Over the years, as you begin to age, your body is far more sensitive to poor dietary choices. If you’ve been consuming an unhealthy diet for many years or even decades, then these poor food choices may have taken a toll on your weight, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and other important physiological health markers. Getting out of a dietary rut is difficult, however, the benefits are extremely large. With simple dietary changes, you can lose weight, regain your youthful energy levels, and even brighten your mood.
Ease Into Your Healthy Dietary Changes
A major mistake that many people make when they opt to change to a far healthier diet is that they try to jump into too many changes all at once. Rapidly changing your diet can be an absolute shock to your digestive tract, especially if you have been eating unhealthy foods for years. Rapidly changing your diet can lead to indigestion, gas, bloating, diarrhea, and even nausea, as the microbiology and gut flora in your system will need time to acclimate to process healthier foods.
The golden rule is to ease into dietary changes, especially if these changes are quite intense. For example, make small incremental changes slowly, like incorporating one leafy green salad into your daily diet, substituting flour and egg pasta with whole wheat pasta, and removing all soft drinks from your diet. The slower and more gradual your dietary changes are the easier it will be to make changes to your diet that will last for the long term.
Eat Fewer Calories and Lose Weight to Maximize Your Energy Levels
One of the first things that you can do to maximize your energy levels is to start shedding the pounds, especially if you’re carrying around a lot of excess body weight. Carrying around too much weight is really taxing on your body, as it puts unnecessary stress and strain on your vital organs and inhibits your system from running optimally. With that in mind, one of the core principles in increasing your energy levels is to eat fewer calories per day so that your body can return to a much healthier weight level. As you begin to lose weight you will feel your energy levels begin to rise, even though you are consuming less. This is because your body will no longer be routing energy to support any excess body mass, instead, freeing up energy that will leave you with a bounce in your step.
Avoid Caffeine For More Energy Coffee and other caffeinated beverages are often referred to by dieticians and nutritionists as false energy sources. Caffeine doesn’t provide you with real energy, instead, it is a stimulant. It stimulates your body into a more energetic state, however, once the caffeine in your body is processed, you will feel the inevitable caffeine crash. A caffeine crash can leave you feeling extremely tired or even in need of a nap. If your goal is to pursue dietary changes that are conducive to high energy then you should absolutely cut all caffeinated beverages out of your diet completely. Healthy alternatives to coffee and caffeinated teas would be lemon and cucumber water, ginger tea, fruit tea, and other beverages that contain no calories and some micronutrients.
5 Healthy Dieting Tips For Increased Energy
1. Leafy Green Vegetables
If you are interested in eating foods that can help energize you then be sure to consume iron-rich foods. Iron is a core nutrient needed by the body to create metabolic function. Without enough iron in your body, you will be left feeling tired and lethargic. Leafy green vegetables are loaded with enough iron to keep your body feeling energized. Some of these iron-rich leafy green vegetables include spinach, swiss chard, collard greens, romaine lettuce, and arugula
2. Lots of Water –
If you’re not getting enough daily H20 then chances are high that you are chronically dehydrated. One of the first symptoms of even mild dehydration is fatigue and lethargy. Cell function is absolutely dependent on water, considering our bodies are comprised of 60 percent water. If you want to maximize your energy levels then be sure that you are drinking at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day, the daily amount recommended for adults. If you aren’t a fan of drinking plain water then add a little citrus juice to it, such as lemon juice, lime juice, or orange juice.
3. Load up on The Fresh Fruits –
Fresh fruits are a great energy source to incorporate into your diet. Fruits that will boost your daily energy levels include bananas, apples, oranges, berries, pears, avocados, and melon. Try to make sure you’re getting at least two servings of fresh fruit per day. It is also good to mix up your fruit choice from day to day, that way your body will be getting a broad nutrient spectrum spread across the many different fruits. Also, always be sure to eat fresh. fruit rather than processed or canned varieties. Processed and canned fruits are usually loaded with sugar and preservatives and they’re also typically stripped of many of their nutritional properties through heavy processing.4. Fatty Fish –
5. Whole Grains –
Eating plenty of unprocessed whole grains is a great way to get plenty of carbohydrates and fiber, both of which can leave you feeling absolutely energized throughout the day. Whole grain pasta, rolled oats, brown rice, quinoa, sprouted bread, buckwheat, corn, and bulgur are all vitamin and mineral-rich carbohydrate sources. Due to whole grains being packed with, making them a far less ideal choice for someone that is dieting to maximize their energy levels, fibers, they’ll digest much more slowly in your b levels. fiber, they’ll digest much more slowly in your body and not leave you with an insulin spike typically caused by flour and egg pasta or white rice. Flour and egg pasta and white rice also contain substantially fewer vitamins and minerals than whole-grain varieties.Avoid Refined Sugars
Similar to caffeine, refined sugar is a terrible thing to consume if your goal is to maximize your daily energy levels. While refined sugar is a source of energy, it typically burns up too quickly in the body and creates a sharp insulin spike that throttles your pancreatic response. Once these refined sugars spike your insulin levels, they inevitably lead to an insulin crash that will leave you feeling terrible, foggy-headed, and without much energy at all. Refined sugar-rich foods and beverages to avoid include soft drinks, heavily processed sugary cereals, ice cream, store-bought fruit juice, cookies, and granola.
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