Wednesday, August 14, 2013

How to Create and Maintain a Balanced Diet

In today's busy world it is hard to fit everything in to your lifestyle. You are constantly out and about doing this and that and it is tough to eat right and try and stay healthy. Most fast food places are not set up to keep you healthy they are designed to make you fat and get you addicted to salt, which is not your friend. Yes the food tastes good when you eat it but have you checked the sodium and calorie count on a quarter pound burger? Chances are that even if you have you still order them because we are a nation driven by a quick pace and a need to sustain while we are out there on the go.

According to the federal government a healthy diet plan is one that stresses the importance of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products and includes lean meats, poultry, fish, beans, eggs, and nuts while staying low in saturated fats, trans-fats, cholesterol, salt (sodium), and added sugars.

In other words the exact opposite of what is going on in the diets of most Americans these days. This explains why we are such an overweight society. We eat terribly and we exercise even worse.

In addition to getting a balanced diet that has the correct amount and types of calories and fat intake we also need to work in time for some activity in order to burn off the excess. This is hard but it really doesn't take a lot to get it done.

If you can be physically active for at least 30 minutes during most of the weeks days and you can increase the intensity or the amount of time that you are physically active can have even greater health benefits and may be needed to control body weight. About 60 minutes a day may be needed to prevent weight gain. Try taking a lunch to work that you can eat while walking and then take a stroll in the park while having lunch and kill two birds with one stone as it were and you'll be amazed at the results and how quickly they happen.

The guideline here is that if you take in a mere 100 more calories per day than you are able to burn, you are going to gain about a pound per month, which is over ten per year. That can give you an idea as to how important diet and exercise are here in this formula.

Generally speaking the government states that 2000 calories per day is optimum for maintaining weight. You can get a more accurate and personalized figure if you visit their website. But for now let's figure that the average American needs to intake 2000 calories to stay at the weight that they are currently at.

This number really is dependent on things like age, activity level, and whether you're trying to gain, maintain, or lose weight. It is possible to take in everyone of those calories without getting anything healthy and you would deprive yourself of needed minerals and vitamins which would be country productive to health.

What you need to do is find out the exact number of calories that is correct for you and your situation and then you can build a diet plan that is full of foods with rich nutritional values. These are the ones that are full of things like vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other nutrients but lower in calories. These are traditionally going to be things such as the various fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products like yogurt.

Once you have the plan in place and you have decided on the diet that you are going to use to maintain or lose weight it is time to concentrate on the physical activity that you are going to do in order to help keep that working. You certainly can do one without the other but since they go so well hand in hand I don't know why you might consider dieting without exercise or exercise without dieting. When you combine the two the results happen faster than when you try them singularly and you will be more impressed with how you look which will spur you on to staying on track.

The other important thing is that you have to remember that staying healthy is not just a workweek kind of thing or something that you can relegate to the occasional weekend. It is something that you need to make a party of your daily life just like getting up and brushing your teeth in the morning. It needs to be a habit and it needs to be done regularly for it to work and be effective for you.

Learning how to read the nutrition label on the foods you eat will help keep you on track as well. Generally speaking you need to keep saturated fats, trans-fats, cholesterol, and sodium as low as you possibly can to maintain health. You also need to get the right amounts of potassium, fiber, vitamins A and C, calcium, and iron. You can look over the Percent of Daily Value (DV) column and remember that as a rule 5% DV or less is low, 20% DV or more is considered to be high.

As you look it over, figure out the calories per serving as well to see if they might be empty calories or if they are worthwhile. According to the government generally anything over 400 calories per single serving of a particular food is considered to be high in calories.

Once you take all this information and look it over you should be able to assemble a diet and exercise routine that will allow you maintain or lose weight and not feel like you are missing out on anything. Initially if you have been overeating and under exercising by a lot you will feel some trouble, that should fade into a distant memory once you start seeing how great you look as the new you begins to emerge from the shell of the old you.








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