We help fulfill your resolutions: nutrition tips for a healthier life
Do you belong among the people, who set New Year’s resolutions? Or do you just want to change something in your life and have it healthier and more active? Then you can read our article about nutrition tips for a healthier life! You will get to know, what is our diet made of, what do we often miss and what mistakes should we not make. And you will see, that it is not so difficult and unbeatable.
The diet is undoubtedly one of the important parts of a healthy lifestyle. Regular, varied and balanced diet with enough liquids will care for the correct functioning of our body, which needs not only the energy but also high quality nutrients including vitamins and minerals, which fuel many life functions and processes in our organism. And if we have some specific goals, which we want to achieve for example with exercise (which we will mention in some of our next articles), then again the diet will play a key role – no matter if we want to lose weight, gain muscles or just stay in good condition.
Our diet
If we want to eat healthy food, it does not mean, that we will have to eat only vegetables all day long and starve. On the contrary, one of the basic recommendation says: to eat more often and regularly. Do you ask why? Because if the body is often hungry, it will feel endangered by the lack of food and it will adapt to this situation by making stocks. Of course this will be in the form of fat, which is the most favourable for the body as a source of energy.
The body just needs enough energy, which is supplied regularly, to be able to fuel all its processes, and just according to these processes and their number, frequency and level, we can say, how much nutrients (and which) the body needs. Which means that the requirements will vary from one person to another, but the basic principle stays the same for everyone – the intake should be equal to the expenditure and the nutrition should be varied. If you want to lose weight, then the expenditure of energy must be higher, in the case of building muscles there must be higher intake of nutrients on the contrary.
Basic nutrients: carbohydrates, fats and proteins
Our nutrition should contain all three basic macronutrients – carbohydrates, fats and proteins. A significant role plays their common ratio and also their origin and the quality often connected to it.
For example carbohydrates, which are the basic and the quickest source of energy, should be taken for example from oats, whole meal bread, rice, legumes, pasta or vegetable. Because exactly this food contains complex carbohydrates with a low glycemic index, which means, that it will make us full for a longer time and the sugar level in the blood does not have such big differences as in the case of sweets, which are full of simple carbohydrates (sugars) and are provably harmful for us. As well as non-quality fats, which are contained in the confectionery. For the start, you can replace sugar with Irbis sweeteners, which behave differently in the body and do not have almost any calories.
The ratio of eaten fats, which represents the biggest stock of energy, should correspond to the 2:1 ratio in favour of unsaturated fatty acids (mono- and poly unsaturated) versus saturated (particularly animal fats). It is vital not to reduce the intake of fats to zero (not even during diets!), on the contrary, some fats are beneficial for our body and the organism is not able to produce them for itself. Positive are for example plant oils (nuts, seeds, olive oil etc.) or fish fat, particularly from sea fish. But because there is often not enough of them in our diet, we can take advantage of VITAR food supplements containing Omega 3 unsaturated fatty acids (for example MaxiVita Omega 3).
Proteins are basic cornerstones of the body, they create muscles, tissues, organs, enzymes and also other parts of all living organisms. They should form approximately 15-20 % of the overall energy need of a human (carbohydrates should be 50-60 %, fats 20-30 %). During weight loss diets and gaining muscles this ratio is even higher. The food rich in high quality proteins is for example meat from chicken and turkey, fish, lean beef meat, legumes, soya, dairy products, egg whites. We can also recommend concentrated sources of proteins in the form of protein bars (for example MaxiVita Protein bars) or protein cocktails, which are popular with sportsmen, whose body requires an increased intake of proteins.
Fruit and vegetables? Of course!
Probably everyone knows that our diet should contain enough fruit and vegetables. But not many people know how much should we eat every day. If we are talking about ideal situation, then the daily intake should be five portions of vegetable and five portions of fruit. Transfered into amount, we are talking about at least 200-300 g of fruit and vegetables. Why? Because it contains important vitamins and minerals, you do not find there harmful fat, the energy is very low mainly at vegetables and many studies prove, that eating fruit and vegetables has a positive effect on the risk reduction of some diseases.
If you are aware, that you do not eat enough fruit and vegetables every day, then there is a solution even for you – for replenishing important vitamins and minerals we can recommend various forms of food supplements from VITAR, which help lead a healthier life in today’s modern and busy world, when the important substances are often missing in our diets. So let’s always have plenty of them in the new year!