22 days into the new year and I finally made my first post. Hi there! I felt this extreme pressure to make this post perfect but I finally had to concede that waiting to publish my first perfect post will delay me from doing what I want to do right now: share nutrition and food information with you!

Did you think of a resolution or two that you will try this year? If it was to start a new diet, which one are you following? Are you going to start juicing more? Do you have a book on the Atkins Diet? Thinking of trying out the Blood Type Diet? I come across articles about how diets set people up for failure and how people who manage to lose some weight following a diet manage to gain it back when they no longer follow the diet because it’s not sustainable. Diet has connotations of restriction and avoidance, but who can’t resist tiramisu or French fries once in a while? Before you know it you are eating everything that was not suggested in the diet. I think that if we all tried to have a healthier eating lifestyle rather than follow one specific diet, perhaps our actions can become a lifetime habit.

Now, click on this link for ChooseMyPlate and spend just TWO minutes browsing the website. Then come back here.  The MyPlate logo replaced the Food Pyramid as a way to visually show a balanced meal where fruits and vegetables take up half the plate, grains and protein take up a quarter of the plate and there is a small circle for dairy, a great source of calcium. It is much easier to translate into meals, wouldn’t you agree? I want to point out that this FREE government website provides a crazy amount of nutrition information that is science based and easy enough to understand so that anyone can begin to eat healthier small steps at a time.

While I follow no specific diet, I have a few mantras when it comes to what I put in my mouth:

• I am what I eat. I feel better when I eat more fruits and vegetables. Period.
• I rarely have processed foods such as chips, soda, frozen meals because of the high amounts of sugars, fats and sodium. But if I am eating processed foods, I choose items that have as few ingredients as possible; Cape Cod potato chips has only 3 ingredients and happen to be my favorite chips (once in a while of course).
•  I am able to control my sweet tooth by eating only sweets I baked myself or a friend baked for me. Or I have fruit instead!

Satiated your cravings once in a while so you don’t overdo it and learn to figure out for yourself whether a food is worth it.