Lowering Your Calorie Intake, Eating Healthier
The foods
of the food pyramid are necessary for our
optimal health. But in what quantities
and which ones are the best? These are questions that
must be tailored to our individual needs. And the
answers will benefit our unique needs. Healthy for me,
is not the same as healthy for you. Everyone’s
nutritional needs are different, and everyone’s level of
calorie consumption is different.
According to the guides published by the USDA, calorie
needs vary from one age group to another, one gender
to another. So how do you determine what your individual
needs are? You can setup a journal for recording your
daily caloric intake for about a month. Make a note
of your weight each day. If you don’t gain any
weight during the course of that month, you’re
eating your recommended calorie level in order to maintain
your weight. Now, take that calorie information, use
the food pyramid and comprise a combination of foods
that will help you achieve this recommended daily intake,
and still be enough to be filling and please the palette.
You now have an individualized healthy eating plan.
If your goal is to cut calorie consumption, you would
be among the latest wave of health conscious individuals
who believe that a low calorie intake keeps us in our
healthiest condition. There have been studies done with
rats that lend credibility to this claim. Lowering the
rat’s body weight by only 10% yielded a longer
life; longer life spans were noted for up to a 30% cut
in daily calorie intake. Anything past that point produced
unhealthy consequences. Now, exactly how this translates
into human life spans, we’re not sure.
Once the importance of a particular food plan is understood
by us, it is a simple as learning our multiplication
tables. We simply memorize the food requirements, and
incorporate it into our daily intake as
needed. As you
take the time to incorporate a healthy food plan, don’t’
forget the necessity of exercise in our daily lives.
In order to keep our bodies healthy and functioning
as expected, we need to keep it fit. This comes through
proper amounts of exercise.
It is at this point in the process
that we seem to lack the direction to finish what the
government started. Maybe we need to incorporate these
techniques into a class taught at school. Maybe this
would give our young people the direction and tools they
need in order to begin such a process, make it a
lifetime habit, and pass it along to their children.
Whatever the formula, your food intake and level of
calorie content, will affect your general overall health
everyday. Overeating can bring on obesity, under eating
can bring about anemia; you need to find that one right
guide for you, and plan, plan, plan.
Our Daily Food Intake Requirements
What do we really need as far as daily food intake?
Are we determining this need based on calorie needs
alone, or do we factor in our vitamin and mineral needs?
If you were to ask the average person, the only consideration
given would be to his or her calorie needs. Vitamins
and minerals are still a fairly new topic for everyone,
and not really considered when determining food intake
needs.
Calorie consumption on the other hand, has obsessed
our nation for the last several years, and is the only
factor we consider when determining our food intake
requirements. This factor will probably not be changing
anytime soon, since most everyone in the medical, health,
and fitness professions equate food requirements with
calorie needs, also.
So, what contributes to our determination of our daily
food intake requirements, from a purely caloric standpoint?
What do we use as our guide to determine these levels?
Most everyone looks at your current body weight, your
physical activity, your age, and your gender. There
are established guidelines for combining each value
from each category, and then being able to configure
your needs. It’s amazing that this much effort
has been given to calorie and food intake alone. Could
you imagine the possibilities if as much time was dedicated
to deterring vitamin and mineral values as well, and
then working with each person to accomplish these levels.
Since obesity is marching aggressively to the front
of the “current epidemics” line, we should
take a moment to address the number one cause of obesity.
It isn’t the improper functioning of the thyroid
gland, or any other system in the body. It is our problem
of overeating. We simply eat too much.
In the area of medical inventions, an arm band has been
created that can tell you your caloric burn, through
every daily activity. Wouldn’t it be wonderful
to take that one step further, and be able to distinguish
caloric intake, caloric burn, how many calories you
actually need, and how many you have left to consume.
If you had such an instrument, persons wearing them
would be more conscious of their food intake, and if
it were equipped with loud sirens if you were to overeat,
do you think anyone would overeat? No. You can bet they
wouldn’t. Who wants to be accused of overeating,
especially if they know that they have reached their
limit?
It’s the regulation of our food intake, the provision
of tools we need to make healthy decisions, and preventive
education that would prohibit many of the health problems
we are experiencing today. A population that is health
conscious and controls their daily food intake is not
an obese population. Nor are they a population with
extreme hypertension, diabetic, and cardiac problems.
All of these problems can be associated with obesity
and nutritional abuse.
As our baby boomers age,
and strive to retain their youthful looks and health,
more and more emphasis will be placed on educating
ourselves about our food intake and what we do and do
not need.
