Being Healthy | Starting with Nutrition Basics

By: Brad Taylor

Implementing a strong nutritional basis for your goals is key, allowing your body to perform to it’s optimum potential. The problem? Many people do not have the knowledge to build an effective yet healthful diet, ensuring that their goals are met and retained. There are many diets out there that warp your metabolism and destroy your body, resulting in a few pounds lost at the cost of your body’s ability to burn more fat in the future. Only after discovering nutrition basics will you experience being healthy while keeping the results.

How to be Healthy: Counting Calories

It is understood that calories will determine whether or not your body has “excess” based upon your metabolic maintenance level, but where the calories are coming from is of utmost importance. 2500 calories from brownies and cupcakes is far different than 2500 calories from a variety of healthful food sources. Plenty of extremely lean individuals never count calories, and they never have to. What’s more important for being healthy is eating the right foods – quality over quantity.

Instead of setting your fixed amount of calories at 2500 and eating whatever you want until that point, most likely not getting enough nutrients in the process, simply eat the right foods. Try and be creative with your diet, tampering with different combinations of great foods. In order to start your new way of eating off the right way, start purchasing and cooking by these guidelines:

Nutrition Basics | Simple Ways to be Healthy

Eat preferably organic – I understand some people can not afford to purchase all organic food, but even consuming just some organic food will help you in being healthy thanks to the added health benefits. While there has been a large-scale proliferation of pseudo nutritional science on the matter, such as the press claiming it’s essentially the same as non-organic food, the studies clearly show eating organic is much healthier than conventional. If it is truly 100% organic then it will not contain harmful ingredients like mercury-containing high fructose corn syrup, or be genetically engineered (GMO). In this day and age, eating organic is one of the first nutrition basics.

Take a multivitamin or wholefood supplement: Since soil is lacking nutrients from modern-day farming practices, foods are undergoing a major depletion of vitamins and minerals. It requires almost 5x as much food today to receive the same nutrition received a few decades ago. Thankfully, multivitamins and whole food supplements are great boosts for being healthy and maintaining daily vitamin requirements. Unfortunately, the recommended daily value as directed by the medical establishment is created with a focus of what one needs minimally simply to survive. A multivitamin or whole food supplement that contains high amounts of the natural forms of the vitamins, instead of synthetic vitamins (made in a lab), are also higher quality.

Diversify your intake – Just like working out, your body responds to change. Varying food intake is one of many ways to be healthy. If your daily intake consists of mainly carbohydrates and you’re not getting the results you’d like, try consuming more protein, or healthful fats. When advising someone on sculpting their diet, it’s always an important factor for me to find out what works for them, because what works for one person may not work for another.

Avoid toxic additives – Another principle resting with the other nutrition basics, avoid food additives such as monosodium glutamate and aspartame, which have been linked to weight gain, brain damage, kidney problems, and increased cancer rates. Even more dangerous is the fact that a lot of food today is genetically modified (GMO food). GMO food could very well be tampering with the very genetic coding of our bodies. Avoiding these toxic additives is extremely important when it comes to being healthy. Buy organic and read labels to avoid these toxic additives.

Being Healthy Automatically | When to Eat, When to Stop Eating, and What to Eat

Your body has an amazing way of telling you when you’re done eating. In fact, knowing when you’re supposed to stop eating is one of the many ways to be healthy which has been used for thousands of years. The trick is to eat slowly, around 20 or so minutes per meal, and your body will tell you when you’re full. Be sure to distinguish whether or not you’re hungry, or you just want something that tastes good. If you’re craving sugar all the time, there could be a nutritional deficiency present. Listening to your body is part of the nutrition basics as well as any other ‘basics’ of life.

Just as your body can tell you when to stop eating, it can also tell you when to eat and what to eat. Of course, you eat when you’re hungry, but the key is to break your meals up into 4-6 meals a day. When you eat 4-6 small meals a day, instead of 3 large ones, you allow your metabolism to properly process the food it is given. Seeing how your body responds to certain foods is the easiest way to find out whether or it is approving what you eat. Listen to your body, and experiment with a bunch of different foods.

Change Your Life, Not Your Diet

This is not a diet, this is a significant change in your life for the better. Being healthy is not a difficult place to reach, but in order to feel better, look better, and think clearer, you need a strong nutritional base. If beginning your quest to be healthy starting from the ground up, it will be an enjoyable process to change your life for the better with food. Stop counting calories and hopping on the latest fad diets, and make a real change through implementing these techniques into your daily life. While there are nutrition basics to know, you should learn how the way think is the cornerstone of reaching your health goals.