Eating Nutritious Foods and Your Energy

For the maintenance or restoration of health and energy it is essential to have a nutritious eating. You can easily gain energy and be able to function at higher levels in your every day activities if you know what to eat and how much.  Knowing what types of energy are available in your meals can help you determine what you need to eat.

The energy nutrients that we find in our foods are chemical substances.  There are a different categories, such as:

carbohydrates - starch, sugar, glycogen.  Should be the nutrients that are your main source of energy each day.  All fruits, vegetables, breads, and cereals are good sources of carbohydrates.  Milk and other dairy foods also give you carbohydrates. 

proteins - large molecules containing nitrogen and made out of amino acids units.  But your body also uses proteins mainly to repair body cells and build new cells for growth.  Meat, fish, eggs, nuts, and milk and other dairy foods all have a lot of proteins. 

inorganic elements or salts - compounds that contain iron, calcium and phosphorus

lipids - known as fats are the nutrients that give you the greatest amount of energy.  When you eat meat, eggs, and cheese you get energy from the fats in these foods. 

vitamins - group of organic compounds needed in very tiny amounts by the body

There are several different ways in which energy is distributed throughout your body. By keeping a balance between these kinds of energy, you will be able to feel better and eat right. The first type of energy distribution is through calories. Calories are units of energy that are located in every type of ingredient. Protein, carbohydrates and fat all contain these calories in them. Knowing how much of this energy to take in is the first step in determining nutritious eating.

From here, you can find how much energy is available in other types of nutrients and food substances. Protein and carbohydrates as well as fats carry the highest amounts of energy in them. However, if you have excess of any of these energy sources, the energy will be stored and will cause weight gain instead of balance. These three major sources of energy all carry different factors in relation to them which should be looked into, especially in relation to what they will provide for sources of energy.

Energy can also be maintained through the vitamins and minerals that are a part of your food sources. For example, vitamin B, in all of its forms, provides for energy to move into the metabolism, which speeds up processing of other nutrients and foods. By knowing the vitamins that contain the right amounts of energy, you will be able to keep a balance in your eating habits.

The two major problems that we can have when trying to find energy through food is not having enough of any of the above mentioned sources or having too much of one of these sources. With each of these problems, it will cause the extra energy to move into an area in the body where it can be stored. This will eventually turn into extra weight and cause imbalances and health problems in your body.

Here is a tip to maintain a healthy lifestyle.  Create a menu that provides the right amounts of energy to your body. Knowing what your personal needs are in relation to this is the first step in maintaining better health. After this, you can find ways to balance your diet as well as find sources of energy through food by finding what nutrients and ingredients are in all of the foods.

Living a balanced lifestyle through healthy and nutritious eating is a major step in being able to live a healthy and energetic life. Knowing what your needs are, as well as being able to define different sources that provide different types of functioning can help you in your personal needs to begin or continue to eat nutritiously.  Even if your lifestyle requires eating out most days of the week, you can still achieve a healthy lifestyle.

It is important to remember that the lack of any essential nutrient over an extended period of time can deplete what the body stores.  Normally, the body stores enough vitamins for brief periods of dietary deprivation.  For all vitamins, an adult can depend upon normal stores to maintain him/her for several weeks and a child for a few weeks. 

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