Change the Way you Feel by Eating Fresh, Healthy Food! 6 Important Facts About Nutrition

A healthy diet is an absolute necessity when it comes to mastering a life of optimal health, happiness & vitality. A healthy diet is one that includes fresh whole foods such as lean non-processed meat, chicken, fish, vegetables, nuts and seeds. It is a diet that has little to no processed, packaged or take-away meals from fast food outlets.

6 Important Facts About Nutrition

I wanted to include this for you because it is so important for your long-term success to understand the underlying facts behind why you are eating the foods that you are eating. Whilst understanding their benefits to your health both physically and psychologically. Supporting healthy brain, immune, and nervous function.

1. Importance of Eating Good Carbs

Not all carbohydrates are unhealthy this is a myth that we have been led to believe. The carbs that are necessary for us to avoid include lollies, soft drinks, energy drinks, white flour-based products, pastas and potatoes. To keep it a little simpler if we look for whole grain products and foods such as fruits and vegetables are what we need that are classed as good carbohydrates.

Just remember that it is the over-processing of foods that robs food of its nutritional content direct from nature. This is what is intended for our bodies to function at optimal health. A great example of this is your lawn, during summer you can water it, and add fertiliser but nothing except a good dose of rain from mother nature has the same miraculous recovery for it. The same works for our bodies.

So, the lowdown on carbs is that our good carbs, unrefined ones, with little processing have a low glycaemic index. Meaning that they supply the body with a steady effective stream of blood sugar. These types of carbs will provide us with more energy that will last us longer throughout the day. If you consume too many, even good carbs these will be stored as fat, however, without them, you will crash. So, they should only take up a quarter of your daily intake for high performance.

So, what about the bad carbs? These refined, over-processed carbohydrates, for many of them, are not even derived from a real food source to start with. They have a high glycaemic index and the fact that it isn’t balanced with fibre. Due to this lack of natural plant-based fiber, the body absorbs these carbohydrates too quickly. Creating an insulin response that spikes your blood sugar levels rapidly. In response to this, the body’s blood sugar levels will drop equally a dramatically. Thus leaving you feeling lethargic and without energy.

Cutting refined and processed carbohydrates out of your diet, dramatically decreases the sugar from your diet. Just from this small change, you will notice renewed energy, as well as your energy levels, being more sustainable, gives you more energy for a longer period of time.

2. Good Carbs to Include Each Day in your Diet

• ½ cup of cooked brown, black, or red rice
• 1 small baked or steamed sweet potato
• 1 small organic baked potato
• 1 cup of quinoa or quinoa flakes
• 1 cup of cooked lentils or beans
• 1 cup of whole wheat pasta
• 1 cup of pearl barley

You can also include food such as bulgur which is added to tabouli. Cook your own popcorn, in a saucepan (not the microwave version).

3. Nutritional Supplements & Macro Nutrients

There are many dietary and nutritional books advocating the need for additional supplements and macronutrients. However, once again these have been heavily processed with chemical changes to the make-up of these foods which virtually strips them of any real nutritional value. If we base our diets on processed foods no matter how healthy they are supposed to be, we will still find ourselves becoming malnourished. There is nothing that will nourish us better and more effectively than a balanced diet of fresh, real food.

4. Why Natural Wholefood Fiber is your Best Friend

The reason fiber is mentioned as being such a necessary nutrient to your daily diet is because it assists us with the digestion of our food, and is an important component in lowering cholesterol. It is vital for healthy bowel function as well as helping us to remain full for longer, therefore, avoiding snacking on unhealthy food choices. Getting enough fiber is as simple as adding more fruit, and vegetables and changing from white processed bread, pasta, and rice to wholegrain.

5. Why you Need Protein

Basically, every function of your cells, organs, muscle, and tissue in your body is controlled by proteins. Proteins are made within the body from small molecules that have come from the foods we eat. None of the proteins required by the body come ready-made. Protein-rich foods are often rated in terms of how “complete” their amino acid profile is, in relation to the needs for essential amino acids. Because we are, biologically, much closer to a cow than a cauliflower (!), the cow’s protein content is much more similar to ours.

Therefore, food that we get from animals and animal products (meat, fish, eggs and dairy) usually score highly on their amino acid profile and are subsequently regarded as “high-quality proteins”. Proteins from these food sources supply all of the essential amino acids. However, vegetables are also perfectly good sources of protein and good amino acid profiles can be obtained from appropriate combinations, such as cereals (eg bread, pasta, rice) combined with legumes (beans, peas, lentils).

This is the basis of many traditional diets, which have evolved to provide the right balance. Where either animal foods or this traditional balance is available, traditional diets have adopted less usual foodstuffs, like seaweed as rich sources of amino acids. Ideally, a diet that includes 75% Vegetable and plant source proteins and say 15–20% animal-source protein. This is not absolutely necessary as many people survive very well with only vegetable and plant-based protein intake.

6. Calcium & Mineral Balance

The recommended daily allowance (RDA) of calcium is 1,000 mg for men and 1,200 mg for women per day but it turns out that it isn’t really as simple as that. Not all calcium that we consume is absorbed and the amount we need to consume daily varies depending on the source of the calcium. Dairy alone is a poor source of calcium as only, about 32–33% of the calcium from dairy products is absorbed. Our body actually needs 300–400 mg of calcium per day, but with dairy, this means we need to consume close to the RDA to get that level with the reduced absorption rate.

Other food sources are more absorbable like bone broth, dark leafy greens, fish with bones, and even carrots. Some foods like spinach, which is often suggested as a good dietary source of calcium, are only 5% absorbable, which makes them great for other nutrients but not a good source of calcium. What happens is that the vitamin C content in many vegetables and fruit is what is needed for the effective absorption of calcium.

Click here to learn — The hidden symptoms behind depression and how to heal from depression “naturally”.

Learn more about the foods to eat and why with easy-to-follow recipes in my eBook: Eating to Live.