HEALTHY EATING, HEALTHY YOU!

Like most Americans, you’re probably trying to manage your time between work, family and friends. In today’s fast paced society, you may find yourself skipping meals, eating on the run or rushing to put dinner on the table.

Every March, the American Dietetic Association (ADA) sponsors a campaign called National Nutrition Month. It is designed to encourage optimal nutrition and health for all Americans.

The focus of National Nutrition Month is to encourage people to make educated food choices and develop good eating and physical activity habits. The March, 2003 National Nutrition Month campaign is Healthy Eating, Healthy You.

One major nutritional issue in today’s society is counting calories. In the early 1900s, a chemist at Yale University applied the concept of counting calories to objectively measure and compare both the intake of food and output by activity.

The concept of calories was born and “energy balance” has become one of the most popular theories of how people gain, lose, and maintain weight.

But have you ever wondered exactly what a calorie is? A calorie is one unit of energy.

Humans need energy to live and they obtain this energy from food. Just how many calories we need to function properly is different for every person. A person may need to eat 2,000 calories in a day, depending on their height, weight, gender, age, and activity level.

If you take in more or less calories than your body burns, you either gain or lose fat. If you take in 3,500 extra calories, it is stored by your body as one pound of fat.

If you burn 3,500 more calories than you eat, whether by exercising more or eating less, your body converts one pound of its stored fat into energy to make up for the shortage.

For optimal nutrition, carbohydrates and proteins are healthier sources of calories than fats. Additionally, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommend that a maximum of 30 percent of our daily calories come from fat.

Your body also needs vitamins to help the body’s metabolism stay in balance, ensure proper growth and healthy reproduction and for proper functioning of the tissues and organs. Vitamins are organic substances that can be found in the foods we eat. They also help you blood clot when you get a cut and lastly, they produce energy.

To learn more about carbohydrates, proteins,
vitamins and minerals, click here

Like vitamins, minerals are also very important because your body needs them to grow, develop and be healthy. You obtain minerals the same way you get vitamins—from food. The body uses minerals to build stronger bones and transmit nerve impulses. Some minerals are even used to make hormones or maintain a normal heart beat. If you eat a variety of good foods, you’ll get all the vitamins and minerals your body requires.

Medifast products not only help individuals lose weight, they also improve nutritional intake. Medifast meal replacements are individually prepared with only the highest quality ingredients, have less than 200 calories per serving and provide 21 essential vitamins and minerals, as well as other nutrients essential to good health.

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March 2003, Medifast, Healthy Ways