A prerequisite for excellent physical well-being is proper nutrition. There are many areas that promote different systems of healthy eating, for example, vegetarianism, veganism, Paleolithic diet, raw food diet. I cannot be one hundred percent adherent of any system, but the elements of each of them suitable for me have become my nutritional rules.
Starting to eat according to these rules, I experienced dramatic changes in my health. The health food recipes and ideas I write about from time to time are generally based on these principles.
I will briefly tell you about them.
- Do not burden your body with heavy breakfasts: start the day with a glass of warm water with lemon, and after a while, drink vegetable juice or eat a salad of fruits or fresh vegetables, towards the end of the day, eat something heavier – carbohydrates, fish, even desserts. This will seem strange to the adherents of the theory “do not eat after six” and “recharge with porridge and cheesecakes for breakfast”, but there are nutritionists who have proven that it is the path from light to heavy during the day that is right for the human body. I tried this principle on myself and completely agree: a heavy breakfast and lunch only make me sleepy and take away the energy necessary for an active life for digestion. Remember your feelings after a hearty lunch: the only thing you want after, it would seem, refueling, is to sleep, and not to perform a few feats planned earlier.
- Eat as many plants as possible. Better, of course, only plants, but I understand that many are not ready to completely abandon animal food.
- Eat as varied as possible, since each product contains unique vitamins, trace elements and performs its function in the body. Many nutritionists those who talk about the basics of healthy eating, for example, advise to diversify the consumption of vegetables, even by color! Eat vegetables of all colors: yellow, red, green, purple, and others.
- Choose local and seasonal produce.
- If you eat meat from animals and poultry, then try to choose one that is organically produced, without the use of antibiotics and hormones. In the case of fish, choose wild and not grown in an artificial environment (it usually grows on medicines and antibiotics in cramped conditions that do not look like natural ones). Avoid or at least limit your intake of large ocean fish such as tuna, swordfish, marlin, shark, mackerel, and Chilean sea bass. It contains a large amount of mercury – a neurotoxin that provokes memory loss, vision, cardiovascular diseases, etc. Pregnant women are strongly discouraged from consuming products containing mercury, as it causes mental retardation, deafness, blindness and cerebral palsy in children. …
- Do not drink water with meals – it dilutes gastric juices and slows down the digestive process. But during the day, especially in the morning, do not forget that the body needs water.
- Don’t eat fruit after eating – it starts fermenting in your stomach and makes you feel uncomfortable.
- Healthy eating also means knowing how to combine foods correctly. Otherwise, chances are good that the vitamins and minerals they contain will not be absorbed by the body, and worse, the wrong combination will cause you bloating, loss of energy, deterioration of the skin and other negative consequences. In general, this is a separate topic, but in short, the correct combination can be described as follows: non-starchy vegetables are combined with everything (fats, proteins, starchy vegetables and fruits); starchy vegetables are combined with each other and with fats. You need to consume only one type of protein at a time, i.e. proteins do not combine with each other, and do not combine very well with fats (it is possible in small quantities).
- And here is a small list of foods that should be avoided: processed foods, canned food, animal products, especially cow’s milk and dairy products (to the question why to avoid milk – the answer is here), sugar and sweeteners (more about the harm of sugar and sweeteners, read more here), bread , caffeine, as well as those foods that your great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers did not eat))).
These the basics of healthy eating will help you to be vigorous, energetic, look beautiful and young and stay healthy.