Healthy Eating With Dr. Cristina Castillo-Nelson

A healthy diet includes food from all five food groups, which includes fruits, vegetables, protein, carbohydrates and dairy. Foods to avoid and really limit are those that have added sodium, added sugar and generally high-fat foods. Healthy sources of protein include things like lean meats, fish, nuts, seeds, eggs and low-fat dairy. Simple tips for a healthy diet are getting more vegetables in your diet and focusing on whole grains instead of refined grains, which means eating whole breads, whole pasta and brown rice, instead of things like the white bread and white rice. Also, cooking at home more has been shown to decrease the amount of sodium and sugar in your diet too. 

Women have really specific needs. On average, women need fewer calories than men do. Women need about 2,000 calories a day, and that varies with your height, weight and activity level. Throughout a woman’s life she’ll have different nutritional needs. When women are pregnant and breastfeeding, they need about 300 to 500 extra calories. And then when women get to the menopause range, their metabolisms really slow down, so they need about 400 to 500 less calories on average. 
For women, it’s really important to have enough calcium, folic acid and protein in their diet for all the needs of the metabolism. One really helpful resource is the www.myplate.gov website. It’s the USDA website for nutrition and it’s great for meal preparation tips. It also has nutritional tips for picky eaters, for kids and if you’re on a budget too. 

If you are wanting to lose weight, you should focus on eating healthy carbohydrates and unsaturated fats and limiting your calories in general. Also, you should pay particular attention to calories from processed foods and foods that don’t really have a lot of nutritional value, that just add calories but no benefit to your diet. A lot of times people snack on things like chips, or things with a lot of sugar, like sugary beverages and pop, but if you can substitute foods that are healthy like seeds and nuts or dried fruits and roasted vegetables or things like that, you get a lot of the macro nutrients instead of just the wasted calories.

Providers are often asked about safe diets, since there are a lot of fad diets out there, many of which can do more harm than good since they are not sustainable. Diets that focus on low carbohydrate and high protein can be helpful, but you want to make sure you’re getting enough fiber in your diet as well. The important thing is that you focus on the five major food groups, so you’re not missing out on any of the nutrients that your body needs.