EATING HEALTHY VS. ACHIEVING YOUR GOAL PHYSIQUE
With the thought of achieving a great physique, people instantly think of eating healthy. Yet eating healthy foods doesn’t necessarily mean you're achieving your goal physique. While acquiring your best physique doesn’t exactly mean you're eating healthy. To eat healthy generally means you provide your body with enough nutrients to function efficiently. Your body demands a specific amount of micro-nutrients (vitamins and minerals) and macro-nutrients (fats, proteins, and carbs) in order to work at its best ability. It is your responsibility to fulfill your body’s nutritional requirements in order to maintain good health. Achieving a great physique usually involves losing fat or gaining muscle. In order to lose fat, an individual must be in a calorie deficit where your body burns more calories than the amount of calories you eat and drink. Gaining weight requires one to do the opposite, where in a calorie surplus you consume more calories than the amount your body burns.
Although eating healthy foods has endless benefits, it is just as important to fulfill the requirement of achieving your fitness goal. For example, if your goal is to burn fat and you eat 10,000 calories worth of vegetables each day, you’re eating healthy but are consuming too many calories to accomplish your goal. Therefore, it is ideal to eat towards your goal physique while maintaining good health. Both of these objectives are done by consuming the amount of calories that will allow you to accomplish your fitness goal while acquiring sufficient micro nutrients and macro-nutrients so your body can function efficiently.
WHAT IS A CALORIE?
You hear about calories all the time, but exactly what does it mean? A calorie is a unit that measures energy. The food you eat isn’t measured in weight or size, but by how much energy it contains. When you hear something contains 100 calories, it's a way of describing how much energy your body could get from eating or drinking it1. Just as the amount of gas pumped into a car is measured in gallons, the different food or drinks you consume is measured in calories. The body breaks down food in a unique way, so the amount of calories is a way of knowing how much energy your body will get from anything you eat or drink. ‘Calorie’ is simply a technical word for ‘energy’.
ARE CALORIES BAD FOR YOU?
Calories are not bad for you since your body needs them for energy. Yet eating too many calories and not burning enough of them off through physical activity can lead to weight gain over time. Consuming too little calories over time will not allow your body to function properly and can negatively affect your health. Foods such as lettuce contain very few calories (1 cup of shredded lettuce has less than 10 calories), while foods like peanuts contain a lot of calories (½ cup of peanuts has 427 calories) 1. Knowing how many calories your body needs each day will help you choose which foods are best for you.
HOW DOES YOUR BODY USE CALORIES?
HOW MANY CALORIES DO YOU NEED?
People differ in size and have different metabolisms, so the amount of calories a person should consume will vary depending on several factors. These factors include a person’s height, weight, age, and daily activity level. The bigger a person is, the more calories that person may need, vice versa. Even though two people can have the same body measurements, the amount of calories they need can differ because of the way their body metabolizes what they consume. Calorie calculators are available online, which can be used to determine how many calories your body needs based on the necessary factors. If you eat more calories than your body needs, then the extra calories are converted into fat. If you eat less calories then you need, then your body uses your stored body fat as the energy it needs to function. Understanding the amount of calories you need will help you better control your weight.
MACRO BASICS
Macro-nutrients or macros are carbohydrates, fats, and protein. With the term “macro” meaning very large, these three nutrients are responsible for providing calories (the only other substance that provides calories is alcohol but is not a macro-nutrient since we do not need it for survival). Anything you eat is broken down to these three macro-nutrients. Your body does not recognize the food you eat as “chicken, rice, salad, etc”. Instead, your body sees whatever you consume as a carb, fat, or protein. This is the reason you find these macro-nutrients written in bold letters on the nutrition label of any food or drink product.
WHAT IS A CARB?
A carbohydrate is your body's primary source of energy. There are two types of carbs, simple and complex. A simple carb supplies your body with quick energy, but doesn’t last long. A complex carb takes longer to break down in your body, yet is a long-lasting source of energy. Neither simple nor complex carb is bad for you. They can both be used to your advantage throughout the day. Upon waking up in the morning, chances are you haven’t had anything to eat for the last few hours you’ve been asleep. Therefore it can be a good idea to consume simple carbs for the immediate energy. If you plan on being out of the house for a few hours, complex carbs would be a good choice for its long-lasting steady energy. So incorporating both types of carbs in your diet can allow you to better control your levels of energy throughout the day.
Examples of complex carbs include whole grains such as whole wheat bread, oatmeal, and brown rice along with other foods such as sweet potato and beans. Simple carbs include foods such as fruits, white bread, white rice, white potatoes, vegetables, juice, pop tarts, etc. Sugar is a simple carbohydrate that comes in different forms such as glucose, fructose, lactose, sucrose, etc. Although both simple and complex carbs are eventually broken down to sugar in the body, digestion and absorption are the main differences between the two types.
WHAT IS PROTEIN?
WHAT IS FAT?
