Nutrition and Weight Management The key is Variety, and Balance.
When it comes to food, we have all heard that we need variety and balance in our diets. Yes diet! It isn't a dirty word. Yes it has four letters, and yes the first three are "die", but it isn't the word that we look so harshly upon. What foods you consume on a regular basis, the amount, nature, and type, make up your diet. Are you overweight? Are you Healthy? Are you Unhealthy? Are you in good physical condition? Are you fit or unfit? These are important questions that are related to food but also to many other things.
To think of diet as a description of eating habits rather than a negative, "can't have", "not allowed", "starving", "doing without" descriptor, we will do a lot better. ~~~ I believe that you can have anything you want. ~~~ Yes, you want a piece of cake or pie at dinner, a couple of cookies one afternoon, some chips one evening, etc.. Go ahead for goodness sakes!
It is a shame to go without delighting your tastebuds sometimes. The important thing to remember is that the treat you just ate, or will eat, must be balanced at some point. Too many treats will result in weight gain. Not enough will result in cravings and feelings of being denied. Balance your meal, or your day, or your week. Try whatever works best for you.
Do you have a big dinner coming next week? Eat light the day before or the day after. Big dinner tonight? Eat a light breakfast and lunch. Vacation coming next month? Want to prepare? Ok, try to eat lots of fruits and veggies, keep breads and starches to a minimum, cook low fat meats like skinless chicken etc. this month and you will not only look better by the time you get there, but you might be on a roll, (sorry about the pun) and choose healthier choices on your vacation as well. If you are going on vacation tomorrow and haven't lost any weight or don't want to gain, choose vacation meal options that appear to be healthiest and don't clean your plate.
*I hate to disappoint you by telling you this, but there is NO PRIZE for the cleanest plate!*
I was always encouraged to clean my plate. I was always given praise for being such a "good eater". Well, it left me with a huge appetite and feeling the need to always leave a clean plate. I would feel stuffed leaving a restaurant and really, the waitress and chef were never impressed or honoured that I was such a "good eater". I felt kind of 'ripped off' or at a loss if I had to leave any of my meal. It seemed a shame to leave that last couple of bites that had just the perfect amount of everything. So what can you do about those feelings? Take it home in a doggy bag, finish it tomorrow, or give it to the kids or the dog. At least you will have gotten your money's worth without feeling stuffed or ripped off.
As for variety, and balance... Try something new.
Try stuffed peppers, or shark steaks for the highlight of your meal. Have basmatti rice or couscous instead of potatoes at dinner. I am not telling you which of these has a higher caloric value. Just limit your portion to a reasonable amount.
We have so many choices today. Vegetables not your favourite? Sneak them into something you do enjoy. Add slivers of carrots to your spaghetti, meatloaf, or salad. Try a stir-fry of things you enjoy. Use a non-stick butter-flavoured spray or light margarine for a stir-fry. Try new dressings, balsamic vinigarettes are often the house dressings served in restaurants. They are wonderful. Try adding different spices to vegetables, not just salt. Cinnamon, nutmeg, paprika, dill, and many other spices and herbs are surprisingly good with many vegetables, and give them an exotic flavour.
You need many vitamins and minerals to stay healthy. You need variety and balance to remain healthy. Using fruit as a common example of a "healthy" food. If you only ate fruit you would become ill because you wouldn't be getting the proteins you need. If you only ate vegetables, the same thing applies. Vegetarians don't only eat vegetables. They eat pasta and rice, legumes, and cereals and breads, and many other foods.
If you ate the exact same meals everyday, you would become ill. You would be getting all of certain vitamins and minerals, proteins and carbohydrates, but you would be missing many of the other essential ones. You need to eat many different types of each food group to meet your body's needs. Not every day, but over a period of time. If you missed getting all of the vitamin B's you should have today, you will probably get it tomorrow, or the next day. This is why we need variety, it covers all of our bases.
Why not just take a vitamin and know for sure?
Well a vitamin is a good thing, but it can't replace the need for food. You still have to take in the calories, proteins, carbohydrates and fats that food supplies. Yes, you need fats in your diet. Many vitamins are fat soluble. They only dissolve in fat so you can't absorb them without it. Fibre and water are also necessary to move and remove wastes and maintain the machine that is the body. It all works together.
What is a Calorie?
Calories are not actually part of the food itself. A calorie is a measure of energy. If a teaspoonful of sugar is equal to 15 calories, then it means that your body will have to spend 15 calories of energy to rid you of that sugar. We say 'burn', because energy is often referred to as burned. If you leave a light burning, the energy burned by the lightbulb is a watt. Any food energy that we don't burn is stored for later use. It is stored as fat.
Fat cells are like millions of little batteries waiting to provide energy when not enough is supplied through the diet. That is why when you cut down on your caloric intake, you lose fat.
The need for specific food types to maintain our bodies provides the reason why we can't abandon eating for a while and live off our stored energy. If you attempt to stop eating and try to live on your body fat alone you aren't getting the other materials needed by your systems and intricate organs. Not enough calories coming into your body and you lose the energy needed to run it efficiently. It is like trying to run your body on a stale energy source which doesn't break down fast enough to meet all of its needs. It is energy without the nutrients. At the same time the body tries to let you know it is starving. You get hungry, craving all kinds of foods, usually high fat and carbohydrates for the quick energy rush. Your skin gets wrinkly and sallow. It doesn't heal properly or quickly, and bruises easily. Your body will try to get the protein (not found in vitamins)it requires by taking it from your own body, your muscles.
You need the fibre found in vegetables, grains and fruit to move your bowels.
You need the water found in all food and drink to make your body work. Cells can't do anything without water. Lungs need moisture to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide. Eyes need moisture to see, noses need moisture to smell, etc. We have to rid our bodies of toxins through water.
A body without protein, carbohydrates, fibre, fat and water will begin to breakdown and shutdown systems from least important to most important. As each system begins to falter, it forces more work and provides less assistance to the most important ones.
Crash diets (where major food groups are removed) fail because the body requires a variety and balance in all things.
What about health diets like taking Amino acids to build muscle etc.?
Amino acids are the very smallest breakdown of the nutrients our body takes in. We get our amino acids from our food, to give ourselves whopping doses of them is to urinate your money down the drain LITERALLY! What you don't need you excrete. Some vitamins will remain in your system and can build to toxic levels if taken in large quantities. Go natural by getting what you need from your food and give your body the exercise of working for its energy, and burn calories at the same time.
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