How to Eat Healthy With a Balanced Nutrition

The foundation of your diet should be to follow an exercise program and to eat well balanced meals and snacks that are low in fat throughout the day. Whether your goal is to feel better, lose weight, or improve health and performance; fueling your body with the correct quantity of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins at the correct time is a scientific strategy to produce results with the bodies nutritional needs.

Your body needs carbohydrates, protein, and fat to function properly. Eating unprocessed foods, reading nutrition labels and using correct portion sizes will help you to get the accurate number of calories for each of these important nutrients. For the consumption of the healthy food, the purchase of the world’s best probiotic supplements can be done. The functioning of the body will be great and effective that causes no side-effects on the body. The proportion of the nutrition should be effective to get the desired results. The charges of the product should be less when compared to the other products. 

There is a formula to find your recommended daily allowance of calories and the amount of nutrients that your body needs as an athlete. To find your daily caloric range using lean body mass:

• body weight x body fat% = Body fat weight

• Body weight – body fat weight = Lean body weight

• Lean body weight x 16 = lower # in daily caloric range

• Lower # range + 500 = upper caloric range

• Your caloric range is between the upper and lower #.

You may need to fine tune this, as your activities change or you are not getting the results that you want. I would recommend reducing your caloric intake by up to 20% to lose weight. Be aware that eating too few calories can lead to fatigue, poor performance, and in extreme cases eating disorders. I do not recommend that you go below 1200 calories if you are a woman and 1800 calories if you are a man without consent from a physician or doctor.

There are many contradictory opinions about what amount of nutrients you should place in your diet and where you should get them from. The right ratio of carbohydrate, fat, and protein is determined by your ideal daily caloric intake. Most registered dieticians recommend that your calories come from 60-65% carbohydrates, 20 to 25% fat, and 15% protein. To calculate the number of grams for each nutrient:

Total daily caloric intake x desired percentage of each nutrient = number of calories from daily intake

Number of calories from daily intake of nutrient divided by number of calories in one gram of the nutrient = number of grams for each nutrient based on your caloric needs.

Number of calories in one gram:

Fat- 9

Carbohydrates- 4

Protein- 4

Additionally research supports taking in about 0.6 to 0.9 grams of protein per pound of body weight. Protein stimulates glycogen secretion which opposes insulin and prevents it from storing glucose to quickly. Our brain and nervous system are sensitive to the concentration of glucose in the blood. You may require a higher level of protein if you are an untrained individual starting a new program, a growing teenager, or an athletes who strength trains, interval trains or exercises intensely. The lower range of 0.6% is closer to the recommended daily allowance of 15% of your calories. Your body has virtually no protein to spare. If you eat too few carbohydrates you would need to eat a higher level of protein for your body to convert to sugar and use as energy. However, overloading your body with too much protein can damage your kidneys because they work extremely hard to convert it.

Another way to determine carbohydrates needs is to eat 3-5 grams of carbohydrates per pound of body weight. The upper range of the carbohydrate requirements reflects the needs of very active athletes. The lower end is appropriate for an active person that eats 60-65% of their calories from carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are needed in the meal to supply the blood with a quick source of glucose to give you energy. Your bodies preferred energy source is carbohydrates and chief storage for energy is in fat. You can get healthy sources of carbohydrates from whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.

Fats provide about 60% of the bodies energy to perform the bodies work during rest and slightly more during light to moderate exercise. A pound of body fat is worth 3,500 calories. Fat is a major component of your body’s cell membranes and is important to all of your body’s cells. Fat has essential nutrients to slow down digestion so that a steady stream of glucose is received rather than a sudden flow. The vitamins A, D, K and E are soluble in fat. Fat insulates the body and cushions vital organs as well. The low fat approach doesn’t mean the no-fat approach. There are paradoxical healthy fats that contain omega 3 and mono saturated fats that are in foods such as avocados, almonds, flax-seed, soybean oils, walnuts, wheatgerm, and olive oil. These foods decrease the LDL (artery clogger) and increase HDL ( artery cleaner) cholesterol and improve triglyceride levels in your body.

Regardless of where your calories come from they do not automatically turn into muscle. It takes training to do this and furthermore any excess calories will be stored as fat.

Labels can help you judge your caloric intake, nutritional values and serving sizes. The percent daily values are based on 2,000 calories. When reading nutrition labels if something has less than 5% of the daily value it usually means that it is low in the nutrient, mineral or vitamin. If it is over 20% whether it is fat or carbohydrates then that means that it is high. It is best to stay away from saturated fat and trans fat as these types of fat harden in your arteries and damage your health. Many nutritionists recommend that you get no more than 20% of your caloric intake from fat. An aggressive recommendation is to limit your fat intake to about 40-50 grams per day. Daily sodium intake should be kept below 2,000 mg. Although we are finding new things about about nutrition every day experts have not yet put a limit on sugar except to say that you should limit your simple sugars throughout the day.

It is recommended that you eat 3 well rounded meals a day with 2-3 healthy snacks between meals. On average, this would be every 2-4 hours for most people. Eating frequent meals helps to speed your metabolism and gives your brain and nervous system energy.

Three-four hours before you exercise you should eat a healthy source of carbohydrates and about an hour after exercise you should eat about 200- 300 calories consisting of carbohydrates and protein. If you need a pre-exercise snack, before you workout – keep it light. Something like bananas, oatmeal, or apples would be a good choice. Water is very important to drink with every meal and snack throughout the day and as you exercise to stay hydrated.