You likely have heard that balanced nutrition is a critical aspect of a healthy lifestyle. But how important is nutrition? Can you live a healthy life without following a balanced diet? If you don't monitor your nutrition, what risks could you face?
In this article, we'll examine the role nutrition plays in your overall health, the benefit of following a balanced diet, and the best diet to follow to maintain optimal health for years to come.
What Health Benefits Does Good Nutrition Bring?
Your body is much like a finely tuned sports car. It needs the right kind of fuel to run at its optimal level. The fuel of choice for the human body are the nutrients found in food. A good balance of nutrients fuels the body and helps it run efficiently. A poor balance of nutrients can lead to a complete breakdown.
If you eat a balanced diet, full of the right nutrients, you will reap a wealth of benefits:
- It offers vitality and energy.
- It helps bring you to your ideal weight and lets you maintain it.
- It enhances the body's immune response.
- It helps delay the effects of aging.
- It prevents or delays the onset of serious medical conditions and diseases.
- It enhances concentration.
- It protects dental health.
- It wards off fatigue.
What Is ‘Good’ Nutrition?
So many eating plans revolve around the idea of eating more of certain foods or less of them. Eat more protein. Eat fewer carbs. Count calories.
A better approach to a nutritional eating plan is clean eating. It is a fairly simple concept. Instead of trying to figure out the magical balance of calories, carbs, and proteins, focus on the path between the food's source and your dinner plate. It is about eating foods that are unprocessed or only processed a minimal amount.
What counts as processed foods? If the food has any additions to it, like sugar, fat, or salt, it has been processed. If it changes the basic form of the food, like removing the bran from wheat, it has been processed. If the ingredient list reads like a science report, it has been processed. A good reminder is CRAP: carbonated drinks, refined sugars, artificial foods, processed foods.
How To Eat Clean
- Choose unprocessed foods like fresh produce, dried legumes, nuts, and farm-fresh eggs.
- Choose minimally processed foods that preserves the integrity of the ingredients. Brown rice, quinoa, and steel-cut oats are a few examples.
- Go for unprocessed meats. Choose wild caught salmon over farm produced. Select pastured beef over grain-fed.
- Use hormone-free dairy. Most supermarkets offer at least one selection of this kind of milk.
- Cook foods only as much as needed. You want to preserve as much of the nutrients and natural state of the ingredient as possible. Stir-frying and steaming are two methods to try.
Adopting clean eating and a well-balanced nutritional diet will help anyone feel and perform better. It is one of the key lifestyle changes that Matrix Age Management in Amarillo recommends for each of its patients.
If you are ready to transform your health and feel younger than you have in years, schedule a consultation with our team. You can also download our free portion size guide below to make healthier choices with every meal you eat.
