A Healthy Diet For Athletes: What’s Crucial?
Posted on April 9, 2009
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A healthy diet for athletes will ultimately define just how well the athlete does in their game. Food is your body's fuel and the quality of the fuel that you give it determines how well you actually perform. Give it nothing but chips and soda and you will surely find yourself facing a lack of energy within the first quarter of your game. As an athlete, there are important foods that are a must that will give you energy, build much for you and keep every muscle and organ in your body working at its optimal level. What goes into a healthy diet for athletes, then?
What's In Your Diet?
There are several key aspects of your diet you simply can not miss. There are some things that are simply not going to add anything beneficial to your body. The wrong foods in your diet will promote weight loss and will stop you from building essential muscle that you need. In fact, you also need to monitor the amount of calories that you consider. In a healthy diet for athletes, it becomes imperative to eat smaller meals that are correctly designed for optimal muscle building and to have smaller snacks in between which are also healthy.
One key element that should be in any athlete's diet is that of protein. Protein is ideal because it adds the nutrients to your diet that help to make up muscle. In a healthy diet for athletes, you need protein so that with each of your workouts and with each game that you play you develop larger and stronger muscles. This gives you more strength, more endurance and helps to keep your muscles healthier too by preventing injury. Consume lean protein in the morning, workout, and then remove the carbohydrates from your dinners for optimal muscle building and toning benefits.
Additional Tips
Here are some additional tips for a healthy diet for athletes.
• Carbohydrates are used as fuel, consume them before events.
• Carbohydrates should be a key element in your diet, up to 60 percent in fact.
• Get 15 percent of your diet from protein for muscle building.
• Add a multi vitamin to your diet as most do not get enough nutrients (increase your range of vegetable consumption too.)
A healthy diet for athletes should be a diet that anyone follows because of just how well it provides your body with the nutrients it needs to do what you command it to do. Improve your diet and improve your health as well as your performance.
A Healthy Diet For Teenagers
Posted on April 5, 2009
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As a parent, a healthy diet for teenagers in your home should be one of the first things that you think about. When a child is born, most parents strive to provide the healthiest diet. As they grow to toddlers and school ages, most parents supply children with all of their meals and make sure that each is balanced. But, when children become teenagers, they are often facing many different changes including preparing much of their own meals for themselves. A healthy diet for teenagers is just as important as it was when they were young, but the challenge is convincing them of this.
What Teens Need
One of the first considerations is to understand what teenagers need in terms of their diet. For example, a healthy diet for teenagers should include these things.
• Protein for muscle building that is happening throughout their body, especially boys who are working on their physical appearance. Protein should be lean and shouldn't be fatty meats.
• Vegetables and fruits are essential because they provide many of the important nutrients any person needs. You will want to provide them with unique ways to eat these so that they are eating these foods without fighting you on it!
• Whole grains instead of "white" foods are also important. Replace their white bread with whole wheat bread. Rice and pasta can also easily be changed without much flavor change.
Dieting For Teens
The other side of the coin for a healthy diet for teenagers is the fact that many teens actually strive to lose weight, whether they need to or not. Because nutrition is so important at this stage in a teenager's life, it is imperative that you strive to find the best way to lose weight. For teenagers that do want to lose weight, the best route for them to take is not to remove whole food groups from their diet, but instead to minimize the portions. Here are some tips.
• Reduce the number of calories considered by ten percent.
• Eat less fried and highly fatty foods. Sugars can also be a problematic area and should be minimized.
• Reduce the portion sizes that are consumed. Take a smaller portion of food in and it can't be stored throughout your body.
• Consumer a supplement that provides you with all of the vitamins and minerals that you need. Look for one designed for teenagers.
• Get exercise. Probably the most important part of a health diet for teenagers is their health in terms of exercise.
A healthy diet for teenagers should provide them with the nutrients that they need to power through their very active lives. Strive for health!
Overpowered and Disempowered?
Posted on April 2, 2009
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Reclaim Your Power with a Healthy Diet
If you are like many Americans, you have turned to fast-food and drive-through eating to save time and manage your busy life. As we rush to meet the demands of our contemporary lives, we are overpowered and disempowered by our own choices.
We already know that a healthy diet, combined with exercise, can help prevent numerous illnesses and life-threatening diseases. The evidence is pervasive and continues to mount. Yet in the face of all the evidence, we still choose the convenience of a nutritionally deficient diet over a healthy diet. We function on the threshold of exhaustion and illness, reducing–one day at a time—our chances for a longer, better life of health and strength. It is as if we have lost our power to act in our own best interest. How did we come to believe that it’s all right to give up our choices for health and power when we are busy, tired, and stressed?
It’s time to reclaim our power. We can do it by starting and staying on a healthy diet—for life. Ask the hard questions, make the right choices, and follow proven strategies. You will be surprised how quickly your power returns.
Ask the hard questions
• Do I know the price of not choosing a healthy diet? Am I prepared to pay it?
• Am I comfortable with the examples I am setting for the younger ones in my family? Am I guilty of a do-as-I-say not do-as-I-do diet?
• Can I afford to procrastinate or remain in denial about my poor dietary choices?
• When and how will I begin to change?
Make the right choices
• Abandon the bland, lifeless world of bleached four, refined sugar, and transfats.
• Choose the vibrant color, texture, and variety of nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables.
• Choose fish or lean meats from animals raised in humane and sanitary conditions.
• Choose whole grains—rice, pasta, and breads are getting better and better. You don’t have to sacrifice taste for health.
• Stop buying products with a list of ingredients that read like a science experiment. Artificial flavors, colors, and other additives do not help and may eventually harm you.
Follow proven strategies
• Let the voices of experience inspire and guide you. The strategies for starting and staying on a healthy diet have been around for a long time. Now that health has moved to the forefront of national news, you will find more options than ever to fit your lifestyle and budget.
• Be patient with yourself. Take a few small steps in a healthier direction and don’t let missteps dampen your determination. Starting and maintaining a healthy diet is possible for anyone.
Remember: You have the power to choose what is best for you, the power to improve your health, and the power to strengthen your body and mind. Reclaim your power with a healthy diet and be grateful in advance for the impact it will have on your life.
Healthy Diet Guidelines: Discovering Details, Dodging Deceptions
Posted on March 29, 2009
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The Basics
Healthy diet guidelines are wonderful. There are thousands of them now and, although they may disagree on specifics, they agree on the general basics:
• Use a current and reputable healthy diet pyramid to guide your diet.
• Eat more of what is good for you and less of what can harm you.
If only it were that simple. Healthy diet guidelines involve much more. Here are a few details and deceptions you will need to look out for.
The Details
You may know the healthy-diet pyramid from bottom to top, but some things it cannot tell you. Healthy diet guidelines are not complete without answers to questions like these:
• Are all fruits and vegetables—canned, frozen, fresh—nutritionally the same? If not, what are the differences and how big are the differences?
• Are all fats and oils the same or are some better for my heart, body, and mind than others? Which ones?
• Is whole wheat the same as whole grain? How do I know if I am getting an authentic whole-grain product?
• How can I avoid buying products with transfats?
• What is a healthy amount of daily fiber, protein, sugar, calories?
• Is the sugar in fruit as bad for me as the sugar in cake and cookies?
The answers are out there in abundance. Make sure you find them as you make your way toward improved health.
The Deceptions
The deceptions are not in the food pyramids. The deceptions are in the supermarkets and restaurants. One almost universal deception involves serving size, labels, and our own willingness to accept what seems obvious. The food industry wants you to believe that a single bottle of soda or fruit juice or a small frozen entrée are a single serving.
• One bottle does not mean one serving of 100 calories. More likely, you will be getting double the calories and double the sugar, but who splits a bottle of soda these days?
• A small chicken pot pie does not mean one serving. With a serving size of one cup, it probably means two servings. The nutrition label shows 600 calories and 16 grams of fat, but it’s such a small pie. Guess who might end up eating 1140 calories and 32 grams of fat in one meal, not even counting a beverage.
Those who market packaged foods count on you to read the nutritional labeling and assume the information is for one serving. Gotcha. You can dodge this deception if you multiply the calories, sugar, and other label information by the number of servings in a bottle or package.
The Challenge
With a little diligence, you can get the details and dodge the deceptions. Think of yourself as a cunning detective, always alert to information that will crack a case or, better still, keep you healthy. Plan your diet carefully with healthy diet guidelines. Shop smart. Don’t leave home without a calculator and a magnifying glass—you will need both. Read labels, ask questions, and become particular about your orders in restaurants. Act as if you are in charge of your own health and you will be.
A Healthy Diet For Teenagers
Posted on March 26, 2009
Filed Under Healthy Diet | 1 Comment
As a parent, a healthy diet for teenagers in your home should be one of the first things that you think about. When a child is born, most parents strive to provide the healthiest diet. As they grow to toddlers and school ages, most parents supply children with all of their meals and make sure that each is balanced. But, when children become teenagers, they are often facing many different changes including preparing much of their own meals for themselves. A healthy diet for teenagers is just as important as it was when they were young, but the challenge is convincing them of this.
What Teens Need
One of the first considerations is to understand what teenagers need in terms of their diet. For example, a healthy diet for teenagers should include these things.
• Protein for muscle building that is happening throughout their body, especially boys who are working on their physical appearance. Protein should be lean and shouldn't be fatty meats.
• Vegetables and fruits are essential because they provide many of the important nutrients any person needs. You will want to provide them with unique ways to eat these so that they are eating these foods without fighting you on it!
• Whole grains instead of "white" foods are also important. Replace their white bread with whole wheat bread. Rice and pasta can also easily be changed without much flavor change.
Dieting For Teens
The other side of the coin for a healthy diet for teenagers is the fact that many teens actually strive to lose weight, whether they need to or not. Because nutrition is so important at this stage in a teenager's life, it is imperative that you strive to find the best way to lose weight. For teenagers that do want to lose weight, the best route for them to take is not to remove whole food groups from their diet, but instead to minimize the portions. Here are some tips.
• Reduce the number of calories considered by ten percent.
• Eat less fried and highly fatty foods. Sugars can also be a problematic area and should be minimized.
• Reduce the portion sizes that are consumed. Take a smaller portion of food in and it can't be stored throughout your body.
• Consumer a supplement that provides you with all of the vitamins and minerals that you need. Look for one designed for teenagers.
• Get exercise. Probably the most important part of a health diet for teenagers is their health in terms of exercise.
A healthy diet for teenagers should provide them with the nutrients that they need to power through their very active lives. Strive for health!
Healthy Diet Guidelines: Discovering Details, Dodging Deceptions
Posted on March 22, 2009
Filed Under Healthy Diet | Leave a Comment
The Basics
Healthy diet guidelines are wonderful. There are thousands of them now and, although they may disagree on specifics, they agree on the general basics:
• Use a current and reputable healthy diet pyramid to guide your diet.
• Eat more of what is good for you and less of what can harm you.
If only it were that simple. Healthy diet guidelines involve much more. Here are a few details and deceptions you will need to look out for.
The Details
You may know the healthy-diet pyramid from bottom to top, but some things it cannot tell you. Healthy diet guidelines are not complete without answers to questions like these:
• Are all fruits and vegetables—canned, frozen, fresh—nutritionally the same? If not, what are the differences and how big are the differences?
• Are all fats and oils the same or are some better for my heart, body, and mind than others? Which ones?
• Is whole wheat the same as whole grain? How do I know if I am getting an authentic whole-grain product?
• How can I avoid buying products with transfats?
• What is a healthy amount of daily fiber, protein, sugar, calories?
• Is the sugar in fruit as bad for me as the sugar in cake and cookies?
The answers are out there in abundance. Make sure you find them as you make your way toward improved health.
The Deceptions
The deceptions are not in the food pyramids. The deceptions are in the supermarkets and restaurants. One almost universal deception involves serving size, labels, and our own willingness to accept what seems obvious. The food industry wants you to believe that a single bottle of soda or fruit juice or a small frozen entrée are a single serving.
• One bottle does not mean one serving of 100 calories. More likely, you will be getting double the calories and double the sugar, but who splits a bottle of soda these days?
• A small chicken pot pie does not mean one serving. With a serving size of one cup, it probably means two servings. The nutrition label shows 600 calories and 16 grams of fat, but it’s such a small pie. Guess who might end up eating 1140 calories and 32 grams of fat in one meal, not even counting a beverage.
Those who market packaged foods count on you to read the nutritional labeling and assume the information is for one serving. Gotcha. You can dodge this deception if you multiply the calories, sugar, and other label information by the number of servings in a bottle or package.
The Challenge
With a little diligence, you can get the details and dodge the deceptions. Think of yourself as a cunning detective, always alert to information that will crack a case or, better still, keep you healthy. Plan your diet carefully with healthy diet guidelines. Shop smart. Don’t leave home without a calculator and a magnifying glass—you will need both. Read labels, ask questions, and become particular about your orders in restaurants. Act as if you are in charge of your own health and you will be.
Navigating the Healthy Diet Pyramid
Posted on March 19, 2009
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The Power of the Healthy Diet Pyramid
What should I eat? How much should I eat? With so much new and sometimes conflicting research—and hundreds of food and beverage options in supermarkets, restaurants, and vending machines—few people have time to sort it all out. If you are drowning in data, don’t worry. Look to the healthy diet pyramid for the fundamentals of healthy eating.
Picking a Healthy Diet Pyramid
You can choose from more than one pyramid. The differences among them are minor. Just make sure the healthy diet pyramid that you choose is current. Search the web. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has one. The Mayo Clinic has one. Harvard has several. The list goes on.
Using a Healthy Diet Pyramid
Keep a copy of your healthy diet pyramid on the refrigerator, in your car, at work, or anywhere that you will be making food choices. A healthy diet pyramid can help you picture healthy eating habits. To describe it briefly, the pyramid tells you to indulge guilt-free in some types of food and to closely monitor your intake of other foods.
• Indulge guilt-free. Look at the base or foundation of the healthy-diet pyramid. Most pyramids indicate that you should eat 8-10 servings of vegetables and fruits and 7-8 servings of whole grains. The message: this stuff is very good for you. The more you eat, the healthier you will be. Enjoy these foods without guilt!
• Monitor for moderation. As you move up the healthy diet pyramid, you will notice that the recommended number of daily servings goes down. Dairy, meats, beans, nuts, seeds, oils, and salad dressings—all should be eaten in moderation. Sweets, at the very top, must be monitored even more closely and restricted to less than one a day.
Reading behind the blocks
Is that it? No, there’s more to the healthy-diet pyramid than food groups and number of servings. Both are useless if you don’t have a solid answer to a critical question: how big is a serving? Serving sizes from one healthy diet pyramid read like this:
• Veggies - 1 cup lettuce, ½ cup other veggies
• Fruits - 1 medium fruit or ½ cup fresh, frozen, or canned or ½ cup dried fruit, or ¾ cup fruit juice
• Grains - 1 slice bread, ½ cup dry cereal, ½ cup cooked rice, pasta, or cereal
• Dairy - 1 cup milk or yogurt, 1 ½ oz cheese
• Seafood, meat, poultry - 3 oz. seafood, poultry, pork, beef
• Beans, nuts, seeds - 1/2 cup cooked beans, 1/3 cup nuts, 2 Tbs. seeds
• Oils, salad dressings - 1 tsp. oil or mayo, 1 Tbs. low-fat Mayo or regular salad dressing, 2 Tbs. light salad dressing
You can memorize serving sizes for the various food groups quickly. The greater challenge will be to learn more about deceptive strategies used by the food industry. For now, you can count on your simple beginnings with the healthy diet pyramid to provide a great foundation for learning more.
Definition of a Healthy Diet:
Posted on March 15, 2009
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Power, Information, and Control
Power
The definition of a healthy diet is a diet with the power to 1) reduce your odds of illness, disease, and death and 2) maximize your capacity to stay healthy, energetic, and strong. What kind of diet has this power? The basics are well established now.
• Eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, not from a can and preferably organic. The definition of a healthy diet does not include canned foods. Canned items are improving but most lack fiber, are loaded with salt or sugar, and simply don’t stack up to items in the produce section. Widely used pesticides and unsanitary conditions in the global marketplace make organics the best bet.
• Eat fish or lean meats and go organic if you can afford it. The definition of a healthy diet does not include meat from animals who are raised in spaces too confined to move, pumped full of hormones for growth, fed antibiotics to offset unsanitary conditions, and slaughtered in ways few have the courage to learn about. It all adds up to unhealthy animals and unhealthy food.
• Get adequate fiber. It helps keep your pipes clean on a daily basis and takes toxins right along with it. If you eat five half-cup servings of fruits and vegetables, you are already more fiber-healthy than most Americans. If you cannot get enough fiber from fruits and vegetables, get more from other foods like whole grains. Once you are accustomed to the substance of whole grain foods, you may never return to the lifeless texture of no-fiber bread, cereal, rice, and pasta.
• Cut back or cut out sugar, transfats, artificial flavors, colors, and other additives. They have nothing positive to contribute to your health and eventually may prove quite harmful.
Information
The definition of a healthy diet, customized to your needs, is a diet based on several types of information.
• know your genetic risks and personal medical profile. We are all unique and your genetic predispositions may suggest that you need more of some foods and nutrients than others.
• Learn current guidelines and strategies for eating healthy, as reflected in the new food pyramid. You will find a wealth of both on the web.
• Carefully read and learn from the nutrition labels of all packaged food before tossing them in your grocery cart.
Control
The definition of a healthy diet is not complete without the word control. If you control quality by eating the health-promoting foods already listed, you have accomplished something huge—but you also must control quantity. No matter how much attention you give to quality, weight gain lurks just a mouthful away. Weight gain, even from healthy foods, poses risks. Excessive weight is linked to heart disease, diabetes, some forms of cancer, and other illness. Face it: whether we are talking about possessions or our bodies, we all might feel better if we could just lighten up.
Remember: Power, Information, Control
• Eat power-foods that promote health and prevent disease.
• Stay informed with fundamental facts about diet, nutrition, and health.
• Use portion control to prevent the first steps that eventually lead to obesity.
Healthy Diet Foods: Lights, Color, Texture, Action
Posted on March 11, 2009
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Healthy Diet Foods: Lights, Color, Texture, Action
The Lights
Those who once ate poorly and now eat healthy knows that healthy diet foods are light in number of calories and good for your digestive system. They know that healthy diet foods make them feel lighter and healthier.
Healthier than who? Well, healthier than someone who just ate a five-ounce steak, garlic-butter bread, mashed potatoes, and cheesecake. This is an extreme example, but you get the idea. When you experience the lights, you go beyond the idea and really understand it. Welcome the lights into your life. Think of the lights as foods that are low in:
• Calories
• Fat
• Cholesterol
• Salt
• Sugar
Of course, watch out for low-calorie, low-fat foods with mysterious ingredients and learn which fats are healthier. Also, remember that even with the good fats and items like beans, seeds, and nuts—portion control is essential to reign in the calories.
Color
When you think of healthy diet foods, what do you see? You see rich colors. Not all healthy diet foods are rich in color but most of them are. Consider the vibrant yellows, oranges, reds, and greens of healthy fruits and vegetables. Even whole grain cereals, breads, pastas, and rice look exciting next to their white-flour counterparts. Welcome the colors of healthy diet foods into your life and you will welcome multiple health benefits that are hard to get elsewhere.
Texture
Textures, especially when combined with color, make both our natural surroundings and our homes more interesting, stimulating, and satisfying. The same is true with our food. Someone who has been living on meat, potatoes, and pies most of their lives will not agree. This is understandable. It takes time to retrain senses that have become dull and complacent with habit. However, when you regularly experience the textures of healthy diet foods, you may discover that you like them. You also will discover that you are naturally introducing healthier foods into your diet. You may even begin to miss them when they are not around.
Texture isn’t necessarily healthy, especially when you are talking about the crunch of high-fat chips and pork rinds. The texture in healthy diet foods is different. Think fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains.
Going for the Gold
Perhaps you already eat lots of healthy diet foods. You eat lean meats, healthy oils, whole grains, and plenty of fruits and vegetables. You are ahead of the game and ahead of most Americans—no doubt about that—but you might want to go for the gold. Some fruits and vegetables pack more nutritional punch than others do.
• Leafy greens like Swiss chard, kale, spinach, and collards are packed with vitamin K and carotenoids and offer substantial amounts of calcium, iron, potassium, and vitamin C. Brussels sprouts and broccoli offer similar benefits.
• Deep-orange vegetables like carrots, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, and butternut squash are also rich in carotenoids and offer fair amounts of fiber, potassium, and vitamin C.
All vegetables and fruits can be ranked for their nutritional content. However, for most people, it’s much easier and just as wise to remember that all are generally good for you and you should eat as many as you can.
Action
Bring healthy diet foods into your life. Go for the lights, the color, and the texture. Enjoy the variety and expect improved health.
The Heart-Healthy Diet: Playing the Numbers
Posted on March 10, 2009
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Discounting the genetic factor, heart disease is the result of an unhealthy lifestyle—a poor diet, inactivity, and smoking—combined characteristics that some experts describe as unprecedented in human evolution. Diet is only one piece of the puzzle, but it is a big piece and we can control it.
Diet and heart disease: too much bad stuff, not enough good stuff
Research tells us that all of the following contribute to heart disease or are risk factors for heart disease:
• Eating way more calories than we need, leading to obesity
• Eating large amounts of saturated and transfats and cholesterol
• Eating sodium-loaded foods that raise blood pressure
• Eating too little of the foods with nutrients that protect the heart
Starting a heart-healthy diet: play the numbers
If you want to start a heart-healthy diet, begin by setting goals that are easy for you and your doctor to observe and measure. It’s a numbers game that anyone can play. Let it motivate you. Here are the numbers you want to record and watch from the day you start your diet until you reach your first goal.
• You want these numbers to go down: weight, total cholesterol, LDL (bad cholesterol), triglycerides, blood pressure.
• You want this number to go up: HDL (good cholesterol)
Any medical website, or your doctor, can give you the latest scales for rating your numbers—from high risk to low risk.
The heart of the matter: take it or or leave it
Adopting and adapting to a heart-healthy diet means knowing what to take into your body and what to leave alone. Whether you are eating at home or eating out, use some of the most current and important guidelines.
• For a heart-healthy diet, take these: fruits and vegetables, low-fat dairy products, whole grain breads, cereals, pasta, rice, fish and lean meats. Together, these foods provide a diet that is low in fat and high in soluble fiber. This can translate into lower LDL and lower insulin levels, which cut the risk not only for heart disease but also for diabetes.
• For a heart-healthy diet, leave these alone: red meat, cheese. ice cream, butter, sweets and other items (breads, cereals) that are high in sugar and fats and low in fiber and nutrients. If you cannot leave them alone, cut back on them gradually until you eat them only occasionally or not at all.
Shopping for a heart-healthy diet: play the numbers again
You cannot win the first numbers game for a heart-healthy diet—lowering weight and cholesterol, raising HDL—without playing a second numbers game when you shop. Watch out for any kind of packaged, canned, or bottled items. The more you read the numbers on the labels, the more you will see the vast range in amounts of good stuff (fiber, vitamins, minerals) and bad stuff (sugar, fat/transfat, sodium). Remember that many desserts are not just bad for your waistline. They make war on your heart with loads of trans fats and provide nothing but empty calories at prices most Americans cannot afford. You don’t buy empty boxes in a department store. Why buy empty food?
Ready to get started on a heart-healthy diet?
Calculate your body mass index (the National Institutes of Health website provides a calculator), visit your doctor, record the numbers from your blood work, and you are ready to play. Hedge your bets and play for keeps.
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