For some time, I have been quite fed up with how all magazines, articles, and institutions keep informing us how important it is to exercise: exercise more intense, exercise, and you feel good; exercise, and you can exercise more; exercise and you lose weight – exercise exercise exercise! One crucial aspect is often forgotten: We do not have the energy to exercise if we do not eat right. That is why I am here to write about the importance of regular eating.
Nutrition topics are one-sided.
Why don’t we get the same wellness banging from nutrition topics like eating? Why are nutrition-related issues always about diets, counting calories or avoiding calories, or wondering about good and bad fats, telling us to give up carbs, go gluten-free, eat superfoods, or go another extreme diet program that might be trending? Oh, why, oh, why, oh, why?
Food and sleep
Actual health facts seem to get lost underneath all that exercise-wellness-crash-diets-avoiding-carbs-non-sense.
Facts like:
To survive, one has to get two things right:
1. To eat
2. To sleep.
These are the ultimate core pillars on which our health depends. If you don’t get these pieces in the right places, you might not want to consider (challenging) your exercise routines. I know this from my personal experience. When our son was a toddler, he did not let us get a good night’s sleep for four years. It was hard to imagine myself running joyfully to improve my physical condition, so I did not even bother to try. I focused on walking, bicycling, and other milder activities like relaxing in the sauna and ice swimming.
Eat! Regularly!
On the other hand, eating has played a vital role in keeping up my energy levels. On top of all the bad sleeping, if I had been eating on an irregular basis, drinking sugary drinks, and grasping for treats all day long, I would have made my days very heavy. As well as my body.
Eating regularly has been my secret weapon for optimizing my energy levels for the day.
The handy tool to remind me about it has been the app we developed: See How You Eat—Your Easiest Photo Food Diary Ever. Inside the app, I entered the times I wanted to be reminded about meal times, and every day, I was blown away by how quickly 2.5-3 hours passed. We hear from our app users feedback that this is the same learning experience our users get. Practical how simple and effective meal reminders are!
Eat regularly to have good energy!
Eat so you have the energy to play. This is what we tell children all the time. True to each word.
For years, I started my days with less than half a soy yogurt can and a few cups of coffee. For lunch, I had a light salad, no bread. Then, in the late afternoon, I was hit by fatigue and spent a lot of money keeping up my sugar levels by eating candy. (Ruining my mood and teeth too)
In all honesty, it wasn’t until our nutrition app development project that I learned about nutrition science. At the same time, I became more aware of my habits for the first time.
My best and biggest aha moments deal with eating processes. How we eat.
For me, the two important learning were:
1. Eating every 2-3 hours
2. Balance plate method: how you compose your plate.
Food gives you energy when these 2 conditions apply:
1. Your motor = your body gets food regularly
- 4-6 times a day (every 2,5 – 3 hours)
2. You fill your plate according to the balanced plate model
- Half of your plate is full of veggies, low-fat protein ingredients, and quality fiber-rich carbs
Eat regularly for a week or two!
I recommend you try out a regular eating rhythm. I bet you’ll soon have more energy to get things done. All the extra heaviness you’ve gained while eating irregularly will start to fall off. Eat, and you’ll do better!
Our Nutritionist, Marika, wrote earlier about this topic.
Read here what Marika says is the biggest challenge for people to start eating regularly.
Eat for energy,
Mia
Founder of See How You Eat apps
PS. If you want to permanently find peace with eating and balance on your plate, download the My Plate Coach app.
