03/04/2023
What makes a balanced meal? Learn this Saturday monring, Read 👇🏼
✅️ Water- let's not complicate it, you need fluid balance within the body by drinking water before and after each meal.
✅️ Micronutrients - These are the foods that contain the vitamins, minerals, fibre, and even water to aid digestion and fluid balance within the body and cells. Cognitive function and physical performance declines inevitablely, if either are off. This is why each meal throughout the day impacts your ability to achieve as well as your mood, energy, and endurance.
✅️ Protein- The building blocks, amino acids are chained together in varying sequences to build proteins. You need to get essential amino acids in your diet because they can not be synthesized by the body. Which is why you need to consume them from animal products or the right combos of fruits and veggies to make up the amino acids needed to build the proteins our bodies need to function. These proteins are used to create energy, form neurotransmitters, and hormones, as we as build and repair muslce and skin tissue. The more active you are and the intensity of said activity is going to increase the demands of proteins in your meals prior to, and after said activity, will rise.
✅️ Carbs- The often villinated macronutrient, usually by overconsumption or over-restriction. Two extreme sides of the same coin. Let's avoid that and focus on how they are beneficial. Carbs come in multiple forms, from complex to simple, which are broken down and abosorbed by the body at different rates. Complex carbs contain greater nutrient density and fibre which makes them break down slower by the body. Simple carbs break down quicker and therefore are a great source of quick energy, think fruits. You need micronutrients from complex carbs and energy from simple carbs, why not combine a little of each with your meals to get the benefits of both? Think, meeting nutrient needs and energy needs separately with each meal or at the very least, throughout your daily food intake.
The rest will be continued in the comments.