Steps towards correct nutrition
Eating is essential. Without food we do not function. Our knowledge of food has progressed throughout our history from the first meal ever cooked to a laboratory grown beef burger. Along the way we lost touch with what was actually benefiting our bodies and minds and fell into a trap of consuming what tasted good. It seems what tastes good, especially in the western world, is salty fatty foods. The French fry perhaps optimises western taste buds. There was a time where calorific dense foods were essential to our survival, living in caves, hunting for food our bodies would have burnt a great deal of calories. However, the average life of a modern human is a lot different to that of a hunter gatherer with us now living, on the whole, fairly sedentary lives.
Step 1
Every human being, assuming they can read, now has the ability to monitor the number of calories they are putting into their bodies. Quite simply if you are consuming more calories than you burn off you will put on weight. If you are consuming less calories than you burn off you will lose weight. So the first rule to nutrition is to monitor your calories
Step 2.
So you are monitoring your calories and are ensuring that your calorie count meets your daily requirements. Good. Now we need to take another step which is to ensure the food that we are putting into our bodies is the right food. Like any organism on earth we humans require a complex mixture of minerals and nutrients to ensure we are functioning at maximum efficiency, any deficiencies in a particular nutrient can lead to health problems. The best way of ensuring you get the nutrients you need is through a balanced and varied diet. So the second rule to nutrition is having a balanced and varied diet.
Step 3
The word diet seems to have a lot of stigma attached to it. For many it just sounds like a lot of hunger and boring foods, however, this could not be further from the truth. A diet is simply a word for describing the foods that you eat. There are hundreds of different diets from all around the world. Every human being is different therefore it is not possible to say that just because one diet works for person A it will also work for person B. Due to different metabolisms and lifestyles every human has different dietary needs. The best advice for choosing your diet is to carry out research and through trial and error. When you try on a pair of shoes or new shirt you can tell that it looks and feels right or not, the same goes for a diet. After a few weeks eating a particular diet you will notice how it makes you feel and how it affects your performance. Pick one that makes you feel good and perform well.
Changing the fuel we put into our bodies can have life changing affects. What we eat not only affects how we look but also how we feel and perform in everyday tasks. Changing your diet in a world where everything seems to be aimed at luxury and easiness is certainly not easy. But stick at it, don’t give in to temptation and you will feel so much better.
PHN