By now, I’m sure you’ve heard people say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. However, that doesn’t stop millions of Americans, and people around the world, from skipping breakfast or opting for only a drink of coffee. The truth is that breakfast really is the most important meal of the day, and you will have a much more healthy diet if you include breakfast in your daily life.
Breakfast is rightly named—break fast. When you sleep, you are not eating for 6 to 9 hours at least, and more if you haven’t eaten since dinner the night before. Therefore, breakfast is the first time you’ll be eating anything for a very long period of time. Some nutrients, like proteins, cannot be stored in the body and are therefore not present, so the body needs you to replenish the “low” levels of such nutrients. Breakfast is like the match that lights the fire. It truly is a very important source of energy for your body in the morning.
Eating breakfast in the morning also helps you avoid some illnesses and disease. For example, your sugar levels are probably out of whack from not eating for many hours, so having breakfast levels out the amount of sugars in your body, helping to prevent diabetes. Eating a healthy breakfast also helps you to provide food to your stomach so that you don’t overeat at lunch because you are so hungry. Overeating leads to obesity, which comes with a whole host of problems, including heart disease.
Healthy breakfast foods, like eggs, fruit, or bran cereal are also a good source of many of the vitamins and minerals a person needs during the day. If you don’t eat these things in the morning, it will be hard to make up for that loss later in the day. Remember that without the proper amounts of nutrients, you body will not function correctly. When you eat a healthy breakfast, it also makes you choose healthier foods during the rest of the day, so that you continue to get the proper nutrients needed for your body.
Setting aside 15 minutes in the morning to eat breakfast every day can truly make a great different in your diet. In the best case, your breakfast will include foods from at least three different food groups. For example, you can have whole grain toast (bread food group) with peanut butter (protein food group) and a banana (fruit food group). Top that off with a glass of milk to drink, and you’ve even hit a fourth food group. Breakfast does not have to include a heavy pancakes and sausage meal every day to be healthy, and even grabbing a single piece of fruit or a muffin is better than skipping the meal completely. Breakfast is important to your health!
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Healthy Eating with Little Money
If you are interesting in eating a healthy diet compared to your current diet, I have good news or you—you don’t have to be rich to do so. It is fully possible to involve yourself in healthy eating, even if you are on a very tight budget. This may require a little bit of extra time and effort to plan your meals, but you can make good and inexpensive food choice in order to provide your body with excellent nutrition.
First, it is important to plan for your healthy diet. When you go shopping, take a list with you of the healthy foods you need to purchase instead of walking up and down the aisles without a plan. When you have a shopping list, you are less likely to purchase random junk foods that you do not need, and so you’ll save money as well as be good to your health. Planning ahead with a list also allows you to look through store sales fliers in order to choose healthy foods that are offered at discount prices that week in particular. When you do go shopping, make sure that it is not on an empty stomach, when you will be craving fatting foods and will be more likely to overspend and waste money on unhealthy products.
You should also consider purchasing items in bulk. Many club stores have a membership fee, but you can save a lot of money if you have an adequate amount of freezer and pantry space. Look at the healthy foods you need, and then head to the bulk-food supply store in order to grab enough of the item for the next month. Remember to choose foods that are both healthy and the freeze readily.
Eat at home as much as possible. When you go out to eat or stop at a fast food restaurant on your way to and from work or during your lunch break, you will pay extra money for the convenience of someone else preparing the food. These foods are also usually high in calories and low in nutrients. Instead, calculate the money you would normally spend to eat out and then use it to buy more expensive healthy ingredients at the supermarket. You can make breakfast and dinner and also pack a lunch to carry to work or school.
Purchase foods that are in season. Fresh fruits and vegetables are usually very high in nutrients, but when you want strawberries in January, you’ll end up paying the extra price. Learn when fruits come into season in your climate and purchase them at those times of year. You can learn to can or otherwise preserve these fruits and vegetables if you want to have them all year round! Of course, heading to your local farmer’s market is a great way to purchase these items and save money. Healthy eating on a budget is all about being creative with the money you do have.
First, it is important to plan for your healthy diet. When you go shopping, take a list with you of the healthy foods you need to purchase instead of walking up and down the aisles without a plan. When you have a shopping list, you are less likely to purchase random junk foods that you do not need, and so you’ll save money as well as be good to your health. Planning ahead with a list also allows you to look through store sales fliers in order to choose healthy foods that are offered at discount prices that week in particular. When you do go shopping, make sure that it is not on an empty stomach, when you will be craving fatting foods and will be more likely to overspend and waste money on unhealthy products.
You should also consider purchasing items in bulk. Many club stores have a membership fee, but you can save a lot of money if you have an adequate amount of freezer and pantry space. Look at the healthy foods you need, and then head to the bulk-food supply store in order to grab enough of the item for the next month. Remember to choose foods that are both healthy and the freeze readily.
Eat at home as much as possible. When you go out to eat or stop at a fast food restaurant on your way to and from work or during your lunch break, you will pay extra money for the convenience of someone else preparing the food. These foods are also usually high in calories and low in nutrients. Instead, calculate the money you would normally spend to eat out and then use it to buy more expensive healthy ingredients at the supermarket. You can make breakfast and dinner and also pack a lunch to carry to work or school.
Purchase foods that are in season. Fresh fruits and vegetables are usually very high in nutrients, but when you want strawberries in January, you’ll end up paying the extra price. Learn when fruits come into season in your climate and purchase them at those times of year. You can learn to can or otherwise preserve these fruits and vegetables if you want to have them all year round! Of course, heading to your local farmer’s market is a great way to purchase these items and save money. Healthy eating on a budget is all about being creative with the money you do have.
Carbohydrate Craze
Carbohydrates have been put into the spotlight ever since diets like the Atkins Diet and the South Beach Diet have recommended cutting carbohydrates out of your meals as much as possible. However, before you make an drastic decisions about what foods to include and not include, it is crucial to learn about carbohydrates and what they do for your body.
In short, carbohydrates can be good or bad for your body. It is necessary to eat enough good carbohydrates, because that is how our body has enough energy for low-intensity activities during the day. Carbohydrates are famously found in breads and grains, but actually they are also found in a number of other foods as well, such as fruits and vegetables. When keeping an eye on your intake of carbohydrates it is important to distinguish the good from the bad.
All carbohydrates are basically sugars. Complex carbohydrates are the good carbohydrates for your body. These strings of sugar are very difficult to break down and trap over nutrients like vitamins and minerals in the sugar strings. As they slowly break down, the other nutrients are also released into your body, and you can provide with fuel for a number of hours.
Bad carbohydrates, on the other hand, are simple sugars. Because their structure is not complex, it is easy to break down and holds little nutrients for your body other than the sugars from which it is made. Your body breaks down these carbohydrates rather quickly and what it cannot use is converted to fat and stored in the body. Staying away from simple carbohydrates is what most diets recommend, since they have little nutritional value when compared to complex carbohydrates.
More importantly than how carbohydrates work in the body and the difference between good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates is how you can actually eat these carbohydrates! First, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. These foods include carbohydrates, but also a variety of other nutrients needed by your body. Another great tip is to cut the white bread and bread products out of your diet and replace then with whole wheat or 12-grain breads instead. Look at the packaging. Foods rich in fiber are probably a source of good carbohydrates.
Learning the difference between good and bad carbohydrates is very important if you wish to have a healthy diet. It is not good for your body to cut out carbohydrates completely—in fact, that is very difficult to do unless you only eat meat! Eating a healthy and balanced diet means including good carbohydrates into your meals.
In short, carbohydrates can be good or bad for your body. It is necessary to eat enough good carbohydrates, because that is how our body has enough energy for low-intensity activities during the day. Carbohydrates are famously found in breads and grains, but actually they are also found in a number of other foods as well, such as fruits and vegetables. When keeping an eye on your intake of carbohydrates it is important to distinguish the good from the bad.
All carbohydrates are basically sugars. Complex carbohydrates are the good carbohydrates for your body. These strings of sugar are very difficult to break down and trap over nutrients like vitamins and minerals in the sugar strings. As they slowly break down, the other nutrients are also released into your body, and you can provide with fuel for a number of hours.
Bad carbohydrates, on the other hand, are simple sugars. Because their structure is not complex, it is easy to break down and holds little nutrients for your body other than the sugars from which it is made. Your body breaks down these carbohydrates rather quickly and what it cannot use is converted to fat and stored in the body. Staying away from simple carbohydrates is what most diets recommend, since they have little nutritional value when compared to complex carbohydrates.
More importantly than how carbohydrates work in the body and the difference between good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates is how you can actually eat these carbohydrates! First, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. These foods include carbohydrates, but also a variety of other nutrients needed by your body. Another great tip is to cut the white bread and bread products out of your diet and replace then with whole wheat or 12-grain breads instead. Look at the packaging. Foods rich in fiber are probably a source of good carbohydrates.
Learning the difference between good and bad carbohydrates is very important if you wish to have a healthy diet. It is not good for your body to cut out carbohydrates completely—in fact, that is very difficult to do unless you only eat meat! Eating a healthy and balanced diet means including good carbohydrates into your meals.
Making the Grade with Healthy Eating
College is one of the most difficult times of life to practice healthy eating. Because of your busy schedule, the amounts of stress, and pressure from friends to party, you may find that healthy eating is impossible. However, with a few tips you can make the impossible seem much more manageable. Healthy eating is possible in college as long as you are willing to work at it.
Make smart decisions when you are eating at your college’s cafeteria. Most students are provided with a variety of option every day, and although the dessert bar may be very tempting, try to limit the number of times you visit it every week. If your school has a buffet style cafeteria with many choices, try to choose one food from each of the food groups. Avoid anything that is processed, covered in cheese or dressing, and greasy.
Scheduling times to eat is also important. When you register for classes, look at the day with meals in mind. You should have enough time in the morning to get ready for the day and grab a quick meal, either in your dorm room or at the cafeteria. Around the middle of the day, make sure that you save time for lunch, and have a timeslot for dinner before 7 PM to avoid eating late at night. You should also plan times to stop for nutritious snacks, like fruit. If your professor does not mind, you can also take these snack foods with you to class. This is a good question to ask during the first day of classes.
The weekends can be very challenging for college students because of the pressure to go to parties, where the main food is usually pizza and the main beverage is usually beer. Order pizza and other foods can take an otherwise healthy diet and throw it down the tubes. If you plan to go out for the night and won’t be sure if there will be healthy food choices available, grab a light meal before you leave and avoid greasy calories. Having pizza and other such college food, like wings or tacos, can be fine once in awhile, but if it becomes a weekly event, you’re looking at trouble.
Of course, alcohol is also a great way to ruin a diet. Beer and mixed drinks have a lot of empty calories, and so skipping them altogether is a great idea. If you must drink, choose diet sodas for mixing your drinks, ask for red wine if it is available, or drink light beer. Again, these treat are fine once in awhile, because drinking alcohol every week will only make you pack on the pounds.
Make smart decisions when you are eating at your college’s cafeteria. Most students are provided with a variety of option every day, and although the dessert bar may be very tempting, try to limit the number of times you visit it every week. If your school has a buffet style cafeteria with many choices, try to choose one food from each of the food groups. Avoid anything that is processed, covered in cheese or dressing, and greasy.
Scheduling times to eat is also important. When you register for classes, look at the day with meals in mind. You should have enough time in the morning to get ready for the day and grab a quick meal, either in your dorm room or at the cafeteria. Around the middle of the day, make sure that you save time for lunch, and have a timeslot for dinner before 7 PM to avoid eating late at night. You should also plan times to stop for nutritious snacks, like fruit. If your professor does not mind, you can also take these snack foods with you to class. This is a good question to ask during the first day of classes.
The weekends can be very challenging for college students because of the pressure to go to parties, where the main food is usually pizza and the main beverage is usually beer. Order pizza and other foods can take an otherwise healthy diet and throw it down the tubes. If you plan to go out for the night and won’t be sure if there will be healthy food choices available, grab a light meal before you leave and avoid greasy calories. Having pizza and other such college food, like wings or tacos, can be fine once in awhile, but if it becomes a weekly event, you’re looking at trouble.
Of course, alcohol is also a great way to ruin a diet. Beer and mixed drinks have a lot of empty calories, and so skipping them altogether is a great idea. If you must drink, choose diet sodas for mixing your drinks, ask for red wine if it is available, or drink light beer. Again, these treat are fine once in awhile, because drinking alcohol every week will only make you pack on the pounds.
Three Deadly Eating Disorders
Healthy eating is very important for our everyday lives, but unfortunately, many people develop problems with body image with prevent them from this healthy eating lifestyle. Eating disorders vary greatly from person to person, but one thing remains constant—they are very detrimental to a person’s health. If you or someone you know suffers from an eating disorder, it is important to seek help as soon as possible.
The first kind of eating disorder that a person may develop is anorexia. Anorexia occurs when someone is overly concerned with weight and simply refuses to eat. Someone suffering from this disease usually tries to hide it by discarding the food without anyone knowing, cutting the food into small pieces to make it look smaller, or lying about skipping entire meals. Anorexia is dangerous because it does not allow a person to lose weight in a healthy way. Cutting fat out of a diet is fine, but not getting enough proteins, vitamins, minerals, water, and other nutrients can make your body lose muscle weight and weaken.
Another major type of eating disorder is bulimia. While you may notice an anorexic person losing lots of weight in a hurry, someone who has bulimia may or may not be losing weight. If a person has bulimia, he or she does not have the will power to give up foods, but instead vomits or uses laxatives after meals to rid the body of these foods. Like anorexia, this can rob the body of key nutrients, and it can also lead to problems in the digestive system, throat, and mouth, which are not made for regular induced vomiting.
The third main type of eating disorder is binge eating. This is a combination of anorexia and bulimia in most cases. A binge eater will, like a bulimic, not deprive his- or herself from food. In fact, someone who is a binge eater will eat enormous amounts of food in a single sitting, and often these foods are not high in nutritional value. Instead of vomiting, a binge eater will then refuse to eat at all and exercise rigorously for a day or two, but then slip into a binge once again. This leads to major problems with weight.
Eating disorders can effect bother males and females, as well as people of any race, ethnicity, or age. Most commonly, victims of eating disorders are teen and young adult girls. Many people die every year due to complications with eating disorders, but if you or someone you know suffers from this problem, help is available.
The first kind of eating disorder that a person may develop is anorexia. Anorexia occurs when someone is overly concerned with weight and simply refuses to eat. Someone suffering from this disease usually tries to hide it by discarding the food without anyone knowing, cutting the food into small pieces to make it look smaller, or lying about skipping entire meals. Anorexia is dangerous because it does not allow a person to lose weight in a healthy way. Cutting fat out of a diet is fine, but not getting enough proteins, vitamins, minerals, water, and other nutrients can make your body lose muscle weight and weaken.
Another major type of eating disorder is bulimia. While you may notice an anorexic person losing lots of weight in a hurry, someone who has bulimia may or may not be losing weight. If a person has bulimia, he or she does not have the will power to give up foods, but instead vomits or uses laxatives after meals to rid the body of these foods. Like anorexia, this can rob the body of key nutrients, and it can also lead to problems in the digestive system, throat, and mouth, which are not made for regular induced vomiting.
The third main type of eating disorder is binge eating. This is a combination of anorexia and bulimia in most cases. A binge eater will, like a bulimic, not deprive his- or herself from food. In fact, someone who is a binge eater will eat enormous amounts of food in a single sitting, and often these foods are not high in nutritional value. Instead of vomiting, a binge eater will then refuse to eat at all and exercise rigorously for a day or two, but then slip into a binge once again. This leads to major problems with weight.
Eating disorders can effect bother males and females, as well as people of any race, ethnicity, or age. Most commonly, victims of eating disorders are teen and young adult girls. Many people die every year due to complications with eating disorders, but if you or someone you know suffers from this problem, help is available.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Eating Healthy for your Heart
Your heart is one of the most important organs in the body, and the foods you put into your mouth effect how your heart operates. If you want your heart to be strong and able to pump blood as well as possible all over your body, it is important for you to eat a healthy diet. Heart-healthy foods are readily available in the supermarket, so choose some that work for your personal likes and you should be able to help prevent heart disease in your own body.
Cholesterol is the most important thing when it comes to eating heart-healthy foods. There are both good cholesterols and bad cholesterols. Good cholesterols are called HDL, and their job in the body is to take excess bad cholesterol (LDL) to the liver, where it can be broken down and then will leave the body. LDL is actually not needed by your body at all from foods. Our bodies make enough of this kind of cholesterol on its own. It is the LDL cholesterol that hurts our hearts, not the HDL cholesterol, which actually helps our hearts be reducing the amount of LDL cholesterol in the body.
LDL stands for low-density lipoproteins. Because this substance has a low density, it does not flow through the blood stream as readily as it should. The red blood cells easily release the LDL cholesterol and it sticks to the walls of your blood vessels, especially in the arteries leading to your heart. This is bad for a number of reasons.
First, when the LDL cholesterol builds up on your arteries, it reduces the amount of blood that can fit through at a time, since the artery becomes smaller. That means your heart has to pump harder and faster in order to allow the same amount of blood to flow through your body. Over time, this makes your heart tired and not as strong. In the worst-case scenario, the blood vessel becomes so built up with LDL cholesterol that your artery could close completely. When this happens, your heart essentially panics because it is not getting the blood it needs and it starts beating rapidly to try to pump the blood. This causes a heart attack.
You can also have a heart attack from LDL cholesterol build up if a piece of the build-up, called plaque, breaks off and floats down the blood stream. When it reaches a smaller part of the blood vessel, it will get stuck and block the blood, which again causes a heart attack. If the piece of plaque travels to the brain instead of the heart, it will cause a blockage in this area of the body, which in turn causes a stroke. Therefore, it is simply important to cut out of your diet the foods high in cholesterol so that you can prevent heart disease and other problems in the body.
Cholesterol is the most important thing when it comes to eating heart-healthy foods. There are both good cholesterols and bad cholesterols. Good cholesterols are called HDL, and their job in the body is to take excess bad cholesterol (LDL) to the liver, where it can be broken down and then will leave the body. LDL is actually not needed by your body at all from foods. Our bodies make enough of this kind of cholesterol on its own. It is the LDL cholesterol that hurts our hearts, not the HDL cholesterol, which actually helps our hearts be reducing the amount of LDL cholesterol in the body.
LDL stands for low-density lipoproteins. Because this substance has a low density, it does not flow through the blood stream as readily as it should. The red blood cells easily release the LDL cholesterol and it sticks to the walls of your blood vessels, especially in the arteries leading to your heart. This is bad for a number of reasons.
First, when the LDL cholesterol builds up on your arteries, it reduces the amount of blood that can fit through at a time, since the artery becomes smaller. That means your heart has to pump harder and faster in order to allow the same amount of blood to flow through your body. Over time, this makes your heart tired and not as strong. In the worst-case scenario, the blood vessel becomes so built up with LDL cholesterol that your artery could close completely. When this happens, your heart essentially panics because it is not getting the blood it needs and it starts beating rapidly to try to pump the blood. This causes a heart attack.
You can also have a heart attack from LDL cholesterol build up if a piece of the build-up, called plaque, breaks off and floats down the blood stream. When it reaches a smaller part of the blood vessel, it will get stuck and block the blood, which again causes a heart attack. If the piece of plaque travels to the brain instead of the heart, it will cause a blockage in this area of the body, which in turn causes a stroke. Therefore, it is simply important to cut out of your diet the foods high in cholesterol so that you can prevent heart disease and other problems in the body.
The Importance of Healthy Eating
Have you ever heard the saying you are what you eat? In some sense, this is true, because if you eat unhealthy foods you are prone to be an unhealthy person. The foods we ingest are extremely important to our ability to grow, maintain function, and prevent illness. Therefore, if you value your health, you should learn as much about healthy eating as possible.
Healthy eating is important from the day we are born. As a child, we grow quite rapidly and this is due in part to the foods we eat. Foods all contain nutrients that provide us not only with fuel to live our daily lives, but also with the very substances that build our bones, muscles, and organ tissues. Not getting enough of one nutrient or another can cause a variety of problems, including stunting our growth. For mothers who are nursing, nutrition is important because breast milk contains the nutrients a child needs to grow and develop properly. Upon growing older, these nutrients are then found in food, but don’t think that healthy eating isn’t important for growth after you’ve gone through puberty. Cells continuous break down and rebuild, so healthy eating for growth continues to be important until the day we die.
Maintaining function is also not important without healthy eating. In out daily lives, we use energy to think, walk, talk, breathe, and perform any other action. The energy it takes our body to do these things comes from two places: fat reserves in the body or our daily food intake. If you don’t eat healthy foods, you will find that you are storing more fat that necessary or that you aren’t getting enough and you feel sluggish or weak. Along with energy-providing nutrients, like fats and carbohydrates, we also need the right nutrients to allow our organs to do their jobs. Hormones and other substances in the body make sure that everything is working properly. If you don’t eat the right nutrients, your body cannot produce these hormones and, as a result, cannot function properly.
Lastly, healthy eating is important in order to prevent illness. When we do not get the right nutrients, or body’s natural defense system against diseases weakens, allowing viruses and bacteria to attack the body. It’s like a well-trained army—if the army doesn’t have enough to eat, it will not do well in battle. Without healthy foods and plenty of water, our bodies simply could not operate on a day-to-day basis. Learning how to eat healthy foods is therefore and important lesson, and one which we should begin learning as children.
Healthy eating is important from the day we are born. As a child, we grow quite rapidly and this is due in part to the foods we eat. Foods all contain nutrients that provide us not only with fuel to live our daily lives, but also with the very substances that build our bones, muscles, and organ tissues. Not getting enough of one nutrient or another can cause a variety of problems, including stunting our growth. For mothers who are nursing, nutrition is important because breast milk contains the nutrients a child needs to grow and develop properly. Upon growing older, these nutrients are then found in food, but don’t think that healthy eating isn’t important for growth after you’ve gone through puberty. Cells continuous break down and rebuild, so healthy eating for growth continues to be important until the day we die.
Maintaining function is also not important without healthy eating. In out daily lives, we use energy to think, walk, talk, breathe, and perform any other action. The energy it takes our body to do these things comes from two places: fat reserves in the body or our daily food intake. If you don’t eat healthy foods, you will find that you are storing more fat that necessary or that you aren’t getting enough and you feel sluggish or weak. Along with energy-providing nutrients, like fats and carbohydrates, we also need the right nutrients to allow our organs to do their jobs. Hormones and other substances in the body make sure that everything is working properly. If you don’t eat the right nutrients, your body cannot produce these hormones and, as a result, cannot function properly.
Lastly, healthy eating is important in order to prevent illness. When we do not get the right nutrients, or body’s natural defense system against diseases weakens, allowing viruses and bacteria to attack the body. It’s like a well-trained army—if the army doesn’t have enough to eat, it will not do well in battle. Without healthy foods and plenty of water, our bodies simply could not operate on a day-to-day basis. Learning how to eat healthy foods is therefore and important lesson, and one which we should begin learning as children.
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