Eat Healthy Foods to Complement Your Fitness Plan

 

Eating healthy foods is a great way to round out your exercise or fitness program; you’ll have more energy and your body will work more efficiently when you feed it well. And as an added benefit, when you eat healthy, nutritious food you’ll likely find that you’re not as hungry and don’t need to eat as much because you’re not consuming “empty calories”.

Not sure what constitutes healthy food? Follow these suggestions and you’ll be on the right track toward a lifetime of nourishment.

Eat whole, unprocessed foods. A whole food is anything you eat in its natural state, before it’s been processed. For example, a boiled egg or baked potato is a whole food; once you add butter or oil and milk to make mashed potatoes or scrambled eggs you are no longer eating a whole food. The vast majority of cereals and breads are not whole foods because the grains used are processed and stripped of many of their nutrients.

An easy way to increase your consumption of whole foods is to eat more fruits and vegetables. Raw fruits are not only nutritious but they taste good! Skip the canned vegetables or the frozen vegetables with added processed cheese sauce. Veggies can be roasted, grilled or baked; to enhance flavor add onion, garlic, basil or rosemary.

Choose whole grains. Whole (unprocessed) grains are rich in fiber, plant enzymes, vitamins, minerals and healthy fats. When processed, grains lose more than half of their nutrient value.

You should aim to eat 25-30 grams of fiber each day. Foods containing a lot of fiber include whole wheat bread, popcorn, beans and berries.

Drink water! According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 37% of our total daily calories come from sugar-sweetened drinks. This includes energy drinks, coffee drinks, soda, sweet tea and even 100% fruit juice. The calories in sweetened drinks are all sugar, with no nutritional value. Because you’re consuming empty calories they don’t fill you up at all. Eliminating sugar drinks is one of the easiest ways to eat healthy.

The healthiest beverage is water, and you don’t have to drink eight glasses a day. When researchers made that recommendation, they were referring to total water intake, which includes the water present in the foods we eat.

Following these simple tips will go a long way toward healthy eating, a lifestyle change you can maintain forever.