Healthy Eating and Exercise Plan

by | Jan 16, 2017 | Health Habits, Nutrition Support, Uncategorized

Healthy Eating and Exercise Plan

Getting started on healthy eating and exercise plan

Healthy eating is about creating a healthy eating plan that meets all your daily caloric needs (roughly 1,800 – 2,000 calories). Most people assume that eating healthy is all about eating adequate servings from each of the five food groups. This would be true in a general sense but there would be minor nutrition variations from individual to individual. Ditto for exercise plans – we are each unique and so much have an exercise and fitness plan that is customized for us. For these reasons, we recommend you consult three people; your doctor who will check your state of health and approve or disapprove certain types of exercise, an experienced and well known nutritionist who will take your lifestyle into account before creating a customized diet plan for you and you need to talk to a well known and qualified fitness instructor who will take your current physical fitness and lifestyle into account before creating a customized exercise plan for you. If you do not know any nutritionist or fitness instructor, talk to your doctor and ask him or her to recommend a nutritionist and fitness instructor for you. The local gym and aerobics centers too might have some qualified nutritionist and fitness instructors working there.

Why we need to exercise

Eating, working (or keeping yourself busy) and exercising are three parts of the fitness pyramid. Exercising is no longer considered optional – it is a must! Experts have lost too much time in recommending exercise for all. A car that simply sits in your garage for years on end will gather rust and be useless when you need it. So just as the car needs to be used, so too our muscles. You do not want to be caught in a life threatening situation where you need to sprint but find you can barely manage a brisk walk let alone sprint. Keep those muscles in tune honey; you might need them some day. If nothing, just keeping them in tune will keep you trim and fit.

If our daily work does not involve adequate physical activity, we need to add it into our lives. Physical activity ensures our heart, lungs, muscles and other organs work in tandem as one unit.

What is Healthy eating?

Healthy eating is a term that simply means eating the right quantities of foods from the five food groups i.e. vegetables and fruit, cereals, milk, fats, meat and poultry. Healthy eating does not refer to some exotic diet to lose weight. It simply refers to eating the right foods in the right quantities at the correct time. The only foods that are not good for you are the junk foods. Everything else is okay.

What is junk food?

Junk food is any food that either contains unacceptable levels of an unhealthy nutrient or chemical. Thus the French fries or burgers or other deep fried food you eat at McDonald’s or elsewhere contain trans-fats – a particularly nasty nutrient that plays havoc within the organs of your body including your heart. Similarly pastries, candies and sodas are overloaded with empty calories i.e. calories with no nutrients – these get converted to fat and getting rid of fat is far from easy. We all love our Chinese food. Unfortunately, most of it tends to be stir fried with lots of cheap oil i.e. fats.

Summary

Avoid junk food, practice healthy eating and exercise regularly. It’s not about living long – it’s about living a life free of diseases and medical complications due to ruined internal organs clogged with fats. Exercise on the other hand, ensures you are physically fit.