7 Short Lessons on Nutrition
First short lesson
Thank you for showing interest in “7 Short Lessons on Nutrition”. I decided to write seven short articles because I believe that nutrition is at the base of our happiness -and among other things- it helps managing anxiety, depression, stress and low self-esteem.
In this series, I will be trying to make you fall in love with understanding what you are eating. I will be explaining the science behind nutrition and present practical ways for you to prepare healthy and delicious recipes.
I started learning about nutrition when I was 17 years old because I wanted to improve my athletic performance. I had heard that eating lean proteins, I would have lost weight and gained muscle mass. Since then, I have been reading about nutrition to deepen my knowledge in the subject. Over the past 5 years I learnt that conscious nutrition changes our habits -and lives- for the better.
Why do we eat?
Every movement that our body can perform is the result of energy being exploited. Whether you are walking, running, sleeping or standing, your body is consuming energy.
All activities that deal with vital mechanisms (such as breathing, eating, sleeping, digesting) consume the largest part of our energy because they are ceaseless throughout the day. The energy they consume in one day is called Basal Energy Expenditure.
Our body works just like a train: the movements we perform are the engine which is powered by fuel, our food.
If excess food is provided, then the surplus energy is stored as body fat; if there is an energy deficit (consuming more than you eat), the body will have to draw on stored fat to find energy.
What is Nutrition?
Nutrition is the science that explains how food can affect your health.
Every meal you eat contributes to your energy intake by providing different nutrients that your body can use to thrive. However, only the right amount of each nutrient will foster your health. The lack of any nutrient cannot be compensated by the over absorption of another. It is then clear that good nutrition is obtained from the right amounts of healthy food in the right combinations,(the Eatwell Guide is an example of this).
See for yourself
To better understand how nutrition works, it is suggested adopting, (only for a week or two) a lifestyle that allows you to experience the basis of nutrition in a practical way. Track your nutrition meal by meal using one of my favourite smartphone apps, MyFitnessPal, LoseIt!, MyNetDiary or MyPlate.
Tinkering with your meals and monitoring their content will help you learn about diets and nutrition quicker. Meal tracking will be explained in detail in the Second Short Lesson.
Energy vs Pleasure
When eating, we are driven by two purposes: providing energy and pleasure.
- The energy contained in our meals is essential for our lives, and despite so, we take it for granted every single time we eat. Luckily, living in the 21st century, all food you find in a grocery shop contains balanced amounts of calories, proteins, vitamins and minerals. In Lesson 4, I will discuss in detail the importance of each macro- and micro-nutrient. You will find out that little imbalances can have significant repercussions on our health.
- What you eat after you are not hungry anymore is induced by pleasure. Everybody is greedy for food, it’s inevitable. Excessive greediness however, could cause our body to be on an energetic surplus and eventually make us gain fat.
Stone Age to Obese Age
In the Stone Age (until 2000B.C.), the only reason humans had for eating was survival. Men had a widely flexible diet, the food wasn’t nutritious and still very hard to find.
Nowadays, the food we eat, whether purchased at the grocery store or in a takeaway or a restaurant, is easy to find (you have to walk merely half a mile to get to the shop), it is very nutritious and pleasant to eat. These three factors make people more likely to gain fat and develop diseases linked to obesity. For this reason, nutritionists refer to the 21st century as the Obese Age.
Back in the Stone Age, humans were struggling to gain body fat. It is hypothesised that their organism was not optimally digesting the wide variety of food they were eating. Today we witness the opposite scenario.
Scientists suggest that through evolution, some people developed in their DNA “Thrifty Genes”. This genetic adaptation enables individuals to efficiently process and store food when in abundance and use it in periods of shortage.
Most people on the planet carry these genes and their organism can efficiently store excess energy, provided by their diet, as body fat. In Lesson 2 and Lesson 7, we will see how you could adapt your diet taking into account the Thrifty Genes.
Is Diabetes a disease?
And here is one of the most asked questions in the field of nutrition. Is diabetes a disease? This question rises from a different definition of the term “disease”.
Disease: the condition of living that impedes normal functioning and is manifested by distinguishing symptoms.
Type 2 Diabetes is a genetical hereditary state of physical abundance of fat caused by these Thrifty Genes. Even if inherited, it doesn’t mean that people will become overweight, but only that they might have a predisposition to gaining fat. Type 1 Diabetes is similar, but not to be confused, as it is caused by an excess sugar intake and does not depend on your genetics. There are several ways to prevent both diabetes, some of which are discussed in Lesson 3. Diabetes per se is not a disease, but it does predispose the body to severe health complications such as heart diseases, strokes, kidney and nerve damages.
Diabetes is a clear example of how nutrition can affect our health.
The food that we ingest matters and has a powerful impact on our wellbeing.
In the next 6 Short Lessons on Nutrition, I will be presenting the six most important concepts of nutrition: Basal Metabolic Rate, Hydration, Macronutrients, Micronutrients, Reading Labels and Diets.
Hope you will read something new in each one of them.
Disclaimer: This article was not written by a qualified nutritionist nor doctor. The writer’s knowledge comes from scientific literature and other online courses. If you have medical conditions refer to your general practitioner.
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