Rose Nyland
Comm/156
December 1, 2000
Kim Holzhauer
Are you aware of the many affects that healthy eating can have on your health and wellness? Benefits of a healthy diet include a strengthened immune system; improved body weight, energy and physical strength; improved emotional health and extended life expectancy (McLaughlin, 2011). It’s important to make wise decisions about the foods that we eat. The way we look at food and our food choices affects our health. Maintaining healthy eating habits will help reduce the risks of chronic illnesses, promote weight loss, and increase your energy levels.
Healthy eating is about making wise decisions regarding the foods that a person puts into their body. Part of practicing healthy eating is eating the right foods and the right portions of that food from all of the food groups in order to maintain high energy levels, optimum health, and just plain feeling good. Healthy eating is a nutritional lifestyle that increases health. Healthy eating has to be a lifestyle in order to reduce the chance of overeating. “Healthy eating is not a diet. It means making changes you can live with and enjoy for the rest of your life” (Healthy Eating: Benefits of a Healthier Diet, 2011). Two of the most common problems that we often see regarding the way we eat is, emotional eating and under eating. The difference in healthy eating and emotional eating is that regular hunger comes about gradually and emotional hunger comes about suddenly, and it is triggered by an individual’s mood. Emotional eating is eating to feed your emotions or feelings. Often times emotional eating isn’t about hunger at all, it just feels good and satisfying to eat. Another difference between emotional eating and healthy eating is that emotional eating normally causes you to want certain types of food, most often, not a healthy option which leaves you feeling regretful. One of the best ways to avoid emotional eating is to eat the
References: Emotional Eating: Feeding Your Feelings. WebMD. Online. Internet. 2003. http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/emotional-eating-feeding-your-feelings. Healthy Eating: Benefits of a Healthy Diet. WebMd. Online. Internet. 2011. http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/tc/healthy-eating-overview. Malnutrition. PubMed Health. Online. Internet. June 2011. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001441/. Mental Illnesses. NAMI- Anorexia Nervosa. Online. Internet. 1996-2012. http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=By_Illness&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=7409. Obesity. Medline Plus. Online. Internet. November 2012. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/obesity.html.