HEALTHY DIET

Our ancestors used to say you are what you eat. We all eat food to live. Without food and water life can’t sustain on earth. Our body has the amazing  capability of breaking food into chemical compounds and use them as an energy source to help us get through the day. A person’s daily consumption of food and liquid is termed as his/her diet. A good healthy and balanced diet consist of a balance of nutrients found in food. The nutritional value of food is measured in two ways macro nutrients and micro nutrients.

Macronutrients – The word “macro” means large, and these nutrients are needed in large quantities. The three macronutrients are fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. Each of these nutrients provides calories and helps you carry out essential functions like walking, thinking, converting food into energy, growing, and repairing yourself.

Micronutrients – The word “micro” means small, so you need smaller amounts of micronutrients than of micronutrients. Micronutrients are also essential to your body. Micronutrients are usually called vitamins and minerals.

Diet and dieting are two separate words with different meaning. But often we confuse them as one. Diet as we discussed earlier is the daily measure of food and liquid a person takes or is habitual of taking whereas on the other hand when a person follows a specific diet to lose weight or gain muscle the process of following a specific diet is called dieting.

Diet of a person differs with respective of their place of habitat, their daily routine, their goals e.t.c. Geographically diet differs as a person living in colder regions or higher altitude will have a different diet which produces more heat in the body such a person’s diet will consist more of meats, dry fruits, chillies etc on the other hand person living in cooler regions will have a different diet such a person’s diet will consist more of fruits and salads etc.

A person who needs to lose weight will have a different diet than a person who wants to gain weight. The one who needs to lose weight will have a protein rich diet and someone who needs to gain muscle will have a diet where protein and carbs are almost in the same range.

Some of the best source for proteins are green leafy vegetables, broccoli, cottage cheese, tofu, soya bean , milk, eggs, chicken, turkey e.t.c The most common sources of healthy carbs are grains such as wheat, baajra, oats, quinoa e.t.c

Even two different sports person competing in different sports will have different diets a bodybuilder / powerlifter will never have the same diet as a sprinter or an athlete. Diets also differ according to gender a female can have an estrogen high diet but it’s not suited for the male. And diets also differ as per the medical conditions of a person.

Diets are not just for sportsperson or someone who has some fitness goal, any normal human being can follow a good balanced diet despite of one being into fitness and sports or not. As every human being likes to live a healthy life and that is possible if we do take care of our body. We take care of our outer appearance by going to salon, spa , putting on make up etc but we often neglect to care for our body from the inside nowadays with our present fast life we often zero down to fast food.

A person who eats a lot of junk and processed foods might be chubby or even might look healthy from outside and will also be filling in required daily macro nutrients of carbs, proteins and fat in the diet but in the inside his body will deprived of the micro nutrients such as zinc, vitamins, minerals e.t.c. The primary purpose of eating should not be just to fill one’s stomach as when we eat with a purpose of just filling the stomach we often turn to the quickest easiest way to fill up which 90% of the times is junk food, but our purpose of eating should be to live a healthy life and when one starts thinking like that then the person starts making sensible choice as in what to eat and what to pass.

A good balanced healthy diet is the one which focuses on providing all the nutrients your body needs. The nutrients required by our body are derived through a combination of food groups – fruits and vegetables, cereals and pulses, meat and dairy products and fats and oils. You must be thinking that’s it about a healthy diet that’s all I need to eat and chuck junk and processed food from my diet and I’m healthy ?

Well the answer is not so easy it’s not just about the right thing it’s about eating the right thing at right time in right quantity, Timing and portion sizes also matter a lot. For eg you should have the highest amount of proteins and carbohydrates in your breakfast and your breakfast should be the heaviest, lunch a balance of carbs proteins and fats and following the dinner which should be high in protein and less in fat and carbohydrates. And also the portion size of dinner should be really small.

A healthy breakfast should include eatables from the following categories ( try including at least one option from the following categories )

Dairy segment – milk / cottage cheese / greek yogurt

Vegetable and fruits – go for a rainbow platter ( try including vegetables and fruits of all colors e.g. – strawberry, kiwi, pineapple, banana, pears etc for the vegetable salad try including – broccoli, lettuce, tomato, corn kennels, carrot, cucumber etc)

Meat segment – eggs / chicken / turkey ( try avoiding processed meats as much as possible )

Grains – quinoua / oats / muesli / wheat bread

Nowadays there are so many diets to look into each diet is for a different goal different body type etc. One just needs to google “type of diets” and you will be filled with the name of diets you never heard of. The most famous diets around the world are the Atkins diet, ketogenic diet, the Mediterranean diet etc.

All I will say is don’t get confused with so many diets on the web and with all the confusing macro and micro nutrients. At the end it comes down to  “WHEN YOU EAT IS AS IMPORTANT AS WHAT YOU EAT”