Eating a healthy diet is not about strict limitations, staying unrealistically thin, or depriving yourself of the foods you love. Rather, its about feeling great, having more energy, improving your health, and boosting your mood. Healthy eating doesn’t have to be overly complicated. If you feel overwhelmed by all the conflicting nutrition and diet advice out there, you’re not alone. It seems that for every expert who tells you a certain food is good for you, you’ll find another saying exactly the opposite. The truth is that while some specific foods or nutrients have been shown to have a beneficial effect on mood, its your overall dietary pattern that is most important. How can you stay healthy and feel great while indulging in your favorite foods? Here’s 3 ways to stay healthy while eating the foods you love.

As much as possible, stick to a balanced diet that includes everything you’d like to eat, but take only what you can handle. Be aware that your desire to eat a certain food may be driven more by habit than health. For example, if you love chocolate, try substituting its consumption with a glass of milk instead of chocolate.

The most important quality for a food to have to boost mood is that it is nutritious. Your body’s ability to deal with a nutrient is directly related to its antioxidant potency. One nutrient that has been shown to increase your mood is resveratrol. Research has shown that resveratrol is capable of decreasing depression and improve memory, focus, and concentration. If you cant take all the help you can get, at least consume the food you can.

If you enjoy eating the foods you’ve chosen, then enjoy it. There is nothing wrong with enjoyment. Happiness and food go together like peanut butter and chocolate, even when you’re craving the chocolate. Just watch the peanuts. They’ll be tiny. Stay away from those that are too large.

For the foods that you love but don’t have time for, include them in your diet in small amounts so that you get the vitamins and minerals they offer. A well-rounded diet should have at least 3-4 basic foods. All can be incorporated into a balanced diet. Keep in mind that a balanced diet includes all the food groups. These food groups are vegetables, fruits, whole grains, dairy products, and meat and poultry.

Include these in the right amounts so that your body can process them efficiently. Keep in mind that your body can only use a fraction of nutrients. It stores them for later use. The rest it discards. That is why it is important to include foods you love in a balanced diet. Its also important to know the recommended daily nutrients for your age and gender. This will give you a baseline for measuring how much of these foods you are taking.

One word of caution. Be aware of the nutrients that you are taking. They may come as a supplement, as drug or as food additives. Some are natural ingredients. You need to be aware of the additives that you take. Also be aware that most supplements are not tested and are not evaluated. They have not been tested to find what they do to you. That is why you need to be aware of what they are doing to you.

To get the most of your vitamins and minerals, consider including them in your diet. If you have a choice, it would be best to have your foods contain as much of the original vitamins and minerals as possible. This will help you get the most bang for your buck.

You can get the extra vitamins and minerals by taking a multivitamin. This would be a better option than supplements because it will give you a higher dosage and will be better formulated. And because it is more readily available, it would be a better choice.

Also, you can choose to add the extras to your food. Eating the extra food would provide your body with the nutrients it craves and they will keep your body in good nutritional health. It would also make it easier for your body to absorb the nutrients because it is already designed to take in extra nutrition. So by eating the extras, your body will work with them to create a longer lasting effect. And it would be safer because your body would already know what to expect from the extra nutrients.