Eating properly

Those who pay attention to their habits are the ones who make a difference in their lives. We are creatures of habit, after all. This section of Heptagrama draws your attention to one of our bare necessities: to eat... properly. Eating gives us the nutrients we need to go ahead with our lives, so we depend on it. Eating properly, however, may help us live healthier and... who knows?... perhaps longer too.

Nutrition from scratch

The first thing you need to know about eating properly is that it is not a matter of seasons. It is not a matter of eating "whatever" some days only to follow a strict "diet" a few days later. Eating properly means feeding yourself with what your body needs (rather than what your mood wants), and doing this every day.

By the way, the science, which studies the art of feeding ourselves, is called nutrition.

The second thing you need to know is that your body will need, besides water, five kinds of nutrients. I am not talking about calories here, but about the tiny substances our body absorbs during our digestion. There are five kinds of nutrients, and they are:

+ Proteins
+ Carbohydrates
+ Fats
+ Vitamins
+ Minerals

Proteins keep our body structure. Carbohydrates and fats provide the energy we need (the body can use proteins for this too, but the idea is to keep getting it from fats and carbohydrates). Vitamins and minerals regulate the chemical functioning of the body, so without them, we are lost. A balanced diet should include all these five nutrients.

All in all, our meals include nutrients in a variety of quantities, so there is no need to count them one by one. Water is also included in the food we take, so there is no need to count it strictly either. Most of the times, our bodies will let us know when it is time to eat and when it is time to drink water too. However, your body does not know what is healthy; it just takes what it identifies as food. It is our responsibility to learn what is nutritious.

Now ask yourself, do you think you have a balanced diet? Or maybe you are abusing one group of nutrients mentioned above? Because of our economic and cultural background, we tend to forget what our body needs to continue eating what we have been. We should not do just that, but there is no need to become obsessed about the term "balanced diet". It is not the same for everybody.

Knowledge + Health