by Brian Cannone
Wheat bread is good, Ezekiel bread is better, oatmeal is best. How do your foods range on the scale of good, better and best choices?
One of the more important elements to keep in the back of your mind when you are a fitness professional or on a fitness and/or health regimen is you need to be aware of the food choices you are making. When you are trying to keep your body performing at its best and lose the weight necessary to your regimen it is very important that you establish how the food you are consuming ranks. A way to help remember the ranks in which your food can be surprisingly easy: good, better, best. There are foods that you eat that are good for you and your body, foods that are better for you, and then there are foods that are the best for you to eat to keep you on your regimen at full speed. You do not want to put yourself at a disadvantage by eating all of the wrong types of food! By consuming the foods that are only good for you, you are most likely unaware of how slow you are making the process of weight loss for your body. To help give you an example of the scale that the foods you eat can range from is wheat bread is good for you, Ezekiel bread is better for you, and oatmeal is the best for you. Each of these foods contains ingredients and nutrients that are beneficial to your body. But unlike wheat and Ezekiel bread, oatmeal does not contain as much impeding ingredients that can dampen your health and fitness regimen and is far more beneficial to you and your body.
Good foods are foods to the untrained eye that are, all in all, good for you. This simply means that there are foods that you encounter every single day that you know is good for you. Wheat bread, canned or frozen vegetables, milk, fish, and meat are all prime examples of foods that are good for you. But the closer you look at them, the more ingredients they contain that are not as good for you as you nearly thought. Wheat bread is a healthy choice of bread, however, there are ingredients and additives that are included in wheat bread that help make it last longer that are not helpful to your body’s health and fitness. The same goes for canned and frozen vegetables. Yes, vegetables are good for you, but “flash frozen” and canned vegetables are not nearly as healthy as other viable vegetable options. Frozen and canned vegetables also contain additives to help make it last longer. The shelf-life of these products should be a dead giveaway of an item of food that is not nearly as healthy as another choice of vegetables. These are just examples of foods that are good for your body. In all appearances, these foods are good for you, and of course they are. You need to keep in mind that although these foods might be good for you, there are always foods that you can obtain that are BETTER for you.
Better foods are the next step up in the healthy range of the food selections you make. When you take a closer look at the foods you are ingesting it should be easier for you to sort out the foods that are good for you and the foods that are better for you. Milk is an example of a selection that is good for you; soy milk is an example of something that is even better for you. While milk is good for you, it contains ingredients that can slow down the process of digestion and contains fat that can be added to your body. You want to find foods that do not slow down your body’s “break-down” process, nor work against your body’s fitness regimen. Soy milk is a drink that is made from soy beans. Soy milk contains a stable mixture of oil, protein and water. Although soy milk contains the same amount of protein as regular milk does, it has no cholesterol and little saturated fat. This proves to be highly beneficial to your body and therefore is a choice that is better for you. An easy way to differentiate foods that are good for you and foods that are even better for you is to take a closer look at what it is you are consuming.
The final step up in the scale of healthy selections of foods you make is the BEST category. These are the foods that you eat that outrank every other “healthy selection” you would have previously made. Foods that would fall in the best category in the range of selections you could make are foods that contain the lowest amount of ingredients. As a matter of fact, foods that contain one ingredient are the foods that are the best for you and your body. When there is only one ingredient in an item of food, it is, by far, the healthiest choice you could make for yourself and for your regimen. There are no additives in these foods and it is something you must prepare yourself (not just toss it in the oven or the microwave) which will drastically cut out most unhealthy aspects of the item in question. The closer it is to nature, meaning how fresh it is, will show you it is the best choice for you to make. You want to be sure to avoid foods that have a much higher shelf-life. The longer it lasts, the more damaging to your health and fitness regimen it will be!
When you are keeping your fitness in mind, you need to also have your nutrition in mind. Nutrition goes hand in hand with your fitness. If you are not eating properly you are not giving yourself the advantage of doing things the fast and easier way to reach your fitness goals. It will help you to determine just which foods are beneficial and which foods are not by keeping the scale of foods in mind. There are foods that are good for you, foods that are even better for you, and then there are foods that are the best for you and for your body. Once you are able to establish which foods you are consuming falls into which category, the easier and more simple it will be for you to reach your fitness goals!
