Lose Weight, Live Well [SPONSORED]

Raritan Bay Medical Center is providing you with essential keys to weight loss and living well.

Maintaining your ideal weight and enjoying a balanced, healthy diet is an important part of your well-being and can significantly reduce the risk for chronic diseases, including: diabetes, heart disease, stroke and certain cancers. Get 30 minutes of aerobic exercise most days of the week. Eat plenty of whole grains, vegetables and fruits, low-fat dairy products, proteins low in saturated fat and switch to water instead of sugary drinks.

Limit your saturated fats and avoid trans fats: Butter, vegetable shortening, foods containing “hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil,” such as cookies, crackers, pastries, microwave popcorn, and some frozen meals; deep-fried foods, like doughnuts, French fries, cheese, butter, fatty meats, like hamburger, and steak, whole milk and whole-milk products, like ice cream and cream.

Increase your intake of good fats: Olive oil, canola oil, peanut oil, flax seeds and flaxseed oil, wheat germ, nuts, including almonds, cashews, pecans, pistachios, walnuts. Avocados, and nut butters, such as almond butter; corn, soybean, safflower, and sunflower oils; sunflower seeds; fish, bluefish, salmon, flounder, lake trout, tuna, and sardines.

Enjoy fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains: Oranges and orange juice; green and red peppers, broccoli, spinach; tomatoes, kiwi, cantaloupe. Dark, leafy vegetables, like spinach, kale, asparagus, almonds, cashews, peanuts, pistachios, walnuts, and 100-percent whole-grain bread, oatmeal, whole-wheat pasta, whole-grain crackers, whole-wheat flour, quinoa, brown rice, barley and millet.

To learn more about weight loss surgery from the Institute for Weight Loss at Raritan Bay Medical Center call 1.855.TIME.4.ME or visit our weight loss surgical website here.