Healthy Eating – An important aspect of health and fitness regime.
Eat healthy foods! Adopt healthy eating!! Take more Carbohydrates!!! Balance your proteins!!! Control your fats!!! Blah…blah…blah…
There is so much, precious information on healthy eating which becomes an integral part of ones daily health and fitness regime, but of no use – people don’t understand what the hell these Carbohydrates, Fiber, Proteins and Fats are? And where to get them?
So I decided to explain this healthy eating verbatim here:
Carbohydrate Food: A combination of starches, sugar and fiber that provides the body with necessary fuel in form of glucose to keep us active. But there are also some carbohydrates that can cause health problems too.
Good Carbohydrates: Are those that digest slowly and keep your blood sugar and insulin level maintained. Good carbohydrates can be resourced from fruits, whole grains, beans and vegetables.
Bad Carbohydrates: Grain used without bran, fiber and nutrients, i.e. foods processed to cook fast and easy are bad carbohydrate food indeed. These things digest so quickly that they cause sudden rise in blood sugar leading to weight-gain, hypoglycemia and diabetes.
Fiber: Naturally fiber is found in vegetables, fruits and grains. It is more than necessary to keep our digestive system healthy. There are two types of fibers, soluble fiber that dissolve in water and help lower blood fats, maintain blood sugar. Soluble fibers can be obtained from beans, fruit and oat products.
Likewise Insoluble fiber does not dissolve in water and directly enters your digestive system. It is available in whole grain products and vegetables.
The recommended quantity of fiber is approx 20 – 30 grams a day, but most of us don’t even take half of that.
Fibrous foods make you feel full faster and keep so for longer, avoiding overeating.
Fibrous foods digest slowly, thus releases glucose slowly and steadily into bloodstreams, keeping blood sugar level maintained.
Proteins: Proteins help our body in maintaining cells, tissues and organs. Lack of proteins intake can cause reduced muscle mass, slow growth, lower immunity and inefficient heart and unfit respiratory system. Proteins energize us to do what we do. The quantity varies from person to person depending on your body and activity level. But we must focus on getting better quality than more quantity.
There are amino acids that our bodies use to create its own protein. The best source of complete protein set is animal-based food i.e. meat, milk, eggs and cheese.
The other sources of healthy protein can be rice, dry beans, nuts, seeds, beans, soy products.
Calcium: Calcium is necessary for our bones, lacking which might result into sever bone diseases. Moderate quantity of calcium intake is recommended for every one. Milk and dairy products are rich with calcium.
Fats: Fats are very important part our diet. Good fats are needed to nourish your brain, heart, nerves, hormones and all your cells. Not only this, your hair, skin and nails too.
Sugar: Refined sugar is one of the bad carbohydrates that can cause blood sugar problems. It absorbs the stored resources in our body like minerals and enzymes to process sugar in our body.
Home-made sweets, fruits, vegetables, grains and beans can be a good resource of natural sugar intake. Strawberries, sweet potatoes, winter squash and apples are the best options.
Salt: Most of us are unaware of how much Sodium we consume in one day. The recommended limit in general is 2,300 mg per day that equals to one tea spoon of salt but for specific cases a dietician or a physician should be consulted.
Therefore it is highly recommended that one should properly balance the daily diet in order to achieve the satisfactory output from his/her health and fitness regime.
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