.e., at every meal) plus 1 as a snack. That's it. If you can't make any other changes to improve your diet, just make this one - include 2 fruits or vegetables in every meal and one more as a snack. Why? Because that one change will trigger a cascade of positive changes. It will increase the amount of vitamins, minerals, fiber and other nutrients in your diet. And it's likely to decrease the amount of salt, sugar, calories, and unhealthy fats. How? By replacing low-nutrition foods (e.g., a packaged rice mix for dinner or chips for a snack) with high-nutrition foods (e.g., a baked sweet potatoe for dinner or grapes for a snack). Now, I said that this strategy is simple, and it is. But I know it isn't necessarily easy because, let's face it, prepping a...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news