Last Updated on September 24, 2020 by Shane Corbitt
What comes to your mind when you think of eating healthy? If you are like most of us, losing weight pops into your head. What if there were many other reasons why you should eat healthy?
Now days so many people are on a tight schedule, meeting deadlines, rushing around that we forget about our health.
The digital age that we live in has created such a fast paced, get it quick mentality that we often times skip and ignore some of the most important aspects in our life.
Taking the time and making the effort to eat healthy is one area that gets ignored. Neglecting this area of our lives is one of the reasons why there is such a high incidence of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.
Now before we go any further, I’m not writing this to criticize or to guilt you into taking action. We are all guilty, myself included, of not taking the time to pay closer attention to our health.
My goal is to try and change your thinking toward eating healthy. To realize that making the effort to eat healthy has many positive effects on your life.
Improves Your Energy Level
Eating healthier foods will drastically increase your energy level. This occurs because you’re eating foods more rich in the B vitamins and vitamin D. These vitamins play an important role in enhancing your energy.
You’re also improving the types of carbohydrates and fats you’re putting into your body. Good fats (monounsaturated fats) and good carbs (complex carbs and resistant starches) fuel your body with good clean energy where bad fats and sugars cause changes in your body that results in feeling tired and unmotivated.
The difference between the types of fats and carbs are an in depth topic, so I’ll go into that in more detail in a future blog.
Reduces The Risk of Diseases
Many don’t realize how your eating habits can increase or prevent your risk of certain diseases. While the list below, in no way, is a complete list of health problems that can occur from ignoring your health. They are some of the most common conditions that can be prevented or improved by eating healthy.
- Eye diseases, such as, cataracts and age related macular degeneration. The eyes are prone to free radical damage which unhealthy foods contribute to increasing. Where healthy foods are great for fighting off free radicals due to being antioxidant rich.
- Heart disease, some forms, can be caused by eating foods that are high in trans-fats or what they are commonly called, bad fats. God fats, such as, monounsaturated fats and omega-3 fatty acids actually improve heart health.
- Osteoporosis, The National Osteoporosis Foundation has recommended eating moderate amounts of dairy, fish, fruits and veggies to reduce your risk of osteoporosis.
- Type 2 diabetes, poor eating habits and obesity are two major risk factors for type 2 diabetes. Eating healthy not only remove these two risk factors but will also regulate healthy insulin and blood sugar levels which also improves your energy and brain function.
Boost Your Brain Function
As I mentioned above, having optimal insulin and blood sugar levels will enhance your brain function and reduce the incidence of the mid-day crash. While eating bad fats and bad carbs will throw off your brain’s levels of mood regulating chemicals that can lead to depression.
Research consistently shows that health-promoting nutrients—such as creatine, an amino acid found in grass-fed beef, omega 3’s from fatty fish, and vitamin D in dairy—can boost your mood and combat depression.
It Reduces Stress
Certain healthy foods have a big impact on increasing the levels of relaxing chemicals in your body, serotonin and dopamine while reducing the level of stress-inducing hormone, cortisol.
It Boosts Your Immunity
Current research shows that by eating healthy foods you will keep your gut bacteria happy and healthy. This in turn strengthens your immune system reducing the chance of infections.
Helps You Lose Weight
Losing weight will come automatically when you go from unhealthy to healthy foods. Don’t worry, you won’t have to starve yourself to accomplish weight loss.
Just by cutting and replacing unhealthy foods with healthier choices you’ll be getting low calorie nutrient dense foods to fuel your weight loss. I wouldn’t even worry about restricting your calories at first. Just replace bad calories with good calories.
You can always decrease your portion sizes later to fine tune your weight loss and reach your goals.
It Lengthens Your Life
If you haven’t guessed by now, enjoying the benefits of eating healthy and avoiding disease will naturally lead to a longer life. Here’s a fun fact for you, The 2014 Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health Study found that people who eat seven or more daily servings of fruit and vegetables are 42 percent less likely to keel over on any given day compared to people who eat little to no produce.
As with any change there will be an adjustment period, ignoring the cravings of those unhealthy foods. Now I know you may think this will be to complicated and expensive but it’s not.
Yes, eating healthier can cost a little more but it will reduce your risk of diseases. Which in turn will decrease your healthcare cost, which is far more expensive than buying healthy foods.
I frequently get asked, What foods can I eat? To simplify this I’ve included a list of foods that you can choose from when shopping.
