Good evening everyone,
Tonight, I want to share with you a topic I value a lot which actually seems to be in disarray for tons of people: "eating healthily".
I used to associate the word healthy with diet directly implying physical appearances. To me healthy eating was about restrictions, eating light, low-calories, looking physically good... you name it. I realized that eating healthily is way more than that and it actually has no links with all of these. It may seem like a no-brainer for some of you and this is absolutely awesome guys, but to me it wasn't.
Today, I see it differently our body is our personal shelter which will house us for life (if we take care of it). It protects us from diseases, allows us to be functional, to move, to live! Why do we constantly treat it like a simple physical object? This is so not!
I first want to clarify the meaning of eating healthy. What does it really mean? In fact, eating healthy means eating diversified food giving us the nutritional apports our body needs to feel good and to have energy. Plus, it considerably reduces the risks of diseases such as cancers, heart diseases, and diabetes. How do we get those nutrients? By eating the right amount of everything from fruits, and veggies to meat, fish, and eggs to milk and dairy to whole grains offering vitamins, proteins, energy, calcium and furnishing carbs, fiber, mineral, and antioxidants as well.
At this point, you must probably think "Ok, that's cool, I know what eating healthy means, but how can I really eat healthy?". I got you, nowadays with all these marketing claims and food regulations we don't truly know what we're eating. Let's get it cover together.
First thing first, here above are the quantity of food you body needs:
Fruits & veggies: 2 to 3 cups/day
Whole grains: 85 to 110 grams/day (I'll tackle all the benefits of it in one of my next articles, you won't believe it!)
Meat, fish, eggs & beans: 220 grams/day
Milk and dairy: 3 cups/day
Fat & oil: 30 grams/ day and not more than 10% of your daily calories from saturated fat.
As you have just seen, our body needs fat and oil as well but good ones! Why? Simply because it helps our cells grow, provides us with energy and hormones, keeps our body warm, and protects our organs. Do you wanna be a mum? Your baby'll need his mother to be healthy housing him in a strong and warm body.
The second advice, be vigilant to marketing claims! Keep in mind their only goal is to attract your eyes and push you to buy. Marketers are fucking good they create attention-grabbing claims and perfectly know how to play tricks on you. What should we do? Ignore those claims in front of the packaging, most of them are misleading. Yes, that's true, marketers take advantage of the senses of words. For instance, you know that word "light" you constantly see everywhere? It actually means that the product has been processed to diminish the number of kcal and fat BUT they add sugar to offset the lack of fat and kcal, which you don't want. Also the word "multigrain", at first glance it seems to be a nice healthy word right? In reality, the product contains more than 1 grain but all of them are refined which is everything except healthy... Oh and this one "Low-calories"! It's supposed to be third less than the original brand but guess what? When you check this is not! Want more? "Natural", it simply means the producer put ONE single natural product which is basically nothing! Final one? Ok! "Non-added sugar", they put that because the product is naturally high in sugar! It does not mean NO sugar!
The last thing which is important when eating healthy is to be able to read the label properly. Do you know that the ingredients are listed from the highest to the lowest? So if you see that the three first ingredients are sugar, palm oil, and flour, that basically stinks meaning most of your product is made of these 3. Manufacturers are clever but be better! For instance they use different types of sugar (with different names to be sure you think it's not sugar) to reduce the quantity per type and be like the product doesn't contain a lot of it ending up with the sugar ingredients at the bottom of the list. Always double-check the sugar quantity. Plus, if the ingredient list is longer than 3 lines it generally means the product has been processed.
This is it for today, I really hope you enjoyed this article about eating healthy, and that you're now ready to see it differently, and to change your eating habits. Promised, you'll feel so much better and prettier than with any stupid diets.
XX,
Math.
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