Nutrition Friday: New Year Healthy Dieting Tips
The New Year is usually a time where people want to try new diets, create new workout routines, and try to lead healthier lives overall. However, the extreme diets that are pushed onto people are usually quite unhealthy. Before you start a new diet, exercise routine, or overall lifestyle change, you should consult your doctor and see what the healthiest fit for your body is. Read more to learn how to avoid unhealthy diet habits and workout routines, so that you can create a better lifestyle without hurting your body.
Calorie Restriction:
This is the most common form of dieting, and can have extremely harmful effects on your body. Of course, from an objective standpoint, there has to be some form of calorie loss in order to lose weight. This can come from a change in diet, calories lost while working out, or a combination of the two. It is extremely important to note, even though this is a way your body can “lose weight,” this is often not the healthiest mindset for changing your body. Restricting your body’s calorie intake can cause an extreme loss in the vital vitamins and nutrients that your body requires to function healthily. Additionally, this calorie restriction can lower your metabolism, and cause harm to your immune system.
This is why we recommend talking to your physician before making any drastic changes to your diet, especially if you are thinking about cutting the amount of food you are consuming. Our further recommendations are to stay away from meal supplements that do not provide you with the proper number of calories, vitamins, or nutrients. Not only can these meal supplements have many unnatural substances in them, but they can harm your body by not providing you with the proper nutrients.
Start Easy When Beginning a New Working Out Routine:
We’ve all started a 2-month workout program, only to stop after a week because our bodies were in too much pain. Why does this happen? This is most likely because we strained our bodies too much. This can also lead to pulled or strained muscles.
As frustrating as it sounds, you need to start slow and be honest with your body. If you want to train for a half marathon, but you have not ran in several months, start with a mile or two. After you know how your body feels after the couple of days, then gradually start increasing your distance.
Give Yourself Time to Rest:
In addition to making sure to start slow, make sure that you give your body the proper resting time. According to Healthline, you should follow these guidelines when it comes to resting your body after workouts:
- If you are doing moderate to heavy cardio, rest every 3-5 days.
- If you are weight training, your rest will rotate depending on which muscles you worked.
- Muscles can take 48-72 hours to recover, so plan which area you want to work out accordingly.
Don’t Cut Out Certain Foods- Carbs are GOOD:
Unless you have been guided by your doctor to cut a certain type of food out of your diet, we do not recommend cutting out entire groups of foods. Why? Because different food groups provide different types of nutrients essential to bodily health. A lack or surplus of a food group can be harmful to the body.
Carbs are a Macronutrient:
Fats, proteins, and carbohydrates are the three groups of Macronutrients that compose most of your diet, and provide your body with the energy it requires daily. You need carbohydrates to fuel your body, and diets that focus on cutting out carbohydrates and replacing them with fats (such as the Keto diet) can lead raised cholesterol, and put you at risk for heart disease.
If you are trying to change the way you are consuming carbohydrates, then try and eat carbs that are less processed. These include grains, such as quinoa, oats, buckwheat, and rice; fruits, such as bananas, oranges, grapefruit, and blueberries; legumes, such as beans and lentils; and starches, such sweet potatoes and potatoes. These are all healthy forms of carbohydrates, and incorporating these into your diet can be a fun way to try new recipes, too.
Healthpointe Can Help:
People often look to the New Year with hope and optimism about changing their lifestyles, and we welcome and encourage your commitment to creating healthy growth. Here at Healthpointe, we want you to become the best and healthiest version of yourself, which is why we’re here to help make sure you foster these changes in a safe way.
Are planning on starting a new exercise routine or diet change? We want to make sure you are physically ready to do so! Schedule a physical with one of Healthpointe’s Clinics, and our doctors will make sure you feel confident about the next change in your health journey. Schedule an appointment here, or call (888) 824-5580 today.