Home Page

Nutrition for Fitness and Health

Proper Nutrition Helps Build Strong Bodies

    Three nutrients -- protein, carbohydrate and fat -- provide the energy that your body’s engine needs to function and stay healthy. Your body requires all three as well as vitamins and minerals because they help make that energy available as you need it. Here’s the scoop on these essential nutrients

Protein

    Although several popular diet books maintain that high-protein diets have the power to build muscle and melt away fat, the truth is that most of us already get too much protein in our diets and still have to fight fat. Exercise, not a high-protein diet, building your muscles. You do need some protein to build, repair and maintain your body’s tissues, including the muscles the skin and the internal organs. But you don’t need a lot of it. Protein, no matter what its source, provides four calories per gram. Your body uses some of it for energy if carbohydrates and fat are in short supply, as they are in some high-protein weight-loss diets.

Carbohydrates

     Carbohydrates, which include sugars and starches, are the body’s primary source of fuel. The brain especially depends on carbohydrates to stay sharp, it can’t function for lone without them. But not all diets recognize that basic fact and instead keep carbohydrate intake to a minimum. Although some people may need to avoid high-carb diets, most nutritionists say that a diet that obtains 50 to 60 percent of its calories from carbohydrates will keep you energy level high. All carbohydrates provide four calories per gram. Fiber, which is part of the carbohydrate family, is the exception, it’s calorie-free. Among fiber’s many positive attributes is its ability to keep you feeling full longer, which will help you stick to your diet. Try to get 25 to 35 grams of fiber a day by eating whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes and seeds.

Fat

    Though fat has been the fall guy for America’s growing weight problems, the truth is, fat is only a problem when you eat too much of it. In fact, fat is an absolutely essential component of every cell in your body -- not just fat cells. Your body can’t function without it. All fats provide nine calories per gram -- more than twice as much as proteins or carbohydrates -- making them a double threat if you eat too much. Most experts suggest that your fat intake should be no more than 30 percent of your daily caloric intake and that most of it should come from monounsaturated (olive and canola oils) and polyunsaturated (soybean, safflower, corn and cottonseed oils) fats. However, dietary fat intake recommendations vary substantially from one diet plan to the next, ranging from 10 to 45 percent of total calories.

Vitamins and Minerals

     Vitamins play a significant role in virtually all the important events in the body, including the production of energy, hormones, enzymes, immune cells and neurotransmitters (chemical messengers in the brain). Minerals are just as critical to staying healthy. They are essential for building bonds and teeth, keeping your heart beating regularly, and helping your blood to clot. Though we tend to think of supplements when we talk about getting our daily requirements of vitamins and minerals, food should be our primary source. Eat a balanced diet with lots of fruit and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, and low fat dairy foods, and you’ll get the nutrients you need. That’s one good reason why you should be wary of diets that are very restrictive. You can wind up with a deficiency in one or more vitamins and minerals.

    So, how do you put proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and vitamins and minerals together to crate a healthful diet that will help you lose weight and that you can stick with over the long term? It’s a trick question. You don’t. You eat foods, not nutrients. Too often we focus on the individual nutrients, rather than the wonderfully delicious packages they come in. The possible food combinations are endless --and so is the steady stream of diet books trying to come up with the winning combination. But there is no magic food combination that works for everyone. Rather, there are some healthy eating guidelines to live and diet by.

    Most people are familiar with the Food Guide Pyramid developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The USDA pyramid is considered to be a balanced guide to healthful eating by many nutrition experts. However, the University of California at Los Angeles’ (UCLA Center for Human Nutrition has developed an alternative pyramid that emphasizes plant foods over foods from animal sources. Both pyramids offer a healthful guide to eating, but UCLA’s California Cuisine Food Pyramid emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole-grain cereals, breads, beans and legumes. Add nuts and seeds and you’ve got yourself a winning weight-loss diet.