Seven Factors of a Balanced Diet

Now first of all before I move on, it is very important that we involve all seven into our diet, to get as much from our nutritional value as we can in our day-to-day life. The first factor I'm going to cover is carbohydrates, in a general diet, it will be about 50% of the plate, it is a big factor. Carbohydrates are where we get our energy from. Now, our energy is important to our performance, so if you want your body to perform but you are giving it no energy, you need to look clearly on where you are getting your energy source from, therefore what carbohydrates you are eating with your diet. When it comes to energy from carbohydrates, there is multiple carbohydrates that you can get them from, for example, potatoes or rice, they are a nice natural source to go to immediately and get a nice source of carbohydrate and these are natural products, therefore you will get as much nutritional value from it, as you can.

Moving on to proteins, now proteins are vital to the body for multiple factors. Meats, they carry protein and protein is the building blocks that the body needs in order to keep growing and keep our body functioning. For example, when we go through daily exercise, our muscles go through a very simple process where we go through very micro-fibre tears, just through general movement and obviously more fibre tears you get is from more intense exercise and what happens is, as they go through the fibre tears, the protein is recruited to the tissues and then the protein fixes the tissue and gets it nice and strong again, that's why protein is very important in a diet of everyone in general public, but also particularly in an athlete's diet, because the more micro-fibre tears that you receive, the more protein the body needs in order to fix it.

Now when it comes to sources of proteins, we have got chicken breast, beef, steaks for example, but if you for example, do not have a... If for example, you are vegan, now vegans have to look elsewhere for a protein source, there is protein sources, for example vegetables like peas, but there is one side effect in order to getting your protein from basically vegetable and not from meats, meats carry a high level of amino acids, amino acids are very very important in your general diet. What amino acids do is they help bind the carbohydrates and the proteins together in the blood to the muscles, so if you are low on amino acids, you are going to be low on the body fixing itself at a quicker rate, so you then are going to have to look at an alternate version, therefore, maybe an additional supplementation to the diet, purely from the amino acid point of view.

Now we are moving on to the next one, we have got what we call fats. Fats do not make you fat, alright. Fats are purely needed for the body for, for example, brain function and it is a very important factor that what you have got to remember is, fats help the body perform, your brain functions from fats, so it is important that they are in your diet. Whenever you put a plate of food together, there should always be a protein source, always be a carbohydrate source and always be a fat source.

Fats are great, but there is one fact you have got to take into place, they are very high in value of calorie to the gram of weight of what you are eating. For example, a gram of protein is four calories, a gram of fats is nine calories per gram, so you are getting over double the calorie value for the same weights of food. So when you are all out there buying, fascinated about how many calories are in a jar of peanut butter, it is purely for fats, because of the fats from the peanuts, that is why it is raising the calorie value of that volume of food. Fat sources, for example, peanuts or a great source is fish, you get the fats from the fish is naturally fatty body composition and also you are going to get the element of the protein from the meats and you are going to get a huge ration of omega-3 from that source of fat as well. So fish, that's a massive one that I would definitely recommend bringing into your diet if you have not so far.

Okay, moving on, vitamins. Vitamins are a huge part of how you feel, what vitamins do is they release goodness into the body and it basically helps with skin, helps with nail development, helps with growth of hair, digestion, helps with growth of the body, it is all about having all those factors together because they all bounce off each other and all help each other. But all I would say to you is, when you look at your plate of food, you want to see the rainbow, you need to see a variation of colours, all the different colours all represent, all different types of vitamins, because it is the vitamin in the product that changed the colour, if they were all the same vitamin, they would all be the same colour. So get yourself a nice bright plate of food.

Moving on from that onto fibres. Fibres are also very, very important for digestion. Vegetables are a huge factor when it comes to fibre, we have got minerals, so minerals are same again, big factor on the body about health and feeling good, but minerals also, they help with growth on the body, so skin production, the body just growing and generally reproducing better product, so cheeses, milks, all that sort of stuff, they will all bring in a nice level of minerals into your body.

The last factor we are going to cover, is water. Water is a huge, huge factor in the body, your body is over two-thirds of water. Keeping your hydration levels high is very important. One of the biggest factors, your body needs water, it is not going to cover you for a week, you must drink it and then replace it and drink it and then replace it. If you have basically started feeling like you need water, that is too late, you need to drink water before you feel like you need it. Your body tells you to drink water when you are dehydrated.

Water will help lots of factors like digestion, it basically lubes all the wall, all the digestive system and makes it a lot softer and easier for the body to pass it through and also helps the body absorb more nutritional value from the product that is passing through the digestive system. Also, when it comes to water, hydration will help you think better, brain function, if you are not hydrated, everything will work at the minimal level, when you are hydrated everything will work at its best performance, so stay hydrated, alright and that will help you with everything in the body that is trying to function.