After a year and a half of getting out of shape since college graduation, I’ve decided to try to improve my physique and overall health. During my fitness research, I have encountered several tips that immediately gave me some good results. I thought that I would share them with you in case you are interested in improving your diet and lifestyle.
1. Avoid fruit juices. They have a high sugar to fiber ratio that’ll stress out your pancreas from the spike in blood sugar levels. Also, this will lead to unnecessary levels of fat storage. Eat fruit instead!
2. Drink less alcohol. You are probably already aware of this fact but it is true. Alcoholic beverages are not only calorically dense (hence the beer belly) but are completely void of nutritional value. If you must, go with light beer or red wine.
3. Consume complex carbohydrates and avoid simple ones. White bread and white rice are broken down in your body very quickly and lack all the nutrients whole wheat bread and brown rice have.
4. Eat breakfast. In fact, get into the habit of eating something within the first hour of getting out of bed. It will kick-start your day’s metabolism and provide you with the energy to engage in your daily activities. According to Men’s Health magazine, most overweight people skip breakfast.
5. Drink lots of water. Two-thirds of your body is made up of water so you need a good amount to make sure your body is functioning properly. A good benefit of being well hydrated is that your appetite will be stable, preventing you from eating unnecessarily.
6. Eat more meals throughout the day. This one may be counterintuitive so let me explain. If you only eat one or two meals a day, your metabolism will slow down because you’re body will want to store energy (thus fat) to last you through those long intervals without any food. If you eat five or six meals a day (eating every 3 hours or so), then your metabolism will keep going throughout the day, burning more calories. This is a good way to increase your protein intake if you want to add more muscle.
7. Make sure to eat healthy fats. Your body needs fat to function properly but it is important to keep track of the fat sources. A general rule of thumb: get your fats from plants (e.g. canola, olives, beans) and fish. Avoid the fats from dairy and red meat.
8. Stay away from soda. The diet alternatives are still bad because of the high sugar content. Sodas have high levels of phosphorous which results in calcium loss, increasing the risk of osteoporosis (i.e. bone density loss).
9. Stop drinking coffee. Your body should not need caffeine to get you energized in the morning or at any point during the day. If you feel tired, then that’s your body’s way of telling you to rest. Dumping coffee into your system is not a healthy way to solve the problem. If you are addicted, you may experience withdrawal; try to slowly wean yourself off of it.
10. Eat plenty of plants (fruit and vegetables). If you look at our dental structure, it is more herbivorous than carnivorous; most of our teeth are for cutting and grinding plants. Evolutionarily speaking, our bodies are adapted to sub-Saharan African jungles and the available food sources there. A major problem with our diet these days is that we now eat foods that did not exist or were rare in our prehistoric environment. This is why obesity and diabetes have become so rampant. Sugar was scarce but provided a lot of energy; thus we developed sweetness to detect sugar, which then inclined us to consume more of it. Now, sugar is ubiquitous and many devour it carelessly to their demise.
So there you have it. I have tried to avoid mentioning the obviously unhealthy habits (e.g. smoking tobacco, snorting cocaine, eating fried food, shooting up heroin); if you do any of this already on a regular basis, I highly encourage you to stop.
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