How often do you pay attention to what you eat? How balanced or healthy are the food items you consume on a daily basis? Despite numerous studies highlighting the benefits of healthy eating and health experts constantly emphasising on eating right, there is still vast majority of people who give little or no heed to it.
As per fitness professionals, your body is made 80% in the kitchen and 20% in the gym, which means 80% depends on the food you intake and 20% is about the exercise or physical activities you engage in. Even if this 80:20 ratio may not entirely be true, we cannot rule out the fact that the food we eat makes a lot of difference to our body. If it tends to be unhealthy often with lots of processed or junk food, then it would be pointless even if we exercise regularly.
Eating healthy food fills your body with energy and nutrients. It is not about strict limitations, staying unrealistically skinny, or depriving yourself of the foods you love. Rather, it is about finding the balance, feeling great, having more energy, improving your health, and boosting your mood. There is a bigger picture. You need to practice moderation, eat a variety of food and get enough physical activity.
In this modern era, due to overload of information on the web, the whole idea of healthy eating seems complicated and expensive. Healthy eating does not have to be overly complicated. If you feel overwhelmed by all the conflicting nutrition and diet advice out there, you are not alone. It seems that for every expert who tells you a certain food is good for you, you will find another saying exactly the opposite. Rather than investing on high-end food products, we should focus on a diet that will be sustainable throughout.
It is simple; let us go back to the basics and our traditional, home-cooked food that has maximum health benefits. For a healthy diet, you should replace processed food with real food whenever possible. Eating food that is as close as possible to the way nature made it can make a huge difference to the way you think, look, and feel.
With years of research, the fitness experts have claimed that in our everyday meals we should ensure a good mix of carbohydrates, protein, fibre nd fat.
Carbohydrates are one of your body’s main sources of energy. However, most should come from complex, unrefined carbs (vegetables, whole grains, fruit) rather than sugars and refined carbs. Having rice everyday will do no harm if you are accustomed to it. But remember, portion control is the key here.
Protein gives you the energy to get up, go, and keep going while also supporting mood and cognitive function. There are variety of protein rich food for both vegetarians and non-vegetarians but ensure to make it part of your every meal. Your body will thank you for that.
And for fibre, eating foods high in dietary fibre (grains, fruit, vegetables, nuts, and beans) can help you stay regular and lower your risk for heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. It can also improve your skin and even help you to lose weight.
When it comes to fat, not all fat are the same. While bad fats can wreck your diet and increase your risk of certain diseases, good fats protect your brain and heart. In fact, healthy fats—such as omega-3s—are vital to your physical and emotional health. Including more healthy fat in your diet can help improve your mood, boost your well-being, and even trim your waistline.
Holistic health practitioner, naturopath and raw food advocate Ann Wigmore says, “the food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison”. Hence, it is important that we should be mindful of what we feed ourselves.
To reiterate, healthy diet is not about depriving yourself from eating three meals a day or putting your body through days of starvation to the extent that you end up being famished all the time. The golden rule is – You don’t have to eat less, you just have to eat right.