How Diet Can Affect Health
Taking your health for granted is not exactly the most sensible thing to do. It is something that is more precious to you than you may realize.
So it makes a lot of sense to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure your health is in the best condition you can make it. One way in which you can do that is by paying close attention to your diet.
What you eat can have a huge impact on your physical health. Eat the right things and you will notice a marked improvement in the way you feel and look over time.
But eat all the wrong things and you will start to notice a downturn in the way you look and feel. The reasons for this are simple enough. However, putting theories into action takes some work.
Working For Your Health
Like anything in life, if you want something badly enough, you know you are going to have to work to get it. Leaving things up to someone else that you really should be doing for yourself nearly always results in poor results!
Your health is no exception. If you want to look, feel and be healthy you are going to have to work at it. The easiest way of getting things started is in taking a long hard look at what you are eating and drinking.
By writing down everything you eat and drink in a day over a week or two, you'll give yourself a pretty detailed analysis of what is going on. And that will provide you with a good place to start from.
Know Your Demons
Identifying the foods that are not good for you in your list of what you're eating gets your focus on what can be changed to make improvements.
It's a case of getting to know your demons so that you can fight back by eliminating them from your life.
Many weight loss diets include healthy meals but would not even be necessary if you habitually followed a healthy diet.
For instance, if you find that you are habitually eating a high calorie snack every day and even at the same time each day; this is an ideal marker for correction. An eating habit is not so easy to break as a casual succumbing to temptation, but it can be broken with a little cunning.
Kicking Eating Habits
Say, for instance that you have a coffee break at 11am each day and during that time you buy a coffee and a donut or two.
It could well be that this is something you have done on a daily basis for months or even years if you've been in the same job for a long time, for example. The process has probably become almost automatic for you.
It can even happen that you get through your coffee break and go back to work completely forgetting you ate those donuts! It happens to quite a lot of people.
You have a long term habit and the only way you're going to break it is by shifting your consciousness regarding that daily break. Instead of walking up to the counter and getting that coffee and automatically reaching out for the donuts, stop yourself in your tracks and take a moment to look at the situation.
Change the Record
Take in the coffee machine, the counter with the cakes, donuts and other snacks and look at what else is on sale in your canteen or wherever it is that you spend your break. Notice what alternative snacks might be on sale. Often, there will be some low calorie alternatives to those donuts. Why not give yourself a big treat and buy a low calorie snack for once?
In fact, just do it!
Don't think about it as an experiment. Consider this the first day of your journey to better health and maybe a slimmer waistline while you're about it.
Once you've done it, sat down and drank your coffee and eaten the low calorie snack alternative, then started on your way back to work once the break is over, think on what just happened. You might fond that you feel rather liberated at doing something different that is also a positive step in the right direction!
Eating the Right Foods
Enjoying better health is all about eating the right food for your body's needs.
That body of yours needs the right nutrients as well as a sensible balance of carbohydrates, proteins and fats along with sufficient fiber each day to function normally.
It will only get these things from meals made from fresh ingredients, such as lean meat, fish, vegetables and desserts made from fresh fruit.
When your diet is made up of mostly these ingredients, you will be giving your body the best nutrition to get on and do what it does best when digesting and processing food. It all goes to helping to improve your health and making you feel good, more energetic and more alert.
If you're very busy and don't have much time to work on a traditional diet for yourself, you could always opt for one of the better home delivery diet programs that provide specially nutritionally balanced meals for you. At least you'd be eating food designed to help you lose weight and be healthy!
Not Eating the Wrong Foods
What your body does not need is too much refined sugar, salt, artificial additives and sweeteners, trans fats and all the other junk that is present in most processed meals, fast food and takeaway meals. 
It doesn't need so much red meat and processed meats that increase cholesterol levels and give your colon a real hard time processing them.
Your body also doesn't need all the extra sugar that is present in drinks such as soda and other flavored drinks. Nor does it need the sugar and dairy overdose from cakes, cookies, biscuits, pies, pastries and other sweet desserts like ice cream and anything with cream-based sauces.
When your diet is made up of mostly these kinds of foods and drinks, you are systematically degrading your health over time. You'll eventually start feeling worse, slower, more lethargic and you will age faster because your body's cells will be oxidizing faster from the overburden of sugar.
Your mental responses will also suffer because your brain won't be getting all the nutrients it needs to function optimally.
Conclusion
It makes better sense to work on eating a healthy diet for more than just losing weight or achieving a successful dieting strategy.
In short, you are what you eat and what you eat defines your physical and to some degree mental health. You get to choose what passes your lips every day of your life.
There is no excuse for ignorance and there are no second chances. Your health is your responsibility. It's not your doctor's responsibility or your family's.
The buck stops with you and only with you. So make good choices and be healthy!