Healthy Eating Every Day

Finally, an easy-to-follow guidebook on nutrition that you can adapt to fit around YOUR lifestyle. Healthy Eating Every Day is a unique, self-paced plan that teaches you how to improve your eating habits for life.

Session One: Healthy Eating: A Balancing Act
Knowing the importance of dietary balance, learning about serving sizes, and identifying personal improvements in food groups

Session Two: Taking Stock
Assessing the health of your diet, understanding the five HEED goals, and determining your readiness to change your eating habits

Session Three: Setting Goals and Rewarding Yourself
Learning the four characteristics of effective goals, setting effective long-term and short-term goals and rewards, and learning the important skill of self-monitoring

Session Four: Identifying Barriers and Benefits
Identifying benefits of healthy eating, identifying barriers to healthy eating, problem solving to overcome barriers, and increasing opportunities for healthy eating

Session Five: Tackling Triggers
Defining hunger, identifying and dealing with eating triggers, and understanding nutrient density

Session Six: Eating Out
Knowing the difference between necessity eating out and special occasion eating out, learning the skill of defensive dining when eating out, and developing strategies for eating on the run

Session Seven: Talking to Yourself
Understanding the interaction between your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, identifying and overcoming dangerous dialogues, and modifying your negative self-talk with positive thoughts

Session Eight: Healthy Shopping Strategies
Overcoming obstacles to shopping for healthy foods, identifying the best options in each supermarket department, and using food labels to assess food choices

Session Nine: Recruiting Support
Identifying the types of social support you need, enlisting sources of support, and recognizing people who are not supportive

Session Ten: Looking Back, Looking Forward
Learning more about the benefits of whole foods, evaluating your progress to date, and setting new goals

Session Eleven: Getting Back on Track
Preventing lapses, relapses, and collapses, and coping with lapses when they occur

Session Twelve: Cooking Up a Healthy Diet
Understanding the role of cooking in healthy eating, learning how to modify recipes, and finding ways to make healthy eating quick and easy

Session Thirteen: Dietary Supplements and Fad Diets
Deciphering the truth about dietary supplements and fad diets, and evaluating nutrition information

Session Fourteen: Balancing Calories With Physical Activity
Understanding the benefits of regular physical activity, dispelling myths about physical activity, and planning ways to become more physically active

Session Fifteen: Controlling Weight
Understanding your body mass index and what it means for your health, learning about energy balance and weight management, and reassessing HEED goals

Session Sixteen: Managing Time and Stress
Identifying personal values, learning to act on priorities, and understanding how stress affects eating

Session Seventeen: Staying Motivated
Celebrating successes, exploring new possibilities, and beating boredom

Session Eighteen: Eating in a Changing World
Understanding our toxic food environment, learning about vegetarianism and other alternative eating patterns, keeping food safe to eat, and looking ahead to new food technologies

Session Nineteen: Planning Ahead
Identifying what helped you change and planning ahead for troublesome times

Session Twenty: Celebrating Success
Assessing the health of your diet, setting new goals and rewards, and celebrating!

Ruth Ann Carpenter, MS, RD, LD, is the director of the center for research dissemination at The Cooper Institute in Dallas, Texas. She is a registered dietitian with a master's degree in applied nutrition and additional coursework in exercise science.

Carpenter has directed The Cooper Institute's nutrition research for 15 years and was the co-developer and a group facilitator for the Lifestyle Nutrition Study, which served as the basis for Healthy Eating Every Day.

She has coauthored five books, including Active Living Every Day, and developed educational programs for clients such as the American Heart Association, Kellogg's, Tropicana, PowerBar, Jenny Craig, Novartis, and Roche. She serves as secretary for the American Dietetic Association's (ADA) weight management dietetic practice group and is a member of the ADA's sports, cardiovascular, and wellness dietetic practice group.

Carrie E. Finley, MS, is a project manager in the center for data management at The Cooper Institute. She co-developed the curriculum for the Lifestyle Nutrition Study and was a co-facilitator in the program, which provided the framework for Healthy Eating Every Day.

Finley manages the nutritional epidemiology project at The Cooper Institute with the goal of studying the associations among dietary intake, fitness, and health outcomes. With a master's degree in epidemiology and a bachelor's degree in nutritional sciences, she is skilled in understanding the impact of dietary habits on health and behaviors.