Knowing how to live a healthy lifestyle is tough because it seems like the rules are always changing. One minute, we’re told that butter is bad for you and now researchers are saying that some butter is actually better for you than vegetable oils because it has healthier fats in it. Research is always changing and finding out new things about food and this leads to a lot of confusion. Often, people get completely lost and they end up doing things that they think are healthy for them when they actually aren’t. You really need to watch out for this when you’re trying to stay in shape because if you follow bad advice, you could be doing undoing a lot of your hard work without even realizing it. These are some of the most common ‘healthy’ things that aren’t actually healthy.
Cutting Calories
Calories can be a good way to measure your intake of food and you can lose weight by limiting them. However, it’s a very simplified way of looking at food and nutrition and if you only consider calories and nothing else, you’re not going to be healthy. Your body needs all sorts of different nutrients that come from different food sources so, while cutting way back on your calories might help you to lose weight, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re healthy. There is such a thing as hidden hunger, where people appear to be healthy on the surface but they actually have a lot of different vitamin deficiencies. You’re not at risk from your weight but you’re definitely not healthy. If your dieting strategy is to just reduce your calories as much as possible, it’s likely that you’ll be missing key nutritional areas out of your diet. The key is not to just eat less, it’s to replace the unhealthy foods with better alternatives that give your body what it needs.
Calorie counting can be very dangerous because people often get fixated on it. In the more extreme cases, this can lead to eating disorders like anorexia (visit https://tapestrync.com/crafting-anorexia-recovery-meal-plan/ for more information on dealing with the disorder). People can cut their caloric intake back to dangerous levels in order to lose weight and leave their body without a lot of the essential stuff that it needs. Often, that’s a lot more of a health risk than just being a little overweight.
Fruit Juice
Cutting out fizzy drinks is quite a simple way to reduce your weight if you drink a lot of them. They’re packed full of sugar which everybody knows makes you gain weight fast and can lead to diabetes in later life. So, if you just cut them out and have an orange juice instead, you’ll lose weight, right? Actually, you won’t. Fruit juice has about the same amount of sugar in it as a fizzy drink does. It’s slightly better for you because it’s a natural sugar rather than a processed one but you’re still getting way too much. The other issue is that during the juicing process, you lose most of the fibre from the fruit so you’re not getting all of the nutritional value out of that fruit. You’ll still get the vitamin content so it’s better than a fizzy drink, however, don’t think that you can happily drink multiple bottles of fruit juice a day and be healthy. You’re better off having a glass of water and eating the whole fruit instead.
Wholemeal Bread
White bread is something that most people cut out right away and switch to wholemeal instead. But wholemeal bread isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. White bread is made with enriched flour which is stripped of its nutritional value during processing and causes your blood sugar levels to spike, so it’s not good for you. The thing is, a lot of wholemeal bread that you find in the shop is made with enriched flour as well, so it has the same negative health effects. You can find wholemeal bread that is good for you, it’ll say 100 percent whole wheat on the ingredients list, if it doesn’t, it’s not much better than white. So, wholemeal bread can be better for you but you’ve got to read the ingredients properly and make sure you’re getting the right kind (visit https://www.wikihow.com/Tell-if-Bread-Is-100-Percent-Whole-Wheat for a quick guide to help you out).
Sports Drinks
When you’re working out, you need to stay hydrated properly and a lot of people turn to sports drinks instead of plain water to do this. They’re advertised as a great addition to your workout that improves performance so you get better results. What they don’t like to advertise quite so much is the massive amounts of sugar that are in them. Most of the major brands have about 8 teaspoons of sugar in each bottle. That means that if you drink a bottle of sports drink while you’re working out, you might actually take in more calories than you’ve burned off. Water is perfectly fine for hydrating yourself while you work out so there’s no need to use sports drinks in the first place.
Peanut Butter
Peanut butter is a really popular food among people that work out a lot. It contains a lot of protein which is necessary for repairing muscles if you’re exercising regularly. People tend to think that it’s not that bad for you because it’s just blended up peanuts, but most people don’t realize just how much fat is in there. A lot of it is healthy fat but you shouldn’t go overboard. You might think that you can still eat peanut butter all of the time and stay healthy if you just get the reduced fat version but there is a big problem there as well. Fat tastes good, that’s why we like unhealthy food. So, to account for the loss of flavour when the fat is taken out, most companies will just put a load of sugar in there instead. If you are going to eat peanut butter, you need to go for the natural brands that don’t add anything to it and be aware that it still has a high fat content so use it sparingly.
If you thought any of these things were healthy and you’re relying on them to get in shape, you need to stop right away.
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