As we are beginning to get into the swing of 2018 a lot of us are making a conscious effort to eat a little better, either by starting a new diet or cutting down on the ‘bad’ foods and treats.
However, often times we are surrounded and exposed to so many supposedly ‘healthy’ food and new trends, it is hard to really know what is good for us!
To help you get the most out of your nutrition and eat well in 2018, we have put together Epochs Top 5 tips to improving your nutrition.
1. Make your food choices based on how you will feel after the action.
– Avoiding and resisting a craving for something sweet is so difficult and so often after we have indulged, we feel guilt and a sense of dissatisfaction. Our advice to is try something different when you get the craving to see if it will suffice and the craving will pass. For instance when craving something sweet, first have yourself a glass or water, we often mistake thirst for hunger.
2. The ‘5 fruit and vegetables a day’ myth!
– We have all been told we should eat 5 fruit and vegetables a day. We so often eat 5 fruit a day thinking this is good for us, however it is not as good as you have been lead to believe. Fruit is high in sugar and eating lots of it actually puts stress on the body and can lead to poor health. Vegetables however have a much lower and more complex sugar content and are good for us. We would recommend 5 vegetables a day and the odd bit of fruit.
3. Organic is better, if it’s organic…
– To be truly organic, the food has to have great soil content. With organic fruit and vegetables being quite expensive, we suggest choosing wisely where to invest. Our recommendation would be to buy your root vegetables (carrots, parsnips etc.) organic as you know they are soil grown and therefore have the most nutrient rich content. Therefore if you are shopping on a budget you can choose to go for a cheaper non organic on the other fruits and vegetables.
4. High fats are good for health.
– We are almost out the era of thinking that fats are bad for us. All the knowledge and research points to the fact that fats are good for the human body and aid energy sustainability and recovery. We would recommend that you incorporate two oils into your diet to get the good fats. Olive oil is ideal as a dressing on salads and meals but is not good when heated, as the fats change and become harmful. Therefore the oil that we would recommend to use with cooking would be coconut oil as it has a greater tolerance to heat.
5. Water –when and how much.
– Water is essential for the human body. We are essentially a vessel that is majority water based and dehydration can cause serious long term health problems that in the short term are not well recognised. We would suggest 2 litres of pure water a day, minimum, to sustain hydration. We would also suggest that this is ingested gradually through sips, over the course of the day. Gulping water can put significant stress on your digestive system.
As always with diet choices be sure to check and know any potential food allergies that you or your family may have. Use this information as a guide and it will improve your health in 2018.
