Eating Healthy: Tips, Recipes
Eating a balanced diet can help keep your heart healthy.
Healthy eating is about enjoying foods from a variety of different food groups. This is the fundamental principle of good nutrition. It’s all about balance.
Eating a well balanced meal
Healthy breakfast recipes are a step in the right direction but not if you do it just once a week, You’ve probably heard people say.. eat your breakfast, its the most important meal of the day. Well, they’re right, Breakfast provides your body with energy after an 8 to 10 hour period of fasting.
While you don’t expend many exercise calories while you sleep, your body still uses a lot of energy for it’s metabol1c functions.
Skipping breakfast is like forgetting to put gas in a car when the gauge reads empty.
Although you may not cease to function you may feel terrible and have very little pep. If you enjoy healthy breakfast recipes, it gives you the time to eat those time release energy capsules and complex carbohydrates.
Three meals a day is traditional in America, however many nutritionists believe this is not the best way to eat. They note that three meals a day give people most of their energy in three bursts.
Between these bursts people lack energy to compensate for feeling tired, someone might eat a candy bar or some cookies between meals, as this provides an energy boost but also increases ones calories and over time ones weight.
These nutritionists suggest we become grazers instead of eating three large meals daliy, consume small amounts throughout the day. This may not be possible during the school year, but mid morning and after school snacks are not a bad idea. Make the energy from those healthy breakfast recipes last by avoiding simple sugars and the yo yo effect.
The Yo-Yo Effect
Simple carbohydrates are found in refined foods, such as white flour or granulated sugar, as well as in fructose the sugar found in fruits and honey.
- They also provide energy. Eating too many simple carbohydrates, however, may lead to major problems in the body.
- They cause a rapid rise in blood-sugar levels, which stimulates special cells in the pancreas to secrete large amounts of insulin, which is needed to enable the body to use glucose effectively.
Without healthy breakfast recipes.. too much insulin is secreted which causes a rapid fall in blood glucose levels. This can result in the loss of pep and energy or even faintness.
If you eat a candy bar to give yourself more pep, your blood sugar again skyrockets, your pancreas kicks out more insulin, your blood sugar falls, and, after a short while you crash again.
This yo yo effect is very common in kids today because of the amount of simple carbohydrates they consume in Junk food and soft drinks.
Fat is Needed for Good Health
Good healthy breakfast recipes and fats are very important to our diet.
They are necessary for the production of many hormones in our bodies, and to absorb fat soluble vitamins and build nerve tissue. Because fats contain twice as many calories per gram as carbohydrates, or proteins diets high in fat may lead to slight problems.
Today Americans get about 35 percent of their daily calories from fat. Most nutritionists believe this is too much and kids are not exempt from this fat frenzy.. Junk food is loaded With it.
Try and base your eating pattern on the following healthy eating guidelines to improve your heart health.
More of this for Healthy Eating:
1. Good Fats : Margarine spreads and vegetable oils such as canola, sunflower, soybean, olive and peanut oil for spreading, cooking, frying and baking, salad dressings and mayonnaise.
2. Low fat dairy : Skim, low or reduced fat versions of milk, yogurt, cheese and ice cream.
3. Lean meat : Red or white meat trimmed off fat, chicken/turkey without skin.
4. Take away : Asian take away (e.g. rice and veggies), Pasta take away with vegetable sauces, Sushi, Salad sandwiches.
5. Snacks : Plain, unsalted nuts, air-popped popcorn, fresh or dried fruit, raw veggies.
6. Drinks : Water, unsweetened tea, diluted fruit juice.
Less of this for Healthy Eating:
1. Bad Fats : Butter and dairy blends, coconut oil and palm oil.
2. Full fat dairy : cream, full fat cheese, full fat milk, full fat ice cream.
3. Fatty meats : Sausages, delicatessen meats such as salami, cholesterol rich meats such as offal (e.g. liver, kidney etc).
4. Fatty take away : Pizzas, Hamburgers, Creamy pasta dishes, French fries and fried meat etc.
5. Less healthy snacks : Biscuits, chocolates, cakes, pastries, chips, sugary foods such as lollies etc.
6. Less healthy drinks : Soft drinks, energy drinks.
