Let's talk about Diet
In nutrition, the diet is the sum of food consumed by a person or other organism. Dietary habits are the habitual decisions an individual or culture makes when choosing what foods to eat. Although humans are omnivores, each culture holds some food preferences and some food taboos. Individual dietary choices may be more or less healthy. Proper nutrition requires the proper ingestion and equally important, the absorption of vitamins, minerals, and fuel in the form of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Dietary habits and choices play a significant role in health and mortality, and can also define cultures and play a role in religion.
Diet is critical. In fact it is as big a factor in fitness as exercise. When most people think of the word diet, they think restricted. Not necessarily true; everyone technically has a diet. With that being said, most people run on autopilot and eat haphazardly.
Our American society can be one of the worst. We actually make it easy to eat poorly, and it has become almost socially accepted. Unfortunately, this is killing us. Unless we start making better decisions, our health, as a society, will continue to degrade.
Let's start with the basics: Many of you reading this have at least heard this once before, but here we go. People should eat six times a day. Now, before you fire off the "I can't do that" statement, read and at least try to understand the concept. Pretty simply: eat three square meals and three healthy snacks. Breakfast, a mid morning snack, lunch, a mid afternoon snack, dinner and an evening snack.
The interesting part of this is that even our government has given us opportunities convenient enough to make this possible. Employers are required to give regularly scheduled breaks, mid-morning, lunch, and afternoon. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof if you work an alternative schedule. The unfortunate part of this is that we make some really unhealthy choices about our time usage. It seems as if though we can be our own worst enemies. I.E. the smoke break...... What are we thinking?
Ok, so enough, stop the madness and give yourself a chance to really do this right. We have just added a B.M.R. CALCULATOR to eliminate some of the guess work. You need to really obtain an accurate estimate of your daily caloric needs. It's probably more than you really think. B.M.R. stands for Basal Metabolic Rate, or simply how much energy you require to function. The first caloric value that comes up on the calculator is a basic existence value. The second value is after one factors in actual activity level.
CALCULATING YOUR CALORIC INTAKE.
Provides an effective way to gain perspective on how many calories you should be consuming.
Calculate Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) Using this B.M.R. Calculator It's Easy And Effective
B.M.R.CALCULATOR
Track your diet with Our Custom Spreadsheet It's Fun And Accurate!
| izone_diet_tracking_spreadsheet_version7.xls |
Below is a Great Resource for Nutritional Information:
