Proper nutrition is the key to a healthy life and a slim figure

Proper nutrition is not only about the figure! This is about well-being, health and even emotional state. There are many reasons why people think about their diet at some point. But, as a rule, when problems with excess weight, gastrointestinal tract (GIT), dermatitis, etc. have already matured. BlogPokuponTeam will reveal the simple secrets of proper nutrition and help with discounts on nutritionists , sports and modern body shaping methods for everyone who strives for a healthy lifestyle and an ideal body. Don’t wait until the last minute, start changing your life for the better now!

What is proper nutrition and how is it different from diet

Proper nutrition is a simple rule, without which a healthy lifestyle is impossible. There is a stereotype that it is difficult, tasteless and expensive. Such a kind of debilitating diet. We are in a hurry to dispel this myth and let’s start, perhaps, with the difference between diet and proper nutrition – why these two concepts should never be confused.

A diet is a food intake of chemically selected limited foods to achieve a specific goal: weight loss, muscle gain, cleansing, or detoxification. That is, the diet directly affects our body and health in general, and therefore it should be prescribed by a professional nutritionist, preferably with a medical education. With a discount from Pokupon, the services of such a specialist will cost up to 50% cheaper.

Medical diets for the prevention or treatment of specific diseases have nothing to do with weight loss diets. They should be prescribed by none other than a dietitian. The only disease in which a diet for weight loss is selected is obesity. Consult a gastroenterologist with a discount from Poupon up to 75% , if you have the prerequisites for such a diagnosis, in order to prevent the development of complications.

Unfortunately, often we randomly limit ourselves to food on the advice of friends or after reading about the miraculous weight loss of pop stars on the Internet or magazines. An improperly chosen diet can not only not give a positive result, but also harm the digestive system. And even if you managed to lose a couple of kilograms, after returning to a normal diet, they will most likely return to you in three times.

Proper nutrition (PP) is a culture of eating food that allows you to achieve a balance of nutrients in the body (proteins, fats, carbohydrates and vitamins) for its full functioning. This is about a healthy lifestyle in general, rather than a fleeting weight loss.

With proper nutrition, neither excess weight nor chronic fatigue is terrible, along with various unpleasant diseases of the gastrointestinal tract such as ulcers, gastritis and others. By the way, the cause of some just may be the wrong diet. The main advantages of PP over diets are a long-term result, the absence of contraindications and side effects.

The principles of proper nutrition

The transition to proper nutrition can be quite difficult, because, in fact, it forces you to change your life habits and get out of your comfort zone. But be encouraged by the fact that by following the simple principles of PP, you will be able to balance sleep, rest, exercise, and productivity throughout the day.

With proper nutrition, it is permissible to eat almost everything, but within reasonable limits.

How to eat right

• You need to eat when you feel hungry – this is a signal for the brain to eat. Eating for company or out of boredom is a bad habit, because when you overeat, the body does not absorb excess food.
• Food must be chewed well, because the digestion of some elements begins already in the oral cavity with saliva secreted during chewing. Thorough chewing not only helps the digestive tract absorb all the nutrients from food, but also helps strengthen the teeth and jaw bones.
• Concentrate on food – put aside your smartphone and tablet for important calls, correspondence, and even more entertainment during the meal. Then your appetite will wake up, the brain will signal to the body that it is ready to eat, which contributes to better digestion, and the feeling of satiety comes earlier.
• Eat sitting . Reclining food provokes the development of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), in which food returns from the stomach to the esophagus and lingers there, which causes discomfort, heartburn and pain similar to a heart attack. Eating while standing or walking has no medical contraindications, but is contrary to the basic rules of a healthy diet. Yes, standing, indeed, “will fit more”, only this is completely useless to you.

How to cook healthy food

• Try to eat only freshly prepared food . When you can’t cook yourself, you can order delivery from a restaurant , but the main thing is to develop a habit. Food retains its beneficial properties for the first 5 hours after cooking, then the microelements are modified and can even harm the body. This is especially true for food heated in the microwave.
• Eat natural foods . Natural products contain natural trace elements necessary for our body, which cannot be said about products with artificial chemical additives. Choose the most natural food without primary processing. This means that when choosing between meat and semi-finished products, it is better to stop at meat.
• Forget about frying food . Useful vegetable fats, when heated, turn into toxic and harmful substances for humans. For proper nutrition , cooking, steaming , stewing in a slow cooker or baking in the oven is ideal . If you still want fried, use butter or lard in small quantities.
• Limit heat treatment . Prolonged cooking, especially food that can be eaten raw (such as vegetables), deprives it of most of its useful elements. Anything that can be eaten raw, try to eat it raw.

Proper diet

• Eat at the same time . By sticking to an accurate eating schedule, you will train yourself to get rid of unnecessary snacks and will not overeat, exhausted by a brutal feeling of hunger. Break the daily ration into 4-5 small meals for better digestibility, quick digestion.
• Limit one meal to 4 meals . Long feasts and banquets only harm with their variety of food, because the body does not understand “what to grab onto”. Moreover, there is a risk of overeating in the desire to try everything.
• Breakfast is a must have. The first meal is extremely important for the body, because it allows you to get an energy resource for the day after sleep. Even if you don’t feel very hungry, you should definitely have something to eat. Otherwise, the body, having not received nutrients, goes into accumulation mode and begins to store energy reserves for the future in the form of body fat at each next meal.
• Limit snacking. A bun with coffee in the morning, a cake in the afternoon in honor of a colleague’s birthday, tea with cookies in the evening – and you can forget about a beautiful figure. Snacking is designed to dull the feeling of hunger between main meals. Ideal for fruits, nuts,
• Eat dinner 4 hours before bed . Otherwise, extra carbohydrates before bed force our body to work on them, and not on fats, which, as a rule, should be broken down during a night’s rest. If these four hours without food are painfully unbearable for you, eat a banana, yogurt.

The diet must be balanced

• Minimize the amount of salt and sugar. The norm of salt for the body per day is 5 grams. We get them from meat, fish, vegetables or cereals without additional salting. An excess amount of salts retains water in the body, increasing the load on the kidneys and the cardiovascular system, and prevents those who lose weight from “drying out” the muscles. And the daily norm of sugar is up to 30-50 grams, depending on the degree of your activity throughout the day. If, for example, you have a sedentary job, try to eat most of the smallest threshold of the norm in the morning. So the energy received will have time to be used up during the day, and not be deposited as a fold on the stomach. It is better to give up sweets altogether, replacing them with fructose, which is safe for health, which we get from fruits.
• Eat carbohydrates for breakfast. Cereal cereals (brown and brown rice, buckwheat, whole grain oatmeal, pearl barley are especially useful), cereals, legumes, potatoes, carrots, beets and other carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates for breakfast will fill you with energy for the whole day. Due to their long digestion, you will feel full longer.
• Proteins for dinner are necessary for every person, because with their help cell regeneration takes place (in particular, muscle building after physical exertion ), the production of antibodies and the transportation of nutrients throughout the body. The perfect dinner is meat and greens. By increasing the amount of protein for dinner, you reduce the evening eating of carbohydrates and do not starve before bed. In addition, during sleep, protein helps the body to relax and recover.
• Reduce the amount of fat you eat . It’s not a good idea to completely cut out fats, as they are essential for the body to function properly, but reducing their intake to 10% of your total nutrients per day reduces the risk of heart disease and diabetes. This applies to natural fats, and artificial trans fats, which are found, for example, in store-bought pastries, chips, mayonnaise, french fries or sausage, should be minimized to 1% of the daily diet.
• Try to include foods from all food groups in your daily diet in order to provide the body with all the necessary vitamins and minerals, because some of them are found only in specific foods. For example, vitamin K, necessary for normal blood clotting, can only be obtained from greens and cabbage, and inositol, which is extremely important for the liver, can only be obtained from melon, peanut butter, and some citrus fruits.
• Increase the amount of fiber – the daily norm of fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs – from 400 grams. The benefits of fiber cannot be overestimated, it has a beneficial effect on the intestines, removes toxins from the body, lowers cholesterol levels, maintains normal intestinal microflora and cleanses it of toxins, slows down the absorption of carbohydrates, which contributes to weight loss.
• Legumes, nuts and grains – at least once a day . Before use, it is better to soak them so that phytic acid does not interfere with the entry of all useful substances into the body. In addition to high energy value, these products contain a large amount of vegetable protein, fiber and B vitamins, which are necessary to strengthen immunity and metabolism at the cellular level. Use whole grain flour for baking.
• Switch to dietary meat . It is worth minimizing the use or completely abandoning the so-called “red” meat – pork, beef, lamb. Give preference to less fatty types – turkey, chicken, veal or rabbit meat.
• Supplement your diet with Omega-3 and Omega-6. Their deficiency negatively affects the digestibility of the protein necessary for building muscle mass, and negatively affects the condition of the skin and hair. You can replenish your Omega-3 supply with good marine fish, and Omega-6 with chicken, walnuts, almonds, peanut butter, and soybeans.

Maintain water balance

• Consume at least 1-2 liters of water per day or more . Especially during high physical activity and sports.
• Drink a glass of warm water with lemon half an hour before breakfast . It’s like an “alarm clock” for the stomach, starting the metabolic processes. In addition, lemon juice promotes the breakdown of fats. Not the least important is the quality of water – with the correct chemical composition of minerals and trace elements. Do not risk drinking liquid from the tap, it is better to order good bottled water at a discount of up to 50% from Pokupon , or put an aqua filter , and be healthy!
• Do not drink water during or immediately after a meal . Water washes away saliva, which plays an important role in digestion, and does not linger in the stomach, entering immediately into the intestines, also washing away enzymes important for digestion. The stomach has to produce them again, and the food takes longer to digest.

Eliminate unhealthy foods from your diet

We rarely read the composition of products on supermarket shelves and think about what we eat. Having decided to switch to proper nutrition, the choice of products should be approached more carefully, because some are frankly harmful to the body.

What has no place in the diet of proper nutrition:

• Sweet carbonated water – these drinks contain a large amount of dyes, flavors and sugar.
• Quick snacks and fast food – these are chips, deep-fried dishes, crackers, even healthy vegetable sunflower seeds are usually eaten thoughtlessly, without portion control. Plus, too much salt and chemicals harmful to the body are added to chips and crackers.
• Smoked and salted products. In sausages, sausages, smoked fish and other similar products, even from the best manufacturer, the balance of animal protein, fats and salt is disturbed.
• Mayonnaise, ready-made sauces and any foods high in trans fats like palm oil, margarine, etc. – they contain a large amount of trans fats and preservatives that have an extremely negative effect on the body.
• Flour products made from white wheat flour are a particularly undesirable product in the diet for those who are losing weight.
• Sugar and products containing it  – chocolate, sweets, confectionery.
• Fast food products (semi-finished products).
• Alcoholic drinks are a very toxic product for the body that kills brain cells, and for those who are losing weight, it is also an obstacle on the way to the dream body.

Healthy menu for every day

The transition to proper nutrition involves changing the menu. Nutritionists and doctors use the concept of “food pyramid”. According to this concept, a healthy diet per day should contain:

• 40% complex carbohydrates (cereals, whole grain flour products),
• 35% vegetables and fruits in various forms.
• 25% protein and fats (lean meat, poultry, fish, dairy products).

At the same time, most of the calories consumed should be consumed in the morning. The task of lunch is to strengthen our body and brain, so that at the same time remain full until the dinner. Therefore, it accounts for the most voluminous meal – approximately 35% of the daily diet with the maximum set of nutrients and vitamins. And dinner is desirable to make light and protein.

To make it easier to develop the habit of proper nutrition, make yourself a menu of healthy dishes for the week ahead and keep a food diary. Next, we offer you some examples of a proper nutrition menu for one day, which will allow your body to receive a sufficient amount of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. You can vary them depending on your taste preferences, guided by the tips above.

Option number 1

• Breakfast: oatmeal with medium fat milk 0.5-1% with dried fruits, cereal bread with cheese.
• Snack: apple or grapefruit.
• Lunch: stewed vegetables, baked meat, salad, cereal bread.
• Snack: boiled egg.
• Dinner: cottage cheese 5% fat.

Option number 2

• Breakfast: scrambled eggs with vegetables, cheese, fruit.
• Snack: orange or apple.
• Lunch: porridge, baked fish, salad, cereal bread.
• Snack: nuts.
• Dinner: boiled meat, salad.

Option number 3

• Breakfast: cottage cheese with fruits or nuts.
• Snack: bread with cheese.
• Lunch: vegetable soup with chicken broth, vegetable salad, chicken breast.
• Snack: apple or grapefruit.
• Dinner: boiled fish with vegetables, 1-2.5% yogurt without additives.

Proper nutrition for weight loss

Switching to proper nutrition is the surest way to lose weight. But don’t expect quick results. It is better to contact a professional nutritionist , if you need to urgently, but correctly, put your figure in order for the upcoming beach season and sign up for a gym . Save with Coupon discounts to afford more!

As in the case of diets, the principle of losing weight on proper nutrition is simple – you need to consume fewer calories than you expend. But do not completely give up fats, replace them with healthy ones in accordance with the healthy eating rules described above.

Daily calorie intake:

• For women – 1500-2000 kcal.
• For men – 2600-2800 kcal.

For weight loss, reduce the daily intake by 300-400 kcal. But don’t burden yourself with an endless calculation of the calorie content of each product that you want to eat. It’s easier to make several diets for the day from your favorite and healthy foods once, leaving a little in reserve for unplanned sweets. And if you want to more accurately calculate the calorie rate for yourself personally, this can be done in the following ways:

1) According to the Mifflin-San Geor formula

• For women: 10 x (weight, kg) + 6.25 x (height, cm) – 5 x (age, years) – 161
• For men: 10 x (weight, kg) + 6.25 x (height, cm) – 5 x (age, years) + 5

When playing sports, the resulting figure is multiplied by the coefficient:

• physical activity is minimized * 1.2;
• sports 3 times a week * 1.375;
• sports 5 times a week * 1.462;
• professional training 5 times a week * 1.55;
• regular workout every day *1, 634;
• professional training every day 1*725;
• physical activity every day and work “on the legs” * 1.9.

2) According to the formula of Harris Benedict:

• For women: 655.1 + 9.563 x (weight, kg) + 1.85 x (height, cm) – 4.676 x (age, years).
• For men: 66.5 + 13.75 x (weight, kg) + 5.003 x (height, cm) – 6.775 x (age, years).