By: Dago Alcaraz Schramm
When we talk about healthy eating or a healthy lifestyle, we generally ask a person why they started exercising or joining a nutrition program, and one of the most common answers is because they want to live a healthy lifestyle. healthy and thus gain in health and quality of life. Although wanting to lead this healthy lifestyle is something admirable, not defining it can be a problem, since it does not guide you to a specific goal, this healthy lifestyle phrase can vary from person to person but we can agree that it is a life where the majority of actions and habits are aimed at helping to keep us away from illness and decrepitude. Within these actions and habits it is certain that in the first places we must talk about nutrition, eating healthy will contribute to the vast majority of health markers moving towards that healthy life we are talking about.
HEALTHY NUTRITION
But like a healthy lifestyle, a healthy diet is another one of those positive phrases that, without defining it, leaves many things in the air that can confuse us and lead us to desired destinations or objectives. There is no perfect diet because we are all different in many ways, we are different in size, gender, level of physical activity, body composition, etc.
Although there is no magic formula that works well for everyone, there are general positive principles that will keep the vast majority away from the disease: “Eat minimally processed food, not too much, and make sure most of it is plants.”
Minimally processed food: it is food that has not gone through human processes, grew on earth, had a mother, absence of multiple ingredients and a short expiration date.
Salmon, apple, pepper, onion, tangerine and sweet potato would be good examples, while cookies, ice cream, pasta would be highly processed foods.
Not too much: the correct amount of food for each person has many variants but if you are looking for an elegant solution speaking in the mathematical sense marked by its simplicity and effectiveness, we can use the hand with each macro-nutrient:
- Protein: 1-2 palms per meal.
- Carbohydrates: 1-2 fistfuls per meal.
- Fat: 1-3 thumbs. And if what you want is more simplicity, another option is to eat 3 full meals a day without snacks, filling yourself to what you feel is 80% of your capacity.
- Vegetables and fruits: An easy measure to use is 800 grams of these meals per day, you simply weigh each plant and fruit that you are going to eat until you add this amount before finishing your day, vary as much as you can to receive a complete range of micronutrients.
IN SUMMARY…
To differentiate a body that has a healthy diet and one that does not, facing a disease (like Covid19), I want you to imagine a boat in the ocean that is about to be hit by a storm, this boat is equipped with the best trained team of sailors in the world, the materials used to build it are of the best quality and technology available to man and it has been tested over and over again over the years to prove that all safety systems work and don’t. They have errors. Now imagine a raft that is on one side and is going to be hit by that same storm, it is being sailed by a pirate while drinking an entire bottle of rum, it is built of old wood that is rotting and has not been given any attention. nor maintenance to their security systems.
And how do you want to face the storm?