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Optimizing Balanced Health And Fitness

A balanced health and fitness program involves both healthy eating and regular exercise. Make sure your needs are met first by the food you eat. This involves eating good, wholesome food that will help you to perform at your peak effort and keep you there.

Balanced Health And Fitness: Metabolism And Antioxidants

Whenever you exercise, regardless of the activity performed, a process called metabolism takes place in your body. Actually metabolism is happening all the time. It just increases as you exercise. During metabolism free radicals are produced. These free radicals destroy body tissue.

One of the key foods that should be eaten at this time is food that contains a lot of antioxidants. Antioxidants neutralize these free radicals so they can’t do any damage to your body. In addition, if they are already attacking your body tissues, antioxidants put an immediate stop to them.

Balanced Health And Fitness: Fruits And Veggies

Foods that contain plenty of antioxidants are fruits and vegetables. You should eat plenty of these types of foods throughout the day.

A good habit to get into is to eat fruit when you first wake up. It takes a minimal amount of effort for your body to digest fruit. Plus they give you a lot of energy.

Fruit also contains a lot of water. During the hours of sleep, a person can lose up to two pints of water. Normally it isn’t replaced unless you were to wake up periodically and take a couple of drinks of water during the night.

The point I’m trying to make here is that eating fruit the first thing in the morning will help to replenish the amount of water that was lost during the night.

In regards to vegetables, try to eat them raw as much as possible. Cooking vegetables destroys a lot of the antioxidants and nutrients. If you can’t eat them raw, try lightly steaming them.

When they are eaten, chew them thoroughly before swallowing them. This helps to release the nutrients inside them, making them more accessible to the body.

Fruits and vegetables have a lot of vitamins and are basically nutrient dense food. These foods should be a part of your regular fare on a daily basis, regardless if you are exercising or not. These will help keep your health in check.

Balanced Health And Fitness: Whole Grains

Eat plenty of whole grains. These foods will give sustained energy while exercising. They are mostly made up of complex carbohydrates. Therefore, they don’t digest as fast as simple carbohydrates, which create blood sugar spikes.

Balanced Health And Fitness: Protein

Another important food that should be eaten when exercising are protein foods. Depending upon the specific exercise you get involved with, various muscles will break down. Amino acids, which are proteins, are the building blocks of muscle. These help the body to rebuild.

Many people think of eating meat for their protein needs. Meat does indeed have a lot of protein, but it also has a lot of other things you don’t want such as fat and various concentrated toxins. The protein in meat is hard to digest as well.

If you are going to eat meat, try to eat the highest grade of lean cuts. This will help minimize the amount of fat attached. Also, try to eat organic meat. This will help limit the amount of artificial toxins normally found in non-organic meat.

There are other sources of protein besides meat. Some of these sources are eggs, milk, soy milk, tofu, fish, cheese, and beans. If you’re a vegetarian, some of these other sources of protein will be perfect for you.

Balanced Health And Fitness: Hydration

Maintaining a hydrated body during exercise will help keep you moving. I have read that professional athletes can lose between 5 and 8 pounds of body weight in water. People who get dehydrated while exercising will grow tired sooner than those who are adequately hydrated.

Plus drinking enough water during exercise will help keep you from overheating. After exercising, drinking water will help you recover sooner.

A balanced health and fitness program will help keep your body functioning at it’s optimal level. These two individual programs go hand in hand to improve your quality of life beyond what they can do for you separately.



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