Complete guide to a healthy diet

Have you ever wandered what it means to eat healthy and deliver all the necessary ingredients to your body? There are multiple diets that concentrate on avoiding certain groups of nutritions. Is this the right approach? Should we avoid eating any of the nutrition options? Let’s stop for a moment and think it through. We, humans are composed in 70% of water. We also have muscles, fat, bones and organs. [AdSense-B]

What do we need to support this system?

1. Water – has many functions, you can check it out here 2. Protein – to feed our muscles 3. Carbohydrates – to feed our brain. Human brain is the fattest organ in the body and may consist of at least 60% fat 4. Fats- to support our heart. Note this is not about butter, fried chicken or doughnut. Your heart needs Omega 3 acid fats 5. Vitamins & Minerals – our body needs them to function properly 6. Fiber – in connection with water remove waste and toxins from our body So the question is how much and what exactly should we deliver? For each of those 6 groups you can find plenty of articles and I will link mine for you as well. In this post I will summarize what your body needs. You will see related articles where I focus on certain groups.

WATER

Photo Credit: @detoxwater

As human body contains a large amount of water we need to ensure there is a clean water delivered daily. And I mean clean water, not tea, coffee, juices ect. Did you know that a cold press squeezed carrot juice you drink is not treated by your body as water, it is treated as a liquid carrot!

How much water do I need?

For every 20kg (44 lbs) of your body mass you need 1liter (34 oz) of water. You can simply count those healthy proportions: a small child who weights 20 kg (44 lbs) needs 1 liter (34 oz), a 40kg (88 lbs) teenager- 2 liters (68oz), a woman who weights 60 kg (132 lbs)– 3 liters (102oz), a man who weights 80 kg (176 lbs) needs 4 liters (136oz), and a 100 kg (220 lbs) bodybuilder needs 5 liters 170oz (yes he probably needs even more when he sweats on the gym. F1 race car driver can lose 3kg during 2h race, and they are allowed to have 1,5l (51 oz) water bottle in the cockpit)

Tips to drink more water

• To make drinking water easier I recommend adding a squeeze/ slice of lemon. Tastes so much better!
• A really great habit is to set alarm clock on your phone every hour and drink one glass of water per hour. At work we will be able to have 2 liters / 68 oz of water this way. Hurray!
• It is also good to start a day with a glass of water to help flush the waste and toxins our organism cleaned during the night.
• Another good tip – try to drink half of your recommended water intake by noon, as in the morning up until noon your body is set on a clean mode.

Do you want to read more about water? Here you can find related articles focused on water. You may also like

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• 13 ideas for a fruit infused water
• 6 dollar lunch in NYC
• Healthy meal plan for one day

PROTEIN

Protein is always very popular regarding our diet, there are plenty of publications and myths around this topic. So lets think how much protein do we need. It depends on the weight and your goal. If you want to feed your muscles and train rather occasionally or not at all, 1g per 1kg (2.2 oz) of your body is enough. If you are frequent at the gym (2-3 times a week) you would rather have 1,5g per 1kg (2.2 oz). Bodybuilders can have even 2g per 1kg (2.2 oz). Coming back to our example above: Your weight – your recommended daily protein intake 20 kg (44 lbs) – 20g of protein 40 kg (88 lbs) – 40g of protein / if train, 60g of protein / bodybuilder 80g of protein 60 kg (132lbs) – 60g of protein / if train, 90g of protein / bodybuilder 120g of protein 80 kg (176lbs) – 80g of protein / if train, 120g of protein / bodybuilder 160g of protein 100kg (220lbs) -100g of protein / if train, 150g of protein / bodybuilder 200g of protein and so on.

What type of protein should we deliver? Where to find protein?

It is important to eat both plant and animal protein in 50/50 proportions. As an example for a 60kg person who trains 3 times a week, recommended amount is 90grams of protein. 45g of animal protein and 45grams of plant protein. Do you want to read more about protein? Here you can find related articles focused on protein.

CARBOHYDRTES

Daily recommended intake is 300g. 1 teaspoon of sugar= 5g of carbohydrates.  Great resource to find 10 foods highest in… (whatever you need to check) is here. [AdSense-B]

FATS

Daily recommended intake is 65g. Good sources of fat:

• avocado,
• olive oil, coconut oil
• nuts (macadamia, walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, peanuts, cashews, pistachios),
• oily fish (sardines, salmon, tuna),
• coconut milk,
• seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, chia).

1 avocado (136g) has 21grams of fat. You are probably not eating more than 1/4 or 1/2 of avocado per day, so it a good amount. If you have 6 meals a day than 10 grams per meal will suffice. 1 blueberry Krispy Kreme doughnut (67g) has 15grams of fat, eating 4 doughnuts a day is probably not the best idea 🙂

VITAMINS & MINERALS

Daily recommended intake I’ve done an extended analysis of my daily intake and encourage you to check it for yourself as well. Even though I feel like I am eating healthy, I am not delivering enough nutrients even for 1 day. It would be way too much food to satisfy our needs. There need to be a balance between all those 6 main groups of nutritions and our metabolism. If you are able to burn 1400kcal and go on a gym where you can burn additional 100kcal, you shouldn’t be eating more than 1500kcal if you are not planning to gain weight. It isn’t an easy thing to do. So I am using supplements and meal replacements. Do you want to read more about my analysis?  I have created a spreadsheet with 3 meals and 2 snacks and analyzed each ingredient to summarize how much vitamins and minerals I deliver. I used this 2 sources to populate the data: 1, 2. I recommend to write down everything you eat during the day for a week or month to see if anything in the diet should be changed. There can be days where we overdose certain vitamins but on other days it would be in deficiency as we don’t usually eat same thing every day.

FIBER

Recommended daily intake 25 grams per day.  Delivering enough fiber helps our body to clean. Fiber also lowers the risk of diabetes and heart disease. Are you able to cover  recommended intake in your daily diet? Do you deliver all vitamins and minerals according to FDA recommended daily intake? Are you eating well? Let me know in the comments below. [AdSense-B] Pin for later: