If you are interested in the topic of a healthy lifestyle and try to eat right, then you probably have healthy habits that you constantly follow. However, are they beneficial? We will discuss which valuable tips have become a habit that can be ignored.
Drink water with lemon in the morning
What do we know about the benefits of lemon water? Detoxification, weight loss, the balance of hydrogen level. And all this, of course, is great, if not for one thing: lemon water does not affect any of these indicators. Firstly, it cannot detoxify you: your liver and kidneys do it on their own, and water, and any water, contribute to this process. Second, lemon water doesn’t control pH balance because how we eat has only a “short-term and minimal” effect on our pH levels.
As for the claims that lemon water speeds up metabolism, nutrition professionals agree that such water is no better than regular water in this matter.
Lemon water is an excellent replacement for soda or coffee: it’s high in vitamin C and energising. However, please do not consider it a miracle drink. With the same success, you can drink a glass of ordinary clean water in the morning.
There are many “healthy” products.
This is a very insidious trap for many. For example, diet ice cream, which, it would seem, has no calories or a protein bar filled with proteins and valuable trace elements. We perceive such sweets as healthy or harmless for the figure and are ready to eat much more than we need to be satiated. By the way, this observation can be attributed not only to sweets but also to any other products labelled “healthy”. Marking like this often leads to overeating.
Favour low-fat foods
For years, fat has been the number one enemy of public health, and doctors and nutritionists have warned that your love of cheese, for example, is fraught with a heart attack. But the scientific consensus has changed radically. Nutritionists and doctors now recognise that good fats are a great energy source. They are necessary for transporting fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K for the normal functioning of our entire body, which, without enough fat, begins to falter. Harmful trans fats should be discarded, but healthy fats contained in high-quality vegetable oils, nuts, avocados, and fatty fish should be included in your diet. Although these products have a high-fat percentage, they are much more helpful and healthy than chemically processed “fat-free” products.
Drink a fruit smoothie for breakfast every day
If you prefer sweet fruit smoothies, then beware. Even though adequately balanced smoothies are very healthy, you should consider their composition. Fruits are undoubtedly beneficial, but many contain much sugar, leading to a sharp increase in blood sugar levels. After all, we know that after a quick jump in blood sugar levels, the same sharp decline will follow, a drop in energy and an irresistible desire to compensate for this physiological process with something sweet. So if you prefer smoothies for breakfast, make them from vegetables and herbs, and add more berries, unsweetened fruits, oatmeal and vegetable milk.
Buy sweet, sugar-free diet foods.
This is great if you decide to give up sugar. We hope that instead of sugar, you use natural substitutes like dates, agave or Jerusalem artichoke syrup, organic maple syrup, coconut sugar or raw muscovado cane sugar. Such natural alternatives cannot be called dietary in any way – they have enough calories, but the glycemic index is low. A completely different matter is chemical sweeteners. Yes, they do not contain calories and carbohydrates at all. The problem is that most of them affect our bodies even worse than refined sugar. Here is a rating of the most harmful sugar substitutes: aspartame (E951) damages cells of the nervous tissue, sucralose (E955) is known to poison the body with toxins, saccharin (E954) increases the body’s sensitivity to ultraviolet rays, xylitol E967 (sorbitol E420) negatively affects the digestive tract, causes cramps and bloating, acesulfame potassium (E950) can disrupt kidney function.
Drink as much water as possible
We are well aware of the risks of dehydration, but there is another side to the coin – an excess of water in the body is just as harmful as its lack. It can cause a condition known as hyponatremia, the side effects of which are fatigue, headache, and nausea. Experts recommend that healthy people drink according to their thirst, ignoring the common myth of 8 glasses of water a day. The amount of fluid our body needs depends on weight, gender, lifestyle, health problems, and the foods we eat. For example, for a girl weighing 60 kg, the amount of liquid recommended by doctors will be 1.8 litres (30 ml of water per 1 kg). However, you should drink more water on a hot day or if there is an intense workout with profuse sweating. If a girl ate a large bowl of soup for lunch and drank a glass of fresh juice, smoothies and a couple of cups of green tea during the day, then the water needed can be significantly reduced.
We advise you not to follow the recommendations of nutritionists or helpful articles blindly but to approach any advice consciously, adapting them to yourself, your taste preferences and your state of health.
