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You are what you eat, the saying goes. Over the years, people have interpreted this in different ways with trendy diets promising health, beauty, or strength. While many of them are backed by testimonies and studies, just as often they contradict other diets with similar evidence—what do you do then?

In food, as in other things, it pays to go back to the basics. We’ve gathered here some of the simplest ways to better nutrition. They may not be revolutionary, but adopting even a few of these will get steady and certain progress toward better health.

Fresh, Whole Foods

Natural food is always healthier than its heavily processed alternatives. Whole foods—unprocessed, unrefined produce (or by some definitions, meat as well)—are generally healthy options. The fresher they are, the better. Conversely, canned food, microwaveable meals and most kinds of preserved food provide minimal nutrition and many drawbacks; best to avoid them.

Organic Food

Not to be confused with whole foods or natural food, organic food refers to the products of certain methods of raising livestock and farming. The specifics of producing organic food vary from country to country—it depends on the authority awarding the classification—but there are a few common factors:

• Plants fertilized with compost or manure
  
  
• Animals get a fixed percentage of nutrition (e.g. 30%) from pasturing
  
  
• No use of synthetic fertilizers or antibiotics
  
  
• Maintenance of a a self-sustaining cycle of resources on the farm

Organic food has slightly more nutrients than conventionally grown food and has significantly less harmful residue, such as synthetic pesticide or toxic metal.

Avoid: Salt, Sugar and Trans Fats

You don’t have to cut these out your diet entirely, but consuming less of them is a good idea for almost anyone.  Studies have shown that consuming too much sugar or salt increases your risk for chronic diseases. In particular, excess salt raises blood pressure, while refined sugars (i.e. those that aren’t naturally present in food) provides few nutrients but a lot of calories. In fact, most kinds of food rich in salt and sugar provide comparatively less nutrients.

When it comes to food high in salt and sugar, nothing could be more iconic than fast food—which is a major reason it’s considered so unhealthy. However, there’s one more reason why fast food is so bad for you: trans fats. Trans fats—which are present in the oils used as a shortcut to add flavor to food like fries, burgers, and chicken—raise bad (LDL) cholesterol levels, lower good (HDL) cholesterol levels, and raise the risk of heart disease.

Add: Whole Grains, Fruits and Vegetables

Need something to fill the space that all those fries have left empty? Try alternatives with whole grains and high-fiber starch. Starchy foods provide important nutrients, such as B vitamins, iron, calcium and folate. They also contain complex carbohydrates, which provide more energy than the simple carbohydrates in refined sugar.

It’s also a good idea to round out your diet with fruits and vegetables. Eating lots of these can lower blood pressure, improve blood sugar levels, and reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke—among other benefits. Of course, those benefits require that you eat a variety of fruits and vegetables. Simply sticking to one or two that you like may provide some benefits, but it won’t be quite as effective.

Balance Your Diet

Nothing kills a diet faster than dullness. Fortunately for us, a varied and balanced diet is generally conducive to good health—as long as the proportions are right. The UK’s National Health Services has an easy-to-use interactive guide to balancing your diet. In addition to the tips we’ve already mentioned, the guide recommends opting for lean cuts when eating meat and eating fish, especially oily ones, regularly.

Manage Your Portions

When it comes to nutrition, it’s best to avoid extremes. Eating too little impairs your growth, while eating too much can put a burden on your body. It is recommended that men have around 2,500 calories a day (10,500 kilojoules). Women should have around 2,000 calories a day (8,400 kilojoules). These figure are based on average body masses, of course, and these can vary widely based on your lifestyle and hereditary traits. And as the previous points have shown, the kinds of food you eat are more important than the overall volume.

Make It Convenient

When diets fail, most people chalk it up to a lack of willpower. Studies have shown, however, that there are several obstacles to dieting that have more bearing than simple choice. One of the biggest determinants of nutrition is, in fact, what is easily available for us to eat. Convenience determines our diets.

You can turn this to your advantage by making healthy options more convenient for you to eat. Prepare them beforehand, put them in accessible areas, and encourage the people you eat regularly to adopt similar habits. All of these will go a long way to making a habit of healthy choices.

Between Meal Habits

Speaking of habits, our diets are about more than just mealtimes. After all, how much we eat is determined in part by how we either use or store energy throughout the day. One of the major determinants of diet is how we sleep.

In addition to the rather obvious point that we have to eat more to get energy missing from lost sleep, a full night’s rest is essential to maintaining the hormones that keep our appetite in check. Studies have shown that people who regularly lack sleep are prone to irregular eating habits, such as more frequent snacks between meals. This can rapidly lead to poor nutrition, especially when snack options are unhealthy.

Choose Wellcare.

A healthy lifestyle is best started on a good night’s rest. Wellcare has high-quality products, from heating pads to electric underblankets, designed to give you comfortable, restorative sleep. To guarantee your safety when using our heating products, we use only the finest available materials in our manufacturing process.

However, the best aspect of our products is that they are equipped with our very own 4D Dynamic Warmth Flow (4D DWF) technology, an innovation in the world of electric heating. With 4D DWF, heat is evenly distributed throughout the product, thereby ensuring your maximum warmth and comfort.

So, what are you waiting for? Grab a Wellcare heating pad, cushion, or electric blanket today.