 1. You Pick Brown Eggs Over Less-Nutritious White Eggs
Brown eggs may look rustic and more nutritious than white eggs but the fact is that a large brown egg contains the exact same proportion of white and yolk, and the same nutrients as a white egg. Brown eggs simply come from a different breed of hens, which are often bigger birds and require more feed than standard white-egg-laying hens. Those costs are usually passed on, adding to brown eggs" specialness.
2. You Drink Soy Milk for the Calcium, but You Don't Shake It.
Calcium added to soy milk is good for bones. But it tends to settle and then can be quite tough to redistribute into the milk. In cow's milk, calcium is naturally suspended throughout the liquid. The moral of the story is shake that soy milk each time.
3. Your Favorite Peanut Butter Fortified with Omega-3s To Get Your Share of Those Good Fats.
Good idea but you're probably not getting as much omega-3s as you may think. You'd have to eat 1 cup of that peanut butter to equal the amounts of omega-3s in a single serving of salmon - a whopping 1,520 calories versus about 200 calories in a 4 oz piece of fish. Enjoy the PB, but favor the fish.
4. Watching Your Weight -
You Pull Way Back on Snacking.
It's a long stretch from a noontime lunch to a 7pm dinner. Snacking helps manage hunger by keeping your metabolic engine running at a more constant pace. Any healthy-eating plan should allow for one or two snacks per day; something nutritious and satisfying. Items such as calcium-rich low-fat dairy foods, fill-of-fiber nuts or naturally sweet, low-calorie fruit.
5. You Hanker Fast Food. Grilled Chicken Beats a Beef Burger.
Sodium can soar in a chicken sandwich. The chicken breast may have been injected with a salty brine solution to help the meat stay moist. At Burger King, the Tendergrill Chicken sandwich has 1,100mg sodium and 75% of that comes from the chicken itself. A Whooper Jr. burger has half the sodium, little of it from beef, and 130 fewer calories. Lean chicken sometimes picks up salty topppings, like the bacon and cheese on the McDonald's Premium Gilled Chicken Club. That has 1,410mg of sodium, 18% more than a Quarter Pounder with Cheese - and is not lower in calories.
You have a 2,300mg-per-day sodium budget so take a minute to scan the restaurant's nutrition data.
6. You Leave Your Hot Cereal Eating 'Til the Weekend When You Can Slow Cook Steel-Cut Oats
Turns out an oat is an oat is an oat, whether it's steel cut from the original groat or rolled flat and even presteamed so that it will cook in 90 seconds rather than 15 minutes. Flattening and steaming does not remove whole-grain benefits, so you'll get all of the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and oaty fiber. Yes, the steel-cut variety is nutty, chewy, and delicious, but instant is do darned weekday convenient. Embrace all oats - but be aware that prepackaged flavored oats can contain a lot of added sugar and salt.
7. You Automatically Swap Turkey Bacon for the Pork Kind.
Not trying to pick on turkey here at all but bacon is a prime example of why label-reading is important. Pork bacon comes in smoky, super-thick, fatty slabs but also in naturally leaner center-cut slices; the latter can contain as little as 60 calories, 1.5g sat. fat, and 260mg sodium.
Turkey bacon also wanders all over the nutrition map. A slice of Jennie-O's ultra-lean version is a nutrition bargain, at 20 calories, 0g sat. fat, and 120mg sodium. But others can contain the same sat. fat as center-cut pork bacon - and even more sodium.
8. Mindful That Many Women Under 50 are Iron-Deficient, You're Beefing Up On Iron-Rich Spinach
Iron is important for energy because it helps deliver oxygen to every cell in your body, but it's tricky to get because it comes in two types. Spinach and other plant sources are rich in what they call non-heme iron. Only about 2% to 20% of non-heme iron is absorbed, versus 15% to 35% of the heme iron found only in animal foods, specifically meat. Chicken liver has the most (13mg), followed by oysters (4.5mg), and beef (about 3mg).
Vitamin C helps increase your body's uptake of non-heme iron from foods. Pair iron-fortified breakfast cereal with a glass of OJ, or add grapefruit segments to that spinach salad.
9. You Make Time for the Gym But You Skip the Pre-Gym Snack to Save on Calories
"Think of a preworkout snack as fueling, not filling," says fitness expert, Myatt Murphy, CSCS. "Aim for 100 to 200 calories, just enough to give you enough energy to exercise. Too much food, and your stomach will be working out at the same time to digest it all." Thirty minutes before exercise is the way to pace this. If you're an early bird, a preworkout snack is essential - there's no fuel in the tank. If you workout in mid-afternoon, you might need less. Best preworkout snack is mix of carbs and protein - like a banana and a handful of nuts or a slice of whole grain bread with peanut butter.
10. While Cooking, You Eyeball the Oil, the Salt, the Sugar!
Cookbooks call for swirls, coatings, even "glugs" of olive oil. Others, more precise, call for a tsp or tbs - but it saves time to just guess. Our experiments with guesswork show that most people overpour common foods and liquids. The difference between a tsp and a tbs of any oil is 80 calories and 9g of fat. Measure!
11. You Sprinkle Wheat Germ on Yogurt or Muffins for Crunchy, Whole-Grain Goodness
A whole grain is a seed with three parts: bran, endosperm and germ. Wheat germ is only one component of a whole grain. Most of the fiber is in the bran, and the protein is in the endosperm. Wheat germ delivers a concentrated wallop of folate and vitamin E but doesn't count as a whole grain.
12. You Buy 80/20 Ground Beef Because It's a Good Thing That Only Only 20% of the Calories Come From Fat
The 80/20 percentage refers to the proportion of fat and protein in the grind, not the proportion of calories. Because fat contains more than twice the calories of protein, 20% of fat by weight contributes 72% of the total calories in a 3.5 oz. portion of raw ground beef, or about 180 of the 250 total calories. Huh? Basically, buy a much leaner grind, such as 90/10, or ask for a lean whole cut like sirloin or brisket to be custom ground for you, which will be fresher anyway.
13. You Do a Free-Hand Pour at the Breakfast Table.
You likely eat enough for 1.4 people.
When we asked 100 people to show us their typical cereal pour, only 1 in 10 poured close to the recommended portions. For flake cereals, the average pour was 40% more than the 1-cup serving size. A full cup of skim milk in the bowl means you've added 40 more calories over the label standard. OJ, coffee cream, jam for toast: Breakfast requires lots of little portion calls, all made on a groggy brain.
| 
