Tested for myself: the sad truth about proper nutrition. What should proper nutrition be like?

Every time more and more new trends are introduced into fashion, which do not bypass the principles of proper nutrition. Vegetarianism, or, as they say now, veganism, drying, drinking diets, therapeutic fasting and other things that often have a negative effect on the human body. And sometimes you can’t keep up with fashion, but it’s quite possible to lose your immunity without effort. However, long before we were born, our ancestors developed one single truth, which remains in fashion to this day - to be healthy and to eat what benefits the body.

There is truth, but there are no clear rules for observing it, boundaries and frameworks within which every person wants to be healthy and keep their body in good shape. There are only transparent rules that are sorted in various sources.

Let's try to dwell on the rules that have already been created earlier, and combine them with those that are not mentioned everywhere, but are no less important.

Principles of healthy eating

Healthy nutrition is a system aimed at enriching the body with all the necessary microelements and vitamins. In order to understand whether this or that food consumption system will be useful for you, it is necessary to take into account the needs of your body, as well as the reaction that follows the use of certain products.

First of all, on the path to proper and healthy nutrition, it is necessary to create a diet, taking into account time periods and the amount of food consumed.

Diet

You should eat at least 5 times a day. That is, the diet should be divided into the following time periods:

These hours are the most optimal for the body to absorb food.

Diet

Having understood the time, let's move on to the main thing - this is the composition of food products.

First breakfast

During the first breakfast, you need to consume foods such as porridge, cereal, eggs. It is necessary to remember that it is at breakfast that a person provides himself with energy for the rest of the day, so breakfast should be rich and hearty.

Lunch

This meal should be a light snack with a fruit or vegetable, but they can be replaced with nuts, but remember that nuts are a high-calorie product and should be consumed in large quantities harmful.

Dinner

At lunch, a person needs to consume protein foods. Soups, broths, and boiled vegetables will fit well into this period of time.

Brunch

Brunch has different time periods, so this word refers to a meal that combines breakfast and lunch (dinner), between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. In this case, we attribute it to food consumption between lunch and dinner, that is, what is in kindergarten called afternoon tea. So, brunch typically involves consuming vegetables or fruits, such as apples. At the same time, do not forget about the liquid, that is clean water without gas, which is a very important component in maintaining balance in the body.

Dinner

Remember that dinner is something light, without weights. The last meal of the day should not cause discomfort or heaviness. Low-fat meats and fish, as well as grain products and boiled vegetables are suitable here.

Minimize your consumption of sweets and eliminate flour products. Forget about semi-finished products. Allow your body and yourself to be happy and healthy.

What should the diet be like?

An indispensable component of health is rational nutrition. It provides a person with energy and substances from which the body is built and which regulate metabolic processes. To know how to eat properly, you need to answer the questions: when to eat? What should the food be like? How to cook it? How to eat?

Some girls, not wanting to gain weight, try to eat less often. So what happens? They usually eat more in two meals than the body can digest, and then some of the undigested food turns into fat. A person not only does not lose weight, but gets even fatter.

If you always eat at the same time, the whole body is promptly prepared for food intake: gastric and intestinal digestive juices are secreted. As a result, food is well digested. But if it’s time for lunch and the person hasn’t eaten, digestive juices will be wasted, and this is harmful. So, the first rule: try to always eat at the same time.

You, of course, have heard that food contains proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, mineral salts, and water. And all of them are very necessary for the body.

Proteins contained in animal products - meat, fish - are called animals. A growing organism especially needs them. Animal proteins are used to build muscles, skin, brain, internal organs. Animal proteins contained in milk and dairy products are very well absorbed by children. That is why milk must be in the diet. Plant proteins are found in peas, beans, and bread.

The body needs to replenish energy costs. And carbohydrates and fats help with this. Carbohydrates are found in cereals and bread, potatoes and other vegetables, and sugar.

In spring and late winter, the body experiences a lack of vitamins.

You, of course, know boxes and jars with vitamins. Some people will buy sweet tablets containing vitamins and eat almost the entire pack at once.

Then suddenly, out of the blue, nausea and headache begin... This is the body letting you know about the increased content of vitamins. Therefore, vitamin preparations can only be taken on the recommendation of a doctor or, at least, with the permission of adults.

The human body contains the most various substances: iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, etc. But most of all there is water in the human body. The brain, for example, contains 80% water, muscles 76%, bones 25%.

This is why humans need mineral salts and water so much. We drink water when we are thirsty, and it enters the body with juices, soup, compote, milk, and other foods. Some contain a lot of water, such as cucumbers and watermelon. There is water in cutlets, bread, and even crackers. Without water, no life processes will occur.

A person can live for weeks without food, but only a few days without water.

Mineral salts are found in the most common food products: In cabbage, apples, milk, fish.

So, the second rule of nutrition: you need to eat a variety of foods. And at the same time try to use the most healthy products: milk, meat and various vegetables: carrots, beets, turnips, rutabaga, cabbage, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers. Try to drink at least 0.5 liters of milk per day. But you shouldn’t get carried away with pasta, cookies, candies and generally flour and sweets. No more than 6-7 tablespoons of sugar per day. In spring you need to eat more rich in vitamins food: sauerkraut, jam, salads from early greens.

It is useful to drink at least a glass of juice a day.

Excessive or insufficient nutrition has a negative effect on the body. With excessive nutrition, body weight increases significantly, which can lead to obesity, and, ultimately, to various diseases cardiovascular system, diabetes, metabolic disorders, etc. With insufficient nutrition, a person sharply loses weight, his health worsens, his performance decreases, and his immunity decreases. That is why it is so important to follow the rules of a rational, balanced and nutritious diet.

This is a strictly limited diet, which consists of a meager set of permitted foods. These products are most often prepared by steaming or baking. The list that can definitely include vegetables, egg whites, oatmeal, whole oatmeal, buckwheat, brown or wild rice, bran and fiber, fish and seafood, turkey. Chicken is already in question - antibiotics and hormones. Cottage cheese and milk too - they cause swelling, and lactose intolerance suddenly bloomed in full bloom. Everything else is impossible - well, or in very small quantities.

There is another product filter - glycemic index. An indicator that relates to carbohydrate foods and shows the strength and speed with which they affect the rise in blood sugar levels and, as a result, insulin release.

What should it be proper nutrition? The calorie content of a healthy diet (hereinafter referred to as PP) varies, as a rule, from 800 to 1500 kcal per day. Particularly brave ones accelerate to 1700 kcal. But if you need to lose weight quickly, then most often it is 1200 kcal per day.

All food is certainly weighed down to the gram and is tested for compliance with KBZHU (calories, proteins, fats, carbohydrates). That is, if a girl who is losing weight decides that she eats within 1200 per day, then, no matter what, she must fit into the limit. At the same time, you also get into the ratio of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. This is where apps like FatSecret or MyFitnessPal come to the rescue, where you can calculate the calorie content of almost any product or dish. With large errors, but PP adherents turn a blind eye to this.

Proteins are absolutely safe, according to PP.

Carbohydrates are stored in fat, so you need to keep an eye on them. Fats are also dangerous, so it is better to exclude them altogether or leave light inclusions in the form of a tablespoon linseed oil in the morning on an empty stomach or fatty fish once a week.

The daily diet is divided into 5-6 meals. You need to eat every 2.5-3 hours. Skipping meals, as connoisseurs and experts assure, will certainly lead to the metabolism (aka metabolism) turning on the stop valve. And everything we eat later will certainly be transformed into fat.

There is also such a thing as a cheat meal, aka an sanctioned glutton. But cheat meals sound trendy. This is when once a week a PP adept allows himself to eat whatever he wants in one meal. In unlimited quantities. At least swallow a cake, even a frying pan of fried potatoes.

Separately, I would like to say about salt, which is completely excluded. This most often leads to an imbalance in the water-salt balance in the body, which will inevitably cause swelling. Those swellings that look like extra pounds fat, with which an even more fierce struggle subsequently begins. Useless, really.

What does cutting calories, eliminating fats and carbohydrates lead to?

If you look at proper nutrition soberly, and not under the influence of euphoria from the kilograms melting on the scales, you will notice that this is, in fact, a low-calorie diet with a very meager set of products. Doctors call this deficiency mode.

There is no question of protein deficiency - the PP diet excludes this.

With a carbohydrate deficiency, a person does not receive the required amount of energy for normal life— not to mention he doesn't have enough fuel to train. But everyone who adheres to PP knows that carbohydrates are stored in fat. Therefore, they calculate to the gram.

With a deficiency of fat, the body turns off the lights on several floors of its house at once: it stops producing hormones, pauses reproductive function, skimps on the quality of skin, lets hair float freely, reduces the speed of brain function, impairs memory - and that’s not all. To put it simply, serious disruptions begin in the body. Only they make themselves known not the next morning, but after a few months - when the “safety margin” runs out.

It turns out this situation: we like what we see in the mirror, but our body is very, very bad from the inside. Only we don’t hear or feel this, because we become extremely dependent on the new body image - thinner, with obvious muscle definition, on which jeans from 2005 can be easily buttoned. And this dependence is many times stronger than the alarming signals that the body sends.

And this is where the head and body rupture occurs. At some point, they stop being friends and each begin to live according to their own program: the head is afraid of everything that does not fit into the framework of the PP, and the body tries to survive in these conditions. It is to survive, I emphasize. It suffers and is depleted, receiving a meager and monotonous set of macro- and micronutrients.

The pleasure of eating

As a person who has experienced this same PP for more than a year, I can say for sure: the feeling of guilt towards oneself in this story happens much more often than the pleasure of food. You eat an apple and frantically calculate in your head whether it fits into your daily caloric intake. You come to an event and when you see the food, you start to get nervous. You lash out at something sweet (because you can’t help but lash out) and then you reproach yourself for it, promising to definitely increase your portion of cardio in your next workout. You are constantly at war with yourself and with your food.

At the same time, it is food that becomes the center of your universe: buy groceries for the week, prepare food for tomorrow or for the whole week, weigh portions, put them in containers, set alarms on your smartphone for each meal, take everything with you, eat the contents of the container, wherever No matter where you are - at work, in the store, on the subway, run into the store again. And so every day.

And this is against our nature. When something goes abnormal, the body resists and declares war. He begins to behave harshly and unpredictably. We understand that everything was started for the sake of the treasured XS. And for him it looks like the mistress is trying to kill him.

Food should be a pleasure just like other human physiological needs! If you perceive food as proteins, fats and carbohydrates in strictly permitted proportions, you are already in trouble.

The moment you catch yourself feeling guilty about what you ate, you can begin to sound the alarm: your head and body have lost mutual understanding. And then either you pull yourself together, or sooner or later a psychotherapist will have to do this.

Eating disorders

This is what doctors call all patterns of eating behavior that go beyond the normal. Here we have orthorexia, anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive overeating. There are many more eating disorders, but these are the most common.

And if anorexia is visible to the naked eye, because a person literally loses weight to the bones, then the same orthorexia or compulsive overeating are problems within the person.

Fortunately, today the image perfect body has changed, and girls no longer chase bones and skin. Therefore, anorexia nervosa is becoming less common and, as a rule, among adolescents.

But mental disorders are gaining momentum, which are not so obvious outwardly, but which pose a huge danger to humans.

A girl who sits on the PP and trains regularly is most likely a perfectionist. She is used to the fact that everything is good and even perfect for her. Everyone admires her success. Therefore, when problems begin in her head, she does not even allow the thought to openly ask for help.

How to admit to everyone that she is weak and needs support? No, she will do everything herself.

Sooner or later, problems with kilograms begin - they grow. The acute desire to control body weight leads to increasingly strict measures. The calorie content of the diet drops even more, the list of allowed foods actually includes only cucumbers and water, and eating breakdowns are becoming more common. Then a deafening feeling of guilt, again food restriction, another breakdown - and so on in a circle.

But it all started harmlessly: weigh your food, count calories, eat every three hours, don’t eat nasty things.

You can try to help yourself by expanding the boundaries of what is permitted and honestly removing strict prohibitions. But awareness is important here. Pretending that you allowed yourself carbohydrates at night is not the same as allowing them and relaxing. Only when the body believes you will it itself begin to reconcile.

Articles by doctors will also help - there are many of them on the Internet.

You can read the book by psychotherapist Svetlana Bronnikova, “Intuitive Eating,” where all eating disorders are sorted out, piece by piece. And recommendations are given for each. You can contact a specialist if you have a good sign. But under no circumstances should you withdraw into yourself and keep the problem inside.

Proper nutrition for women is a healthy diet

Only after going through all the stages of PP, I realized that it has nothing to do with healthy eating. Healthy is intuitive. When you eat, feeling hungry, when you get joy and pleasure from food. When the built-in calculator in your head doesn’t work when you see a plate. When you are not afraid to eat extra fruit, because it will not fit into the KBJU. When you perfectly understand which food is harmful and which is healthy, but at the same time you don’t live only with thoughts about food, containers and PP recipes, and don’t hang out on specialized online stores. You're just living. And you rejoice. And don't blame yourself. And you train for pleasure, and not to work off what you ate.

Think about this if you are on PP.

Instead of P.S.: how not to become a victim of proper nutrition

1. Counting calories and weighing food is, in principle, normal, if not delayed. It's enough to indulge for a month to simply understand what, for example, 100 g of buckwheat or fish looks like. But don’t turn your life into an endless pursuit of KBJU.

2. What does proper nutrition provide? Know that there is still not a single adequate scientific study that would confirm the benefits of fractional nutrition. But doctors unanimously say that frequent snacking means constantly increased insulin and the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

3. Avoid strict prohibitions. A common truth: the more you forbid yourself something, the more painful the breakdown will be later.

4. Without fanaticism! We all understand what it looks like junk food- and we refuse it. We don’t go to extremes; we don’t bake cookies made from amaranth flour with added protein and stevia.

5. We eat according to sensations - when we feel hungry, and not according to the alarm clock.

6. We eat without haste. That is, if we eat, then we eat, and not scroll through Instagram or anything else on a smartphone. This way you will quickly understand that you are full.

7. We don’t make a cult out of food and don’t get hung up on every calorie. The body is still more cunning, and it will take its toll - no matter how much you resist.

8. Trying to come to terms with the fact that healthy body- this is not a fat-free body. This is the most difficult thing in the whole story, but you will have to work with your head and the perception of the reflection in the mirror.

9. Find for yourself a nutrition system on which you can easily survive for several years. In which both your brain and your body will feel pleasant and comfortable.

10. Trust your body. And stop controlling everything.

Tatyana Kurbat writes more about fitness, nutrition, food supplements and everything that a girl who takes care of herself needs in her blog.

Proper nutrition for schoolchildren

We will tell you about the diet, the correct meal schedule.

A proper eating routine is very important for any person, especially for an actively growing organism. By eating healthy food, we strive to give the body everything it needs to thrive. proper development and life activity.

A competent diet adds health and activity to any person. And health and activity are exactly what you want to have at any age.

➠ Try to always add something new to your diet; don’t eat the same foods.

Agree, it’s difficult to ask a girl out on a date if you constantly have a headache or a gloomy mood. This is precisely the state in which people who eat an unbalanced diet usually find themselves. Each meal should provide the body with sufficient and correct proportions of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. On average, consumed proteins, fats and carbohydrates should be in the following proportions, respectively - 1:1:4. If you are actively involved in sports, then the ratio changes slightly - 1: 1: 5. But if, on the contrary, you pay a lot of attention to lessons, science, reading, then the proportion will change in the other direction - 1: 0.8: 3.

Proteins are the most important component found in all tissues of the body, which is why it is the most necessary in our diet. During protein starvation, the body's protective functions are weakened and a person becomes very lethargic, and then, as a result, everything seems boring and uninteresting to him.

Proteins are able to take part in energy metabolism, replacing fats and carbohydrates if they are not supplied to the body in sufficient quantities. But excess proteins are harmful, since their breakdown products become harmful to the body, as they can create extra stress on the liver, kidneys, and worsen the functioning of the nervous and cardiovascular systems.

➠ The balance between proteins of plant and living origin is very important. Animal proteins should be about 55%, since they contribute to better development of the body, containing essential amino acids.

Fats, like proteins, are one of the most important components. They are responsible for part of the energy in the human body, help better absorption of vitamins A, E, K. Lack of fat can affect vision, nervous system, kidneys, skin, lead to weakened immunity. The main foods that contain fats are meat, fish, various oils and dairy products.

Carbohydrates are the body's main source of energy. For this reason, those who play sports are advised to increase the amount of foods containing carbohydrates in their diet. If the body lacks carbohydrates, headaches, drowsiness, weakness appear, memory deteriorates, but their excess can lead to obesity.

Many doctors believe that excess carbohydrates can lead to diseases of the kidneys, liver, gastrointestinal tract and other organs. The body gets carbohydrates from fruits, vegetables and sweets, but they are more useful from vegetables and fruits.

Vitamins play a special role in the development and normal functioning of the body. It’s not for nothing that the word “vita” is translated as life. They are needed for almost every biochemical process, but most importantly, they increase mental and physical performance. Vitamins also increase the body's resistance to diseases and adverse external factors.

➠ Always have something healthy with you that you can snack on, for example, if you get stuck in a traffic jam. It could be an apple, an oatmeal cookie, or drinking yogurt with cereals.

Lack of vitamins in the body causes various diseases: scurvy, osteoporosis, rickets, beriberi, pellagra, etc. It can also lead to bad mood and well-being, deterioration of memory, vision, hearing, decreased performance, insomnia, weakened immunity, diarrhea, headaches, nausea, peeling of the skin of the face and body.

One of the necessary components for the proper functioning of the body are minerals.

Thus, calcium is one of the main components in the structure of bones, and iron, copper and magnesium are involved in the transport of proteins, carbohydrates, and gases. Some minerals are responsible for rapid blood clotting.

➠ Many people believe that they should adhere to a certain diet, but, as practice shows, it can do more harm than good. Therefore, you should not constantly eat the same set of foods or, moreover, consume only one particular product, but in large quantities. Everything is always good in moderation.

The human body is not capable of producing minerals, so they can only be obtained from food.

Lack of sodium, phosphorus, calcium, chlorine, bromine and potassium can lead to nervous system disorders.

If there is not enough iodine in the body, then it is quite possible that the thyroid gland will malfunction, and, as a result, goiter. On the other hand, an excess of the same substances can also lead to disease. The balance between all minerals found in both plant and animal products is very important for the body.

If you are a little hungry, then instead of candy or chips, eat a bag of rye crackers or a banana. This will calm your brain cells, preventing you from eating too much.

So, according to many doctors, the main thing is to eat at approximately equal intervals, and not to eat the entire daily diet in the morning or evening. It is best to sit down at the table 4-5 times a day, while for breakfast you should eat 25% of total number daily norm, for lunch - 35%, for afternoon snack - 15%, and for dinner - 25%.

Also note that food takes about 3 hours to digest, so you should have dinner no later than 3 hours before bedtime. If you can only eat 3 times a day, then increase each meal by 5%. However, regardless of whether you eat 3 or 4 times, you must strive to ensure that breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner fall at the same time every day. This will help avoid digestive problems, which can result in deterioration of mood and decreased activity of the body as a whole.

In order for our body to function correctly, it is necessary to consume quite a lot of liquid per day, about 35 ml per kilogram of your weight, and juice, tea, coffee, lemonade, etc. are not suitable, since they usually contain sugar and other not very useful substances which are only excreted from the body large number liquids along with beneficial microelements.

So, you need to use filtered or mineral water without gas. Melt water is considered to be the healthiest (you can freeze a bottle of water in the freezer and then let it melt completely).

Try to limit your consumption of tea and coffee to the first half of the day, as drinking tea in the evening can cause anxiety, restlessness and even insomnia.

However, you should not drink water during meals or immediately after, as it greatly complicates the digestion process. It is better to drink a glass of water immediately after waking up (about 30 minutes before eating), because by the time you get ready to have breakfast, the water will already have time to disperse throughout the body.

It is best to quench strong thirst with mineral or salted water, also in hot weather You should not eat a lot of smoked, salted and fried foods, because these foods cause thirst, and you can drink a lot of excess liquid. And an excess of water is also harmful - it has a bad effect on the functioning of the kidneys and genitourinary system. It is very harmful to drink water before or during physical activity and hard physical work.

You also need to remember that many products already contain water and you should not drink them immediately after eating them.

It is best to drink a glass of water about an hour after eating.

Each product contains a certain amount of calories; consumption should depend on your chosen rhythm of life. So, if you lead an active lifestyle, then, accordingly, you spend more energy, and therefore food must replenish all these costs in full. If you eat rather sparingly, then the lack of foods that supply energy to the body can lead to a general weakening of the body. After all, the body cannot consume less energy than it needs, so it will begin to make up for the lack of energy at the expense of its own internal resources. Such a regime will soon lead to lethargy, apathy, and illness. If, on the contrary, you eat a large amount of high-calorie food and at the same time spend very little energy, then the other extreme appears - obesity and other diseases that develop on this basis. So any extreme is very harmful, especially for those who are going to live an active life: dating girls, hiking, sports, discos...

Try to eat fish at least 2 times a week, since in addition to polyunsaturated fatty acids, it contains iodine, the deficiency of which leads to weakened brain function.

It is also very important to adhere to the principles rational nutrition. This means that it is necessary to eat a variety of natural products without the content of dyes and preservatives, provide the body with the maximum variety of nutrients (fats, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, etc.). Since the body is subject to circadian rhythms, eating at the same time trains our digestive tract, which begins to secrete digestive juices at a certain time. For example, if you have lunch at one o’clock in the afternoon, then tomorrow by this moment your body will be expecting food at the same time. And he will process food much faster than yesterday.

If you continue to eat regularly, your body will require less energy each time to prepare for meals.

The body always requires food when it feels the need for it, and therefore the schedule of its requests may change depending on the emotional and physical condition. Have a strong effect on appetite weather conditions, physical and mental stress. Stress and fatigue can cause both a sharp attack of hunger and a reluctance to eat at all. At such moments, you should not eat forcefully, as you will not only not benefit the body, but will also significantly harm it. A healthy feeling of hunger will always remind you that it’s time to eat.

Berries and fruits that contain the antioxidant vitamin C are very useful for the active functioning of the brain. These include black currants, all citrus fruits, sweet and bitter peppers, radishes, rose hips, and green onions.

In no case should you interrupt your hunger with chips, nuts, or chocolates - this will negatively affect your appetite and proper diet. And the absence of a regime, as mentioned above, leads to poor health, decreased activity and reluctance to achieve set goals, be it knowledge, sports, household chores or a good rest.