How to get (and stay) healthy and fit is an extremely important topic to discuss about, especially nowadays with the endemic obesity alarm spreading all across the world. As today I bumped into this CNN article on the matter, I thought to share a few nutritional tips from my Meal Plan “The WISDOM of food“, that I think may be helpful. Hope you will enjoy the reading and find it useful. Let me know down below of any comment you may have.

How to stay healthy and fit

Nutrition can be a quite complex topic, with so many streams of information and technical details. Nevertheless, being “eating-conscious” can also be easy to follow. Sometimes just a bit of common sense turns out to be very helpful. Anyway, as the saying goes, the common sense is the least common thing in the world!
Here below, some gold nuggets in this respect.

Tip #1: Getting your head around what the macronutrients are

Some information you may have about macronutrients can be misleading. In my experience I have found out that quite often people are not entirely clear on the difference between carbohydrates, protein and fats and, thus, when it comes to being aware of their daily nutritional intake, they do struggle with identifying them precisely.

Beyond the most common and well-known examples such as pasta, pizza, muffin, wheat, chicken, fish and so forth, there is a very simple rule of thumb:

  • carbohydrates are everything that comes out from the soil, such as legumes [*], vegetables, fruit, grains and so on,
  • protein is everything that “moves around”, swims or flies,
  • fats come basically from nuts, oils or dairy products (e.g butter).

This an oversimplification of course, however, this very basic rule can make you right 90% of the time. It is as simple as that.

[*] When food contains both protein and carbs, it gets listed according to the prevalent macronutrient.

Tip #2: Reading labels

At some extent, this point can also be a consequence of the previous one as, when there is no familiarity with some topics, people tend to skip them. So, it happens that many just don’t bother reading the ingredients list and nutrition facts label, which are on the back of the container, trusting the packaging and the advertising information well displayed on the front, instead.
Now, as you may have noticed, in recent years, in the aisles of supermarkets many new “health foods” have appeared all of a sudden. Some of them claim to be “sugar-free”, “fat-free”, “whatever-free”…These tags may give many a deceitful sense of security when choosing a specific food. In general, the trap with many of these foods is that they aren’t as healthy as they are supposed to be.

Be careful in blindly trusting the dazzling hype on the packaging and check out carefully the nutrition fact’s tiny label on the back, instead. This will help you to assess on your own the quality of what you, and your children, eat.

Tip #3: Focusing on “real” food

Again, eating healthy and balanced it is not difficult. Or at least…in theory it isn’t, but these two words can give us the idea of the challenge many deal with: comfort and habit. Yes, these are the reasons why many people don’t really bother to change their non-supportive behaviour: they choose to be comfortable and easy.
Having said that, each one of us knows, to some extent, that eating processed and junk food is one of the worst things we can do and I am not just talking about our fitness shape. It looks like it can trigger inflammations inside the body and distress the gut. Furthermore, recent studies show it can be addictive as it tricks the rewarding centers of the brain into eating more than we need. However, these foods are comfortable, easy to get, cheap, ready to consume and furthermore they are everywhere! So, why not cut off the time needed to prepare the dinner by buying a ready-made one? (don’t do that on a regular basis!).

Whenever possible, buy real, fresh, local and minimally processed foods, directly at the source of the production chain.

Tip #4: don’t drink your calories!

Liquid calories don’t seem to have the same impact on the brain as solid foods do. It looks like they affect the brain appetite centers in a softer way. Therefore, after a drink, we don’t feel sated and we end up with consuming overall more calories, instead of compensating for the calories we drunk. This is an over-simplification, of course, as we cannot compare red wine to sugar-sweetened drinks on a level playing field, but you got the idea.

Be aware that sugar-sweetened drinks which are apparently innocuous, are in fact really harmful.

  • Firstly, they are “empty calories” without any nutritional value.
  • Secondly, they create addiction since refined sugars, by triggering brain neurotransmitters like dopamine, can have deceitful effect on the rewards centers of the brain, inducing to overindulge in consumption.
  • Thirdly, they have been related to many health conditions such as insulin resistance, diabetes and obesity.
  • Finally, artificial sweeteners, not only have been recently described as being harmful for your health, but they also produce gas in the belly, so you may get bloated.

Try to avoid consuming these drinks, or at least limit them as much as you can.

Hope you enjoyed this reading. Feel free to share it with anybody who can take advantage of it and leave your own comments down below.

Help us spread Happiness & Health!

Lots of love, Roberta

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