Is A Healthy Diet That Important?
How important is a healthy diet? There are two phrases used in the fitness industry that describe just how important it is. The first is, "You can't out-exercise a bad diet." You need to eat healthy to get the results you want. The second focuses on the importance of diet in your appearance. That phrase is, "A great body starts in the kitchen." If you put junk into your body, you'll end up with junk.
It's not about dieting but making smarter choices when you eat.
When you diet, you have a strict list of foods you can eat and those you can't. Diets often dictate the food at each meal. Eating healthy isn't like that. It's more about making smarter choices. If you're hungry for a snack, it's smarter to choose a handful of nuts or an apple, rather than a candy bar. Topping a baked potato with Greek yogurt is healthier and lower in calories than topping it with sour cream, so it's a smarter move. Small changes like these make a big difference, but you'll get the most benefit from making big changes, like cutting out food with added sugar and eliminating highly processed food.
It sometimes takes time to make changes.
Cutting out food with added sugar is one of the hardest things to do, but it's also one of the best things you can do for your body. Sugar adds to the potential for a lot of serious conditions, which include high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. It's really hard to give it up, since it's highly addictive. The more you eat, the more sugar you want. It even alters your sense of taste so things don't taste as sweet. That's why once you give up food with added sugar, you'll notice how truly sweet fruit tastes.
You can't out-exercise a bad diet can also refer to calories.
It's far easier to skip eating fries and a soft drink that exercising the extra hours to burn off the calories. Do you exercise longer or just skip the sugar laden soft drink and fries? The answer should be simple for most people, skip the soft drink and fries. Compare the number of calories to healthier options. The number of calories in just an order of large fries is the same as it is in 120 asparagus spears or 240 string beans. It would be tough to eat that much in one setting
- Healthy eating includes what you drink. Soft drinks with sugar contain about 100 calories and those that contain artificial sweeteners may be low in calories, but studies show they may increase belly fat.
- A healthy lifestyle should also include a good night's sleep. Too little sleep increases the amount of hunger hormones and suppresses the hormones that make you feel full.
- A healthy diet includes adequate protein, which is the building block material for muscle tissue. It also should include healthy fat, since you need healthy fat to help burn body fat.
- No matter what your fitness goals, you need a healthy diet to achieve it. You need it to boost your energy when you exercise, help you lose weight and provide the materials to build strong muscles.
For more information, contact us today at Habitat Health and Fitness
If you workout at Habitat Health and Fitness in Lakeland, FL, you already know that we create a program that include stretches to do before a workout. The warm up stretches don't require a lot of effort, but they get the blood circulating to the muscles to prepare for the extra effort required during the workout, get your heart ready for the workout and increase the temperature of the body to make the muscles looser. The stretches use the same muscles you'll be working during your actual workout.
You may have read about all the benefits of having a workout partner but are still unclear whether it's the right move for you. While there are a lot of good reasons to have one, it's not for everyone. There are some reasons not to have one. Here are the pros and cons of a workout partner so you can decide whether having one is right for you.
Not all processed foods are bad. Some of it is healthy. The actual food and how it's processed makes a difference in how it will affect your health. For instance, frozen vegetables are processed. They're washed, which is a way of processing. They normally are frozen close to the field, so there's no transportation. That means they can fully ripen and immediately washed and frozen they're frozen. If they're vegetables, they are also blanched before freezing. The process of freezing them quickly after they ripen means they probably have more nutrients than fresh fruits and vegetables on the store shelf.
You may have heard a lot about the Paleo diet. It's one of the latest crazes, which doesn't necessarily mean it's unhealthy. It simply means it's popular. While we work on fitness at Habitat Health and Fitness in Lakeland, FL, we also emphasize that you have to eat healthy if you want results. You can't workout at the gym and then eat a whole cake topped with a quart of ice cream every day and expect to lose weight or be healthy at all. Let's delve into what exactly a Paleo diet is and how it benefits or detracts from your health.
At Habitat Health and Fitness in Lakeland, Florida, we not only help you become stronger and fitter, we also encourage you to look at other areas that affect your fitness and health. Consuming too much sugar is one of those areas and it's easy to do, especially if you have average eating habits. Some form of sugar seems to be in all types of products that are processed. Eating food with added sugar can have disastrous effects on your body and make it harder to get results at the gym.
Like many of the healthier oils, olive oil is plant based. If it's the highest quality, with the most nutritional benefits, it's extra-virgin olive oil. Just what are the benefits of olive oil? First, its fatty acids are primarily monounsaturated. Those help your cholesterol profile by increasing the good cholesterol and decreasing the LDL or bad cholesterol. It also has about 14% saturated fat and 11% polyunsaturated, in the form of omega-6 and omega3. The more refined olive oil is the less oleic acid it contains. According to many studies, oleic acid reduces inflammation, which is linked to several serious conditions.
Everybody has made resolutions that lasted only a week or two. It's true that most New Year's resolutions have a short shelf life, with the average one kept until February 1, just 32 days after it was established. In fact, 68% of Americans said they quit their resolutions even sooner than that. So how do you make a resolution and stick with it? What are resolutions that really work? Sure, we're past New Year's Day, but that doesn't mean you can't start fresh and make a resolution to make your life better right now.
What's the cost of obesity? Just check the hospitals in Lakeland, Florida. Many of the patients are there either because of obesity or the diseases contributed to by obesity. In fact, the epidemic of obesity has led to increased spending for health issues. It costs more to purchase personal goods if you're obese. Annually, an obese woman pays $4,879 more and a man pays $2,646 more.
While there's a general consensus that after six weeks, exercising can resume. However, just like a workout program, that should be modified for your particular situation. If you've had a normal delivery and have no complications, maybe even exercised throughout the pregnancy, you might start sooner. If you had a C-section or other complications, you may not be ready. Always check with your health care professional for the best time to begin doing strength training after having a baby.