The Healthiest Processed Foods
Everyone in Houston, TX, has ample opportunities to eat unhealthy foods, which are often labeled processed food. That’s because it’s the easiest way to describe them. But not all processed foods are bad for you. When you read processed food, you often think of the junk food aisle and chips, pork rinds, burgers and fries come to mind. Not all processed foods are bad. In fact, some of the healthiest processed foods should be included in your diet. Processing can include everything from cleaning and freezing food, to highly processed that contain ingredients that look like they came out of a chemistry lab.
When you cook tomatoes, you process them.
While some vegetables lose vitamins when you cook them, such as vitamin C, tomatoes actually become healthier. The longer you cook tomatoes, the more lycopene they contain. Lycopene is a powerful antioxidant. However, the vitamin C in them is diminished. In order to find the unhealthy food, read the label. If you see the words refined grain or bleached flour, put it back o the shelf. The act of milling the grain removes the nutrient laden area, the bran and the germ. The bran has the fiber and the germ has all the nutrients, including minerals, vitamins, fat and protein. Opt for whole grain options.
Frozen vegetables are processed, but may be better for you than fresh.
Fresh vegetables have a limited shelf life. They’re often picked before they’re ripe and allowed to ripen as they come to market. They sit on the shelf for a while, too, before you buy them and then wait a day or two before they’re eaten. There are fewer nutrients when picked before ripening, and the nutrients diminish each day after picking. Frozen vegetables are left on the vine until peak ripeness, picked and immediately frozen. They’re fresher and filled with more nutrients than many of the fresh fruits and vegetables on the shelf.
Not all canned foods are bad.
Check out tuna, salmon and even some canned fruits and vegetables. They’re all healthy and good for your body, plus have the added benefit of being affordable. You have to make sure they don’t have added sugar or salt. If you buy a canned good, like beans, and see sodium, you can rinse them several times to reduce that content. Fruit with added sugar is definitely not healthy. It’s linked to high blood pressure, heart attack, diabetes, dental carries and other diseases.
- When you buy peanut butter or nut butter, check the label. Make sure it contains one ingredient, nuts. You may have to stir it, but it’s worth the effort in taste and healthy benefits.
- Definitely pass up the snack area and pastries. They contain empty calories and often have trans fats, the unhealthy fat, chemicals and tons of sugar. There’s no up side. Even granola or protein bars are often filled with sugar and chemicals. Eat fruit, nuts and vegetables for snacks.
- Yogurt with live culture is healthy, but watch out for added sugar. Low fat yogurt is particularly bad, since sugar is added to make it to improve the flavor that removing the fat created.
- Instead of eliminating all processed foods, opt for those that are minimally processed with the fewest ingredients on the list of ingredients. You don’t have to break the budget to eat healthy and using frozen and some canned foods is a big help.
For more information, contact us today at Reggie C Fitness
If you’re exercising and improving your fitness, it’s good for your health and can reduce the risk of many diseases, including diabetes and heart disease. However, to create a health-focused workout plan, rather than a plan simply to get those curves and muscles you want, you need to focus on things like injury prevention, movement and longevity. It’s called functional fitness and requires that you work on endurance, strength, balance and flexibility. It will help you as you age and even slow the aging process, too.
Whether you workout with me in person in Houston, TX, or opt for the online option, you know I focus on looking good, while getting fit and healthier. One good side effect of a healthy lifestyle that helps you look your best is improved cognitive functioning. Not only does exercise enhance your brain power, there are foods that help boost your memory. You don’t have to be old to want to improve cognitive functioning and memory.
I have had clients at RC Fitness in Houston, TX, who put on weight easily and are overweight. They find it hard to take off those extra pounds. It’s not that they eat more than others. It’s that they have a hormone imbalance, which makes it harder. If you feel like you’re trying your hardest to shed those extra pounds, but your body is fighting harder to keep them, that may be the case. You can control many of the factors when you know what to do. Hormonal imbalances make it especially hard for women going through menopause, when hormone levels are regularly changing. There are ways to identify the problem and control it.
If you want to flatten your stomach, you need to work several muscle groups. People normally think specifically about the abs when they think a flat stomach, but other core muscles are also important. Not only are strong core muscles important for a flat stomach, but also to improve your balance, prevent backache and help you achieve your fitness goals. However, no matter how strong your core muscles and abs are, if you have a layer of fat on your belly, nobody will see how flat they are. That makes a healthy diet and weight loss important.
Those sweet treats and delicacies may look fantastic and taste that way, too, but they could be killing you in the process. They’re loaded with sugar and too much sugar can be dangerous to your health. That doesn’t mean you have to give them up entirely. An occasional treat won’t create lasting harm for most healthy people. However, there are dire consequences for eating food heavily laden with sugar on a regular basis. To make matters worse, sugar is in just about everything you find on the grocery shelf. It may be called corn syrup, dextrose or high fructose corn syrup, but it doesn’t make it any better for your health.
I focus a lot on appearance at RC Fitness in Houston, Tx, but every workout and dietary recommendation is also designed to make you healthier. Many of the recommendations help regulate hormones and hormones affect your health, while also affecting your weight and metabolism. People often associate hormones with estrogen and testosterone, which are associated with sexuality. However, they’re more than that. They are chemical messengers that help the body to function at its best. They control everything from your mood to your body temperature and weight.
While there’s a generalization that processed foods are bad for you, it’s just that, a generalization. There are foods that are processed that not only could be in your menu, but should be. The definition of processing is food that is cooked, canned, frozen, milled or dehydrated. Processing does many things. It can lower the nutritional value of food. It can also be loaded with unhealthy additions, which include preservatives, sodium and added sugar. Those are the true culprits of processed food, so reading the label is imperative.
If you’re using my ap or working out with me in Houston, TX, you know I highly recommend a program of healthy eating. Weight loss and fitness starts in the kitchen, which is why I made it easy for you with the weekly menu and shopping list ap. I’ve had several people follow the plan and ask what the best day to meal prep is. That’s one thing that’s so great about the program. You get to choose. It should be a day when you can have time to stay home and don’t have to go to work.
You don’t have to live in Houston, TX, to realize there’s food with added sugar everywhere you look. If you want to quit sugar for good, it becomes pretty difficult. Not only is added sugar in the vast majority of food we eat, it’s also quite addictive. It stimulates the reward center of the brain, like an opioid, releasing dopamine that makes us feel good. While it’s not physically addictive like an opioid, it’s emotionally addictive because it makes you feel good. Think about the times you grabbed a sweet because you felt bad emotionally. That’s what is meant by emotionally addictive.