Great Foods for Healthy Eating

I've had a lot of people ask me what type of foods they should eat. This is an enormous question because really there is so much out there that you SHOULD eat and so little that you shouldn't. But, I'll come up with a good list of alternatives which seem to help me:

• Instead of regular sandwhich bread.....Try Eizekiel Bread: sold at Kroger & Publix in the frozen health food section, or at Trader Joe's (come on, you knew I had to get you to go to TJs)
• Instead of white rice......Try brown rice! Or quinoa, barley, millet, etc. They are really good, even my girls like to eat them.
• Instead of white flour tortillas......Try corn tortillas! Just make sure to watch the ingredients label. You should easily be able to find some with just corn, water, and lime (WalMart has them).
• Instead of ground beef.....Try turkey or chicken. They are so much lower in saturated fat. Ground beef is full of nasty ingredients that none of us should eat. If you must eat beef, eat a steak (at least you can tell what you are eating).
• Instead of sugar......Try agave! Agave is much less processed and refined. It has a low glycemic rate as well. My dh and dd love ketchup and it is full of sugar. At Whole Foods I found one made with Agave. They never even noticed a difference.
• Instead of artifical sweetners.....Try stevia. It is a natural product and has no calories. Stay away from Nutrasweet, Splenda, etc. Other than the major studies showing how bad these are for you (google it if you don't believe me), I've personally found they make me crave foods. Once you get all the yuck out of your system, you'll be surprised at how satisfied with eating normally you'll be.
• Instead of nuts with added salt and fats.....Try raw nuts with nothing but the nut! I was amazed at the difference this made in my eating patterns. Before I would sit down with a bowl of nuts and be unable to stop eating thanks to the addictive nature of salt and oil. Now I can have some almonds, cashews, pecans, walnuts and be able to enjoy them without overdoing it. The nuts aren't the problem. The salt, oils and seasonings are!
• Instead of chips....Try edamame with a sprinkly of sea salt. Edamame are soybeans that I like to buy frozen and steam in the microwave for 3 minutes (put them in a bowl, leave them in the shell, add a tablespoon of water, and cover). I know what you are thinking, "Ewww. Soybeans." But, they are good and you should try them. I love them.
• Instead of bagged popcorn......Try to pop some in a microwavable popcorn bowl (sold at WalMart, Amazon, etc). I give mine a light spray of olive oil and a dash of sea salt. Yum!

I'll add more to this as they come to me, but feel free to add your own too!