Healthy Diet Plans for Women

The media bombards us every day with some diet plan or another. Many are fad diets and nearly impossible to follow. Good advice for healthy eating is just as easy to find, but healthy living comes down to following that advice, which is the hard part. According to womenshealth.gov 60 percent of women in the U.S. are overweight and one third are obese.

What You Need to Know

Women have special nutritional needs. For example, women of childbearing age need more iron and folic acid in their diets. Iron can be found in many fortified hot cereals. Also consider adding curry powder and dried thyme as seasonings for recipes; both are loaded with iron and add no extra calories. Folic acid can be found in fortified foods such as breakfast cereals or green leafy vegetables. Women should also consider investing in a good calcium supplement.

DASH Diet

DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. While it is not a weight loss diet, many of its users have enjoyed this side affect. The diet plan comes highly recommended from many sources, such as National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association. The DASH diet plan includes different levels of caloric intake and was also used as the basis for the USDA Food Pyramid; it even includes a 1,200 calorie plan especially for women. Is it the easiest diet to follow? Probably not, but it one of the healthiest. The diet concentrates on upping vegetable and fruit intake, but does provide some wiggle room by incorporating healthy, tasty recipes.

Good Resource

Sparkpeople.com is a large, free community website. It has thousands of recipes and healthy diet plans. The site offers a personalized diet plan, message boards and blogs packed with information and support for dieters. You must register to access the full site, but it is free and popular, the site claims to have 5 million members.

Considerations

Get your mind out of the fad diet mode--they simply do not work. In the long run, you have to change your eating habits to lose weight and keep it off, so do it the healthy way. Always discuss your diet plans with your physician before you start: Your doctor should be a good resource in helping you to find a doable healthy diet plan.