Now is the perfect time to give your kitchen a good healthy inspection. There could be all kinds of hidden pitfalls and nasty foods that are just waiting for a chance to tempt you into falling back into your bad eating habits. These foods may even be disguising themselves as healthy food options when the opposite is actually the truth. If you want to have a healthy lifestyle and healthy habits, then you need to make sure that you are living in a healthy environment, and this means eliminating the dangers that are lurking in your kitchen.

You need to face it, no matter how truly motivated you are toward getting healthy, there are going to be opportunities for temptation that present themselves when you least expect them, and it is really only a matter of time. When temptation does happen, you are going to need healthy foods and healthy snacks within your arm's reach so that you can stop yourself from falling into that temptation trap.

There is no better time than right now to take stock of what is in your kitchen and to be truly objective about whether or not it is going to hurt you or help you later on in the future. You may have developed some kind of attachment to that plate of cheesecake on the bottom shelf of your fridge, or the buttered popcorn packets you keep in the bread box, but this is absolutely no time for you to be all sentimental about your food, because your health and well being is at stake.

Begin with your fridge and your pantry. Focus on taking away the sugar laden foods and the high calorie foods and replacing them with lower calorie and whole grain alternatives instead. You will be surprised at the number of alternatives that are out there, providing healthy solutions for the sugar laden and high fat laden food items that were previously in your fridge and pantry.

Things to Throw Out: You absolutely need to get rid of the thick sauces and dressings, creamers, white rice, chips, white pasta, dips, soda pop, mayonnaise, packaged junk foods like Ho-Hos and Twinkies and pudding. None of these things are going to do any good sitting around in your pantry and fridge, so throw them out now and never look back.

Things to Keep: Make sure that you keep the sweet potatoes and spinach, vinaigrettes, nuts, whole wheat pastas, tomatoes, carrots, oatmeal, salsa, mustard, yogurt and natural no sugar added apple sauce. These are healthy food options that you should always have on hand.

Things to Put on Probation: If any of the following things end up becoming a problem, make sure that you find a substitute: High fat cheeses, whole milk products, ice cream, butter, cooking oil, eggs and beef.

Photo Credits: babbagecabbage

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