Why a Healthy Diet is important

If you’re a healthy weight and generally feel fine, you might believe you don’t need to worry about following a healthy eating plan. You could be one of the lucky people who automatically selects the proper foods and never needs to think about what you put in your mouth. Or you may be one of the lucky folks who can eat everything and never get sick.

But, if you’re like the rest of us, you have to be quite cautious about what you consume. We may not think about a healthy eating plan on a regular basis, but we should. Most of us strive to eat healthily every time we eat anything, and we may even think about what else we’ve eaten that day or week before we eat again. However, we rarely have a comprehensive picture of our diets.

For example, the majority of us are actually unaware of how much fat we consume. And most of us consume excessive amounts of sugar without even realizing it. Unless we need to lose weight or until our doctor tells us that our cholesterol, blood sugar, or blood pressure are too high, we typically don’t care about maintaining a healthy diet. Worse yet, our doctor suggests that we address each of those issues.

That’s when most of us suddenly decide we need a healthy eating plan. But if we had been following a healthy diet, we might have never had health or weight problems to begin with. So it’s never too early to start formulating a plan for healthy eating, not only to stay at a healthy weight (or lose weight, if need be) but to stave off those problems that so many other people face like diabetes and high blood pressure.

It is best to start following a healthy eating plan as soon as possible if you have a family history of heart disease, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure, or if people in your family tend to acquire diabetes later in life. If you start looking after yourself now, you’ll be less likely to get those same ailments in the future. It’s never too late, which is also wonderful news.

You may believe that because you’ve been eating whatever you want for the past 40 or more years, you’re already on the path to developing those diseases, and you may be correct. However, if you begin eating healthily right away, get rid of any excess weight, and make deliberate decisions about what you eat (and how much exercise you get), you automatically reduce your odds for contracting those diseases.

It’s especially important to follow a healthy diet, not just for yourself, but for your children and other family members. Kids do as they see you do. If you show that nutrition and health are important, your kids are more likely to grow up concerned about health, too. And they’ll have a better chance at avoiding those same illnesses. A healthy eating plan can help you, and get them off on the right foot.