As promised last week in the mail, today’s post is gonna be all about diet. Or a complete guide of the crucial ingredients of pretty much every healthy diet. Complete guide I say? Well, how long should this one be, what other than healthy foods and junk food listings should it contain?
Well, in order to get someone familiar with the ups and downs of certain foods per say, and make them realize what they should and shouldn’t include into their eating habits is not an easy thing to do.
There are so many information that in some instances they overlap each other making you unable of forming a clear picture, so in a way limiting your information servings maybe is a wise thing to do now.
Every doctor and expert out there tells us to eat healthy, but some of us simply don’t have a clue what that is. And even the ones who do, they can probably admit that a healthy diet is a pretty darn hard thing to do nowadays. In the post about eating habits and foods that burn fat, I wrote some tips on what I think is important to add to your daily routine, and here I will do the same thing, as well as make a no nonsense explanation on what you can, and in fact need to eat in order to have a sustainable healthy lifestyle.
Ok, let’s start now:
1. Veggies
They are one of the cornerstones of your healthy diet. Remember your mom always telling you to eat your vegies? Well maybe she was not that familiar with all the benefits that vegies give, but she was right nonetheless.
Veggies are considered as one of the healthiest groups of food, and including them into your diet can in turn benefit you a lot. But before we go and list all the things vegies are good for and make a chart on how often should you actually consume them, let’s first make a subdivision and try to understand how are they divided.
- Dark green vegetables:
Bok Choy, broccoli, collard greens, dark green leafy lettuce, kale, watercress, spinach etc. - Beans and Peas:
Black-eyed peas, soy beans, white beans, lentils, split peas, black beans etc. - Starchy vegetables:
Cassava, green bananas, corn, green peas, potatoes, water chestnuts etc. - Red and orange vegetables:
Pumpkin, red peppers, tomatoes, sweat potatoes, tomatoes juice, carrots, acorn squash etc. - Other vegetables:
celery, artichokes, avocado, Brussels sprouts, green peppers, cucumbers, turnips, cabbage, mushrooms, beets, onions, cauliflower etc.
But why knowing these sub categories should be even slightly important to you? Well, the thing is, your consumption of vegetables in quantity is not the only part of the equation, but it’s also very important that you consume vegetables from each group as balanced as you can.
This sounds impossible, I know, but try and balance as much as you can, and that should be just enough.
How much is enough?Well here is a chart that may give you the clue.
And if you are asking how vegies can contribute to your health, here are some hints:
The benefits of having vegetables as a part of your diet
- may reduce risk for heart disease, including heart attack and stroke.
- may protect against certain types of cancers.
- may reduce the risk of obesity, and type 2 diabetes.
- may lower blood pressure, and may also reduce the risk of developing kidney stones.
- Some vegetables are known to help you with weight loss in a way they open the beta receptors of fat tissue cells. Here is a post we wrote about foods that burn fat.
Enough about vegies, let’s move on to another group of foods.
2. Healthy proteins
By healthy proteins i mean the one’s found in healthy sources prepared in the right way. This one should also be a vital part of your diet.
Alongside with vegies, it’s supplying the body with the most important of nutrients. Its role in your body is to ensure the growth and maintenance as well as repair the cells in your body.
Being a component of the muscles and organs it also plays a crucial part in almost every process that occurs within our body. Such as metabolism, digestion, and so on. For athletes and also for people who want to lose weight, proteins plays a vital part in their overall approach and strategy regarding maintaining weight and having a fit body.
Foods rich in natural proteins:
The best sources of complete natural protein are found in animal foods such as meat, fish, shellfish, poultry and dairy produce.
You can also find protein in beans and some of the vegetables mentioned above under “other vegetables”.
But consuming the protein only from sources such as meat and dairy isn’t very wise. You must as well as with vegetables, balance your protein intake from various sources. Aim to make healthy protein occupy a big percentage of your healthy diet.
3. Fruits.
You cannot go wrong with these ones. Every fruit is a healthy one, and while you should not limit yourself to only couple of them, you also shouldn’t feel the need to eat one of each. Eat five to ten pieces of fruits per day, and if you can, try and diversify. If not, that’s ok as well.
You can also replace all drinks other than water with freshly squeezed fruit, and while I’m not going to try to sell you a power juicer, I will only remind you that taking the time to squeeze the juice out of a fruit (if you go under the excuse that you do not have time to eat any), compared to all the benefits it can give you is worth for sure. Fruits are mostly consisted of water, so have in mind that you will have a nice body detox as well.
Below you can find some of the benefits of including fruits as a part of your diet:
- The fibers contained in fruits help your digestive system, and balance your metabolic rates in general.
- Fruits help you feel better (in some studies it’s shown that fruits help depressed people to feel much better after a period of 30 day consumption). Just don’t forget to eat those fruits before consuming other meals. A good strategy that I find is eating fruits as healthy snacks between meals. That way you will also speed up your metabolism.
- They are full with vitamins and minerals which impact your health in many ways.
- Most of them have the best effect on your skin (a study conducted on a group of women has shown that those who have regular intakes of fruit are less likely to have to visit beauty salons and spend much money on repair cosmetics).
- Known cases of memory stimulation.
So remember to have fresh fruits always ready and within your reach and hopefuly over time fruit consumption will become a habit.
As for other things you should consider, here are the most important ones:
- Whole grains. I will just mention whole-wheat bread, brown rice and whole-grain pasta. Nonetheless, they can still be important part of your diet.
- Healthy oils. Use olive and canola oil for all of your salads, and for cooking as well. Avoid butter, and certainly avoid trans fats. Go for the most healthy type of fats- the monounsaturated ones. In this post about how to naturally increase testosterone levels, you will find more about them.
- Drink a lot of water. Forget all the other drinks that are pushed to you from media and advertising. Nothing can beat water in any way. Drink at least one third of a gallon per day, and make sure you stay hydrated throughout the entire day as well.
- Honey. As for sugar intake, this one is the most natural and has tons of other benefits to offer as well. Take at least one spoon of honey per day, and watch how your sugar cravings will be satisfied, as well as your immune system improving with each day.
Try and make these cornerstone principles in your diet, and look how your health, and by that every aspect of your life will improve a great deal. Things like weight problems, lack of energy, lack of concentration, various medical problems, cosmetic and similar issues will be gone in no time, and guess what? You won’t have to pay a dime to some “expert” so he can lure you into doing some “voodoo”- as I like to call it.
After all, the important thing is to have a constant and sustainable healthy fuel filling your body needs, so making this a habit once and for all resolves the need to make changes to your lifestyle as in order to improve your health on short terms. Eat your ways all the way to healthy lifestyle as well as toned body.
We are interested to know how much of this is already in your daily eating habits, and what can you also recommend for others to pay attention to?