Modern Nutrition Plan for Building Muscle Mass

Many people think that all it takes is more exercise and workouts to build muscle mass but there is a scientific way to build muscles that provide more effective results and faster. What many people miss is to implement a proven nutrition plan for building muscle to help make every bodybuilding repetition they do become more effective.

Fitness experts agree that your diet is more important to muscle building than your dedication to lifting weights but you need both working on your side to get the most out of either one. You need to workout on a regular schedule and you need a plan for getting muscle building nutrients into your body at the right time.

Putting Together a Nutrition Plan for Building Muscle

You can make this hard or you can make it easy. You don’t want to start eating an abundance of food or rely on any one food group. You’ll hear many people tell you that you need more protein while building muscle mass but you also need a balance of nutrients for your body to function at its best.

You never want to overload your system with one specific food group.

There are many nutrients that your body needs and if you’re striving for good health, then you best be consuming all of those nutrients. I hope that makes sense because all too many people get tied up in the protein consumption part of the muscle building equation and forget about nutrients that are so very important for their best overall health.

When start adding in more protein to your meal eating and depending on your gender and body size, you want to give yourself a 6oz to 8oz portion of meat per meal at most. Add to this meal whole wheat grain pasta, potatoes, brown and long grain rice. Then fill yourself up on all of the fresh vegetables that you want to eat.

Yes indeed, fresh and preferably raw vegetables like broccoli and carrots are a great choice due to their high nutritional value so fill up on all you want. And if you are vegetarian who avoids meat, use tofu in place of meat and add more nuts into your nutrition planning. Vegetarians as a rule need to be concerned about getting enough protein and even more so with vegans.

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Snacks and Meals

Your nutrition plan for building muscles should include eating 3 good meals per day along with 2-3 snacks. It’s a good idea to try to plan your meals so that you eat about every three hours or so throughout your day. When it comes to snacking, eating a handful of raw Almonds is a really good choice because they are loaded with protein and other valuable nutrients good for your all around health.

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Other snack ideas for muscle building are to have a banana with a ten ounce glass of milk. Milk along with its many nutrients also supplies your body with needed protein and any fruits are a great pick for muscle builders to get a mid-day or morning or evening snack. Fruit always makes for a good option to add into your nutrition plan for building muscles.

A good way to keep your nutrition plan for building muscle working in your favor is to stock up on the foods you need to be eating a week, even two weeks in advance. Simply create a menu plan for a week or two in advance, stock the cupboards and you’ll have what you need on hand to through a few ingredients together when it’s time eat your meals and snacks.

Including Protein Supplements in Your Nutrition Plan for Building Muscle Mass

Protein supplements are a great way to add that much needed protein to your diet but you have to use some caution and common sense here. Many protein supplements do not contain the many other nutrients that your body requires for both muscle building and your health in general.

These are fine for “supplementing protein” as long as you are not using them as a complete meal replacement. If meal replacement is your intention then you would be smart to buy a product that is balanced and contains the wide variety of nutrients that your body needs.

Tip: Serious and competition bodybuilders require many more calories than the average person. Consuming 3,000 to 5,000 calories a day is common among this group and using high protein meal replacement shakes between meals are a good way to help pack in those extra calories along with getting nutrients that your body requires.

Building muscle correctly means that you need to take care of your entire body in all areas and get enough rest to regenerate and build up muscle. Be sure to get a good night sleep and be sure to take days off from muscle building like setting your schedule to one day on and one day off or limit your workouts to only three days a week.

Once set up, stick closely to your schedule because if you start missing your workouts on a regular basis, your previous muscle building activities will start reversing. This will make you work all that much harder for the same results you would have received by sticking to your plan. You want to be able to workout then recover, workout then recover and repeat it as close to clockwork as you can.

There’s a definite, purposeful and scientific method for gaining muscle mass effectively and by you having a good nutrition plan for building muscle is where you want to be. By fueling your body with the right nutrients you are providing your body with the energy you need to do your workout sessions and realize the muscle building goals that you are looking for.

The combining of foods is generally pretty easy to understand and this is the basis for this healthy nutrition guide. It all started from the studying of the effects of gastric physiology. It evolved from the understanding of how digestive juices and enzymes truly function and how certain combinations of foods are digested more easily and efficiently than other foods.

It’s not always what you eat, but how you eat and what you eat what with.

This Healthy Nutrition Guide was Designed to Meet Those Fundamentals

What it really comes down to is that it’s not what you eat but how your body digests the foods that you put into it. The combination of and quality of your food will greatly determine the nourishment your body receives.

When you eat the right foods together, your overall health can improve dramatically. Side benefits include feeling better – even younger, losing weight, sleeping better and more energy throughout your day. Not to mention a healthy and more fit body and immune system.

Who in the world does not want more energy and to look and feel younger?

Use this Healthy Nutrition Guide to Start then Keep Learning

This healthy nutrition guide was designed to get you thinking in the right direction. By no means does it even scratch the surface of the different elements related to a complete and healthy nutrition plan. But for most people a healthy nutrition plan is not all that far away.

When you embark upon your journey you will notice small changes to your health and how your body feels as you begin to eat better, digest better and free up your system to feed your body’s cells with the nutrients they need for top performance.

Develop Your Healthy Nutritional Plan in Steps

Change your nutritional plan gradually by adding little changes and new habits each day and before long you will look back and be amazed at how far you’ve come.

Following this Healthy Nutrition Guide can Save You Money!

If you want to eat better it can actually cost you less money. Saving money by eating better and getting better nutrition sounds like a pretty good deal. It is and with some simple adjustments in the budget to transfer the costs of processed and restaurant prepared foods into “your fresh food department” you can save money and enhance your health all at the same time.

You might be surprised to find that your ten dollar restaurant meal will buy you more fresh fruits and vegetable than you could possibly eat in a single meal while providing more healthy nutrition than you may have ever thought possible.

If you’ve found this healthy nutrition guide useful please let us know by hitting the “Like” button on this page and then grab a hold of some more health and fitness resources at http://MyFitnessNut.com.

The first thing you’ll want to do there is to sign up for the My Fitness Nut Newsletter where you’ll get three fitness training workouts on videos that can work wonders to enhance this healthy nutrition guide by adding in a fitness routine.

Eating Raw Foods is a Great Choice

Eating raw food is a great choice because they are very easy to digest as they have naturally occurring enzymes that aids your body’s digestion and its ability to increase nutrient uptake.

Raw foods in their natural state make them very digestible. What’s more, it takes your body very little energy to do so.

Raw foods are loaded full of nutrients in comparison to cooked foods. Junk foods are the worst and should be at the bottom of your food chain; meaning eat them sparingly if at all. Most junk foods are just that – junk food, and are primarily empty calories with little to no nutritional value.

When You Want a Snack – Reach For Raw Food!

When you start eating more raw foods you have a choice of eating them whole or juicing them. Juicing allows you to ingest more concentrated nutrient levels but in turn you lose the fiber that’s so important. Even if you juice though, you can still snack on some raw food to give yourself some bulk.

Raw Foods Promote Natural Energy

When you increase your intake of say something like carrots and celery you will immediately notice a huge increase in your energy level. You can eat practically any vegetable or fruit and increase your energy level.

Ideas on Getting More Raw Food in Your Diet:

Vegetables – We touched on that above a bit but basically everything from Artichokes to Zucchinis works. There are lots of recipes to combine both vegetables and fruits to keep your life full of variety if you choose the raw food diet.

Fruits – if you’re juicing them be wary of the concentrated sugars found in most fruits and think moderation. Just realize that if you’re juicing eight apples to make a small glass of apple juice you’re getting most of the calorie content of eight apples and a practically empty stomach.

Raw, organic fresh fruits are an excellent source of nutrition and a wonderful source of energy but be sensible and follow the guideline in the “A Healthy Nutrition Plan Starts with the Food Pyramid”.

Salads – mix it up, red leaf, green leaf, butternut, iceberg and romaine, mix it up and eat lots of fresh leafy organic vegetables. An ideal dressing is cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil with a few herbs and spices, maybe some lemon juice, balsamic or red wine vinegar. Olive oil and balsamic vinegar all by itself makes a great salad dressing.

Juices – If you looking to put raw food into your diet you can forget about cans, cartons and bottled fruit juices. As a matter of fact, you don’t even want to make fresh raw juice at home in advance. The best value comes from the freshest fruits and vegetables being juiced and consumed as soon as possible. This is the very best way to get all of the minerals, vitamins and enzymes that your body needs. When it is not possible to make your own, turn only to fresh, cold processed organic juices from trustworthy companies that preserve the nutritional integrity of the whole raw food.

Raw Nuts and Seeds – raw organic nuts and seeds when we eat them in moderation provide lots of benefits. They contain proteins, necessary fats and calories for energy. Be sure to eat raw, not roasted nuts but be careful not to overeat and use them sparingly. Seeds like flax and sesame can be mixed into your salads for some added crunchy flavor and great nutritional value if you chew them well.

Lastly, talking about important raw foods would not be complete without mentioning Aloe Vera. Aloe Vera has been dubbed the name “miracle plant” and for good reason… Aloe Vera provides so many benefits there have been entire books written on the subject.

Because of the power of this plant, companies have gone to great lengths to preserve the nutritional integrity of the plant in a juice form and have bottled it for our convenience and use. The best bottled Aloe Vera juices will have 100% organic cold processed “inner leaf fillets” at the top of their ingredient list.

Including Aloe Vera into your diet is a smart decision indeed but most people are not going to grow, harvest and juice Aloe Vera plants for their consumption even knowing it’s as beneficial as it is.

The problem is that they’re not typically available at your local market.

From healing burns and cuts on the outside to aiding digestion, providing high nutrient absorption and the healing of your body from the inside out there’s probably not another vegetable you’d want more in your diet if you only knew all of the many benefits it holds.

Staying in harmony with the purpose of this section, local raw foods are best and the soonest you are able to consume them once they’ve been harvested the more nutritional value they hold for you.

Eat fresh and enjoy the many benefits available to you when you choose to add in or exclusively eat raw foods in your diet.

The last and final section is the “Conclusion to the Healthy Nutrition Guide” where we’ll summarize a bit and hopefully get your vote to allow us to continue to help and serve you in the world of health and fitness.

There are a few ways to flush out toxins from your body and detoxifying your organs right down to all of the cells in your body.

One way is by drinking plenty of clean water, another by combining the right foods and yet another by doing a colon and body cleanse.

Some people will even fast for a full day or more and drink nothing other than pure clean water giving their organs a chance flush, relax and heal.

Who doesn’t want to have a clean body inside and out?

Detoxifying is an Important Part of a Healthy Nutrition Plan

With our environment that we’re living in today we are exposed to gobs of pollution, dirt and toxins in all of our surroundings. Because they are in our environment, they end up in the foods that we eat and our body gets bombarded from many angles.

Detoxifying your body can help remove built up toxins and free radicals that can be responsible for all kinds of health and fitness problems. When we talk about detoxifying our body, we’re talking about using a method or remedy to rid ourselves of all the harmful substances that have accumulated over the course of time.

Detoxifying Cleans up Your Organs

When you detoxify, you are removing poisons and impurities from the blood primarily through your liver where these toxins are processed for elimination. Other organs that also help your body to remove toxins are your lungs, kidneys, lymph system, skin and your intestines.

In our modern world, the build up of toxins over time can tax and compromise the ability of your “cleansing organs” to work properly. This can create a downward spiral as every cell in your body is negatively affected when toxic impurities aren’t properly filtered out.

Help Your Body to Cleanse and Detoxify

We covered combining the right foods…

We covered drinking the proper amount of water…

Now, let’s give your body some help in cleansing by using herbal supplements.

The reason for detoxifying your body is to be and feel healthy and to keep your body functioning at its very best. There are many varieties of colon cleansing and detoxifying herbal supplements that do a good job with no known side effects.

Herbs like senna, sagrada and rhubarb come to mind and they are all very gentle cleansers when taken in the right amounts.

A good quality colon cleanser and detoxification program can help your body’s natural cleaning process by:

• Stimulating the liver to drive toxins from the body
• Promoting elimination through the intestines, kidneys and skin
• Improve circulation and cleansing of the blood
• Refuel your entire body with healthy nutrients due to better absorption

A cleansing and detoxifying program should be done twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall but at a minimum do the entire program at least once a year.

When your colon is clean and free of toxins the amount of nutrients that gets into your bloodstream increases dramatically and every cell in your body benefits by that.

So, if you were wondering how to colon cleanse, you can always use these herbal programs. If you were wondering how not to need colon cleansers then the next section of this guide is “Super Digestible Nutrient Rich Raw Foods” and will give you an introduction to eating raw foods.

There’s no doubt that you’ve enjoyed the benefits of combing the right foods together if not for the nutritional aspect, then for a pleasurable one.

The secrets of combining foods is not something new, the concept has been around for thousands of years but the reasons why and which ones work best is still being studied today.

Food is a popular topic and with good reason. It’s a necessity of life. Many studies have been performed on food and this has led to many discoveries being made with many more underway.

For instance, combining foods to lose weight quickly is extremely popular. By combing the right foods you will improve your digestion, cholesterol levels, your metabolism and this helps lead to weight loss.

Nutrition is a science that relates to everything that goes on in the body. Your body requires food and water to survive and all the basic functions cannot be performed properly without this adequate nutrition and hydration.

Food is classified as any substance that is composed of carbohydrates, water, fats and proteins. These food sources may be from plants, animals or other sources such as fungus. At one time food was found through gathering and hunting methods. In modern times farming, ranching, fishing, hunting and other methods have become common ways of finding food.

Nine Basic Rules to Follow When Combining Foods:

1. Eat starch foods and acidic foods at separate times otherwise the acids can neutralize the alkaline medium which is required for starch digestion and the result is fermentation and indigestion.
2. Eat food containing carbohydrates and proteins at different meals with most people being best suited for protein earlier in the day and the carbohydrates toward the end of the day. Protein foods need an acidic medium for good digestion.
3. Eat only one type of protein food at a meal setting.
4. Proteins and acidic type foods need to be eaten at different meals because acidic foods can inhibit the secretion of the digestive acids required for optimal protein digestion. Undigested protein putrefies, or rots if you can relate, in bacterial decomposition that produces some potent poisons that you should want to avoid.
5. Fatty foods and proteins should also be eaten at different mealtimes. Some foods, particularly nuts, are loaded with good fats but require hours for digestion.
6. Fruits contain natural sugars and your heavier proteins should be eaten at separate meals.
7. Eat melons only with other melons or alone. They do not combine well with any other type of foods.
8. Eat sugary food and fruits at different meals than your starchy foods. Fruits require no digestion in your stomach and can be held up when you eat them with other foods that does require digestion in the stomach.
9. Desserts should be eaten alone and separate from any other types of food. When eaten on top of meals they weigh heavy on the stomach but require no digestion there so fermentation occurs. The bacteria there, other foods and sugars turn into alcohols, vinegars and other acids.

Combining and eating the right types of foods together can help improve your digestion and overall health. Additionally, combining the right foods together can also help a person decrease stomach and digestive problems as well as discomfort after eating their meals.

Some experts believe that eating the same types of foods together allows your stomach to work better, more efficiently and with less stress.

One of the fastest and easiest improvements you can make right now is simply to chew your food up more completely before swallowing because that’s where the whole process starts.

One last thing about combining the right foods and how they affect your weight…

As you get older a common concern is weight gain. It is known that as we get older we have a tendency to gain weight. This is because our body needs fewer calories than it used to and if you don’t cut down your weight is going to increase and rule you.

If you’re like most of us, there’s no doubt that you have tried all kinds of diet plans and exercised more or at least thought about it. What might come to a surprise is that just by combining foods differently you could set yourself up to lose weight rather easily.

Following what we’ve been telling you here using the food combining principles above you might want to start changing up your food combinations right away.

As an example, fruits don’t digest as well when they are mixed with starchy foods so choose something like yogurt instead because they both digest easily together.

If you’re going to do it, bananas are about one of the only foods that digest well with other foods such as cereal and oatmeal. Generally speaking, you are best served by eating fruits as a snack and on an empty stomach.

Here are a few tips on combining foods for losing weight:

Eat starches and proteins separate from each other.

Eat fruit separate times.

Leave yourself 15 to 30 minutes between eating your main course and eating your dessert.

Chew your food thoroughly.

And of course one of the best ways to help you lose weight is to increase your daily water intake to one ounce for every two pounds of body weight at a minimum. Water helps you to flush out the toxins in your body and nutrients from your food can not be absorbed without it.

For the next topic in this guide we’ll discuss “The Importance of Detoxifying Your Body” but don’t lose sight of how important combining the right foods are and why it’s so important to drink enough water each day. By doing so, it will also help you feel less bloated and assist you dropping the body fat.

When you initially eat food the food is not in a usable form for your body. Your body needs to process this food so that it can extract all the life giving nutrients from all that you have just eaten.

Your food must be converted into small enough molecules so that it can be carried throughout your body in your blood stream bringing nutrients to all of your body’s cells. For this to happen your body needs to digest the food that you eat.

Makes sense right?

Digestion is the process of mixing food with digestive juices as the food moves down your digestive tract. It starts in your mouth with your saliva as you chew your food and begin the process of breaking down larger pieces of food with smaller ones.

So, digestion starts the moment you begin to chew your food and ends in your lower small intestines mostly exhausted and ready for elimination.

The Process of Digestion

Your digestive tract contains a wall inside of it that actually moves. It’s a large hollow like muscle that allows this movement to happen. This moving process helps pass your food along where the nutrients can be absorbed into your body through the walls of your digestive tract. Different foods are also digested in different areas of your digestive system.

This movement is called Peristalsis, as if you really wanted to know, but you can relate to this movement by envisioning a wave moving towards the beach with their back and forth movements.

Okay, after you’ve swallowed your food it’s pushed into the esophagus first. The stomach meets the esophagus at its base with a ring like muscle known as the lower esophageal sphincter.

The sphincters job is to keep the esophagus and the stomach closed off from each other. When this sphincter muscle is approached with food it relaxes to let the food pass into the stomach and closes back up again.

That’s how it works in a healthy digestive tract.

Now your stomach has three important tasks to perform with this new arrival of food. The upper part of your stomach relaxes and stores the food and liquid you just ate.  Task number two is to mix all the food and liquid together which is performed by the stomach using muscle action where it then moves on to task number three where this mixture is emptied into your lower intestine.

All foods do not move into your lower intestine at the same time. Some foods like proteins take longer to be mixed up and broken down by the stomach. Carbohydrates will be processed quickly and fats normally take the longest amount of time to digest.

Next, foods in your intestines are mixed with juices from your pancreas and liver then this mixture gets absorbed by your intestines and nutrients are carried through your bloodstream and your entire body.

Why is this Digestive Process so Important to Know?

This digestion process is very important because your body needs food to be turned into small enough particles before it can be used to feed your body. This is the only way to get these tiny particles small enough so that they can then be used effectively by your cells.

Your cells do an amazing job for you. Cells help to make your skin, bones, muscles and organs. Everything from the hair on your head to your toenails you can view cells as tiny building blocks for your body.

Nutrients from your food help to feed and repair cells and to build new ones. Once your body is nourished by your newly born and fed cells you’ll appreciate more energy and feel stronger, healthier and revitalized.

Problems of Improper Digestion

Problems begin to spring up when your body doesn’t handle the digestive process in the right way and nutrients are not properly or completely absorbed. It’s called mal-absorption. If poor digestion occurs you might experience one or more of the following signs:

This can be weight loss or weight gain, constipation or diarrhea, gas pain or heartburn, bloating or nausea.

That covers a lot of are doesn’t it?

When these symptoms occur on a regular basis it will be a sign that something else maybe wrong. So if you suddenly start experiencing any of these symptoms it may be and issue with your digestive system and you should immediately make plans to rectify the problem.

If this is you, do you think that it could have something to do with you not having a healthy nutrition plan? Yes, that’s a good possibility isn’t it.

In the next segment of this guide we’ll discuss “The Benefits of Combining the Right Foods”. Here you’ll get the basics of combining foods to help create your healthy nutrition plan.

Understanding What Malnutrition Really Is

Understanding malnutrition starts with understanding its meaning which is “an imbalance between the body’s demand for nutrition and the availability of nutrients”.

When your body is not getting the right amount of nutrients over a period of time you body begins to suffer.

Without adequate nutrition your body will become weak, your immune system breaks down and your overall health degrades. Bottom line is that advanced nutritional deficiency can lead to death.

Malnutrition can be Found Everywhere

Most people associate malnutrition with people living in third world countries. While it is true that you’ll find a larger percentage of malnourished people there, you’ll also find them right in your own backyard.

Going back to our definition above and you either fill your body’s nutritional requirements or you too will be considered malnourished.

A common condition found in many countries around the world is Anorexia. Even if you’ve never heard of it, you’ve probably seen it up close and maybe even personal.

Signs of Anorexia are extreme weight loss and many times it begins with a person wanting to lose weight. When the person’s perception becomes distorted about how much weight they are losing, it becomes very serious and professional help should be sought.

The type of malnutrition commonly found in third world countries is known as a protein-calorie type of malnutrition and children are often affected most frequently. Because their bodies are unable to grow and develop properly from the daily lack of food, their digestive system and organs become damaged, they suffer from starvation, and sadly they die.

Obese People Suffer from Malnutrition Too

Obese people can have severe malnutrition and you’d never think that by looking at them. But what if a person ate primarily all sugar all of the time? Empty calories, no nutrition and guess what – Malnutrition. Overweight and malnourished, how pitiful is that? Organ and digestive damage can still occur compounded by the excess strain on the cardiovascular system from being too overweight.

Remember, malnutrition is defined as is “an imbalance between the body’s demand for nutrition and the availability of nutrients”.

Many deficiencies can take hold when you fail to get the right amount of certain nutrients. You can see this in people that lack calcium for instance and their teeth, bones and fingernails turn frail and brittle. People that lack iron can become anemic and the lack of iodine can lead to thyroid problems.

The list goes on and on and the facts are that wealthy or poor, fat or thin, everyone can be at risk of malnutrition. The takeaway here is be sure that if you can’t, won’t or just don’t eat balanced nutrition, do yourself a favor and get some good quality nutritional supplements to feed your body what it’s missing.

What we’ll do next is talk a little about “Your Digestive Systems Role in Healthy Nutrition” so click that link and we’ll go through how your body uses the nutrients you consume.

Four Food Groups inside the Food Pyramid

There are four of the basic food groups that have now been placed into the Food Pyramid for a guide on eating healthy nutrition. This guide will show you just how many servings of each group you should eat each day. You’ll notice that the foods at the wider base offer you more servings a day while the top portion of the guide includes those foods that you should be eating more sparingly.

The concept behind the Food Pyramid is to eat servings from each of the different levels every day. This gives you with balance and variety that you need in your diet on a daily basis. By following these suggestions you can be certain that you are getting the right amount of nutrients in your body.

This is the type of healthy nutrition plan that you want to adapt to.

When you eat in this manner you can quickly begin improving your eating habits and in short order, you’ll feel the health of your body improve.

Separating the Four Groups inside the Food Pyramid

As you will notice in the diagram above the grain group is at the base of the pyramid. The foods you’ll find in this section are primarily cereals, pasta, breads and rice. You should normally be eating between 6-11 servings from this group each day unless you are attempting to do a no or low carbohydrate diet.

This particular food group consists mostly of carbohydrates and can provide your body with energy and fuel. Depending on your level of physical activity you may need to adjust this a bit because excess carbs can pack on the weight if your body is idle and you’re not burning the fuel from all those calories fast enough.

This is why professional athletes will often load up on carbs before a big race or sporting event. People who participate in marathons, triathlons, iron man competitions and long distance cycling events will do a “carb load” prior to the big event.

Next we have the fruit and vegetable group and you should be eating larger amounts of these foods as well. Fruits and vegetables are rich in vitamins, minerals, phyto-nutrients, fiber and more. Fiber is extremely important to your digestive system and you should eat at 6-9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day and if not, it’s a good idea to supplement in the areas that you are lacking.

Moving on to the next level of the Food Pyramid we have the meat and dairy products. This group is rich in protein which is essential for everyone and health and fitness nuts may want to increase their protein intake based on the intensity of their workouts. Protein and dairy originate from animal and plant sources. These include food items such as milk, fish, poultry, eggs, nuts, cheese and beans.

All of the foods in this group contain important nutrients and protein that can’t be found as abundantly in other food groups. Calcium, iron, phosphorus, zinc and B vitamins are essential for bone and muscle development.

The foods in this group are necessary for your body and are extremely important for children as they require more of these in their diet as they develop and grow.

Last but not least the top of our Food Pyramid contains sugars, oils and fats. You’ll find these in a variety of foods, they are very important but should be used sparingly especially in the case of sugar which offers your body mostly empty calories that provide you with little to no worthy nutritional value. Some fats and oils however are a must have for a healthy nutrition plan.

Here are a few food sources to spark ideas when planning meals:

Some of the best sources of carbohydrates include: Wheat of all varieties, corn, rice, barley, rye and oats. Varieties of potatoes like white, golden, red and sweet potatoes. The Legumes like pinto beans, peas, limas, navy beans, black beans, lentils and peanuts. Nuts of all kinds including coconuts.

Some of the best sources of fruits and vegetables include: All fruits fall into this category but some are very high in natural sugar such as grapes so be mindful of this when choosing your food.

Apples, lemons, oranges, apricots, peaches, grapes, pears, strawberries, avocadoes, tomatoes, watermelon, muskmelon, cantaloupe, casaba, honey dew, bananas, prunes, grapes, raisins, dried currants, figs, dates, persimmons, blackberries, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, currants, mulberries, gooseberries, huckleberries, olives, nectarines, pineapples, plums and raspberries.

With vegetables you also have lots of choices: Asparagus, beets, cabbage, carrots, turnips, parsnips, cauliflower, cucumber, egg plant, lettuce, celery, endive, romaine, chicory, cucumbers, cabbage, celery cabbage, parsley, field lettuce, okra, onions, radish, summer squash, spinach, kohlrabi, kale, Brussels sprouts, cone artichoke, chard, string beans, celery, turnip tops, lotus, endive, dandelion, oyster plant, rutabaga and garlic.

Some of the best sources of proteins include: Animal meat of most any kind like chicken, turkey, beef, lamb, veal, pork, geese and ducks. Legumes provide protein and are important to vegetarians. Fish is known to be beneficial for its “good oils” but is also high in protein. There are many choices when it comes to fish like shrimp, shell fish, herring, pickerel, salmon, trout, bass, pike, red snapper, tuna and a whole host of fresh and saltwater varieties not listed here.

Deep cold-water fish are prized for their valuable oils as opposed to freshwater fish so this is good to keep in mind when preparing your menu.

Nuts like almonds, Brazil nuts, walnuts, pecans, macadamia nuts, filberts and hazel nuts are all good protein sources and some of the best sources of dairy include: cheese, milk, yogurt, Greek yogurt, sour cream, and cottage cheese.

At the top of the Food Pyramid we have the fats and oils.

Some of the best sources of fats and oils include: Dairy products such as cream, butter and some of the richer cheeses. Fatty fish like herring, shad, salmon and trout being high up on the list. Legumes, nuts, coconuts, cotton seed oil, flax seed oil, sesame seed oil, olive oil and more.

Understanding the Food Pyramid helps you fit together a more balanced and healthy nutrition plan and is the basics of most preplanned packaged diets. Next, we’ll briefly touch on malnutrition with “Ending the Confusion about Malnutrition” and why it’s not just a third world problem…

And why it could be your problem too.

In the world of health and fitness developing a healthy nutrition plan is as important as, even more important, than your exercise plan. Both go hand in hand and if you are serious about getting fit and staying fit, it’s in your best interest to learn the basics of getting enough exercise but more importantly, what a healthy nutrition plan is.

The Basics of a Healthy Nutrition Plan

Here we’re going to give you that basic understanding and some ideas to set you in the motion of thinking the right way nutrition. By no means are we able to cover all the details, so in this report we’ll stick to the basics of a simple healthy nutrition plan.

You already know that it’s important to eat correctly and as the old saying goes “you are what you eat!” rings true. You know that if you eat too much you’ll tend to be overweight and on the opposite end of that spectrum, if you eat too little you will be thin, sickly and suffer from malnourishment.

What we need is a well-balanced approach to a healthy nutrition plan.

In this learning series will cover some things you’ve probably already heard before and if that’s you, just use these guidelines as a healthy nutrition “refresher”. Chances are that you’ll grab a few good tips out of this either way.

At the end of this guide we’ll talk about how combining certain foods can also be a big benefit to you too. Combining the right foods can help you jump start your metabolism and get you in the losing weight mode fast. We’ll also cover a little information about eating raw foods and the importance of detoxifying. So let’s get started…

Eating the right food is important to a healthy nutrition plan.

Everyone knows and agrees that you need food to survive. Finding good quality food and fresh drinking water has been at the center of our existence as humans beings since our beginnings. We can survive, albeit not as comfortably, without a house, vehicle, and fancy clothes but give it a few days without water and a few weeks without food and simply put – We’re toast!

You can find the evidence of this can in many third world countries where malnutrition runs rampant. Where they do have some food, the food that is available does not meet the daily nutritional requirements for the body. Many times the food that is available is in such short supply and there’s not enough food for anything that even resembles a healthy nutrition plan. All too many people feel lucky when they are able to eat just once a day!

This is extremely difficult and hard on the body especially for growing children.

Your body requires food for the energy you expend with every movement you make; even breathing requires effort and energy from your body. This effort needs food to fuel that function.

Eating the right food helps keep our body in top condition and ensures that our body performs correctly and to its potential. When you eat healthy nutritional foods you feel and look better. All of your vital organs work better when fed properly and you can see physical evidence of this in your hair and skin.

A word about healthy nutrition and diets

Everywhere you look nowadays you’ll find a barrage of information on diets, weight loss and exercise plans both old ones and the next new fad. To say the least, it can be overwhelming trying to pick and choose what diet you should do.

They all seem to tout “We’re the best”.

The danger with this sea of information lies in the fact that for most people, if you don’t know what to do, you’ll do nothing at all. That’s a normal reaction but the fact is that if you do nothing at all, you’ll stay on the same path you are already on.

You’ve heard the advertisements… Low carb diets, no carb diets, Atkins diet, the Paleo diet, Weight Watchers, South Beach, and the list goes on…

Some of these diets are really good diets but some are also so restrictive that you will never last long enough doing them to accomplish your goals and that is very disheartening.

When looking at changing the way you eat, you need to look at it just that way. You’re changing the way you eat, not that you are “going on a diet”. Look at it as a healthy lifestyle change and start changing it gradually over time. In other words, don’t associate it with dieting when what you’re really wanting is a long term healthy nutrition plan for eating better.

If you’re the kind of person that likes to have a regimen to follow then following a preplanned diet might be your very best choice. Go ahead and read the rest of this Healthy Nutrition guide and apply the principles when you are looking for the best diet for you to follow.

Another point is that you might have to try a couple of different diet plans to find the one that works best for your body. There’s nothing wrong with mixing and matching different elements from different diets to develop something that will work best for you.

Again, just follow and apply some of the principles in this guide. As you continue reading you’ll gain a pretty good basic understanding of how to proceed. With that thought in mind let’s move on to “A Healthy Nutrition Plan Starts with the New Food Pyramid” so that we have a better understanding of what to eat and how often.