Healthy Eating Tips for making every week a “FITWEEK”

Once you get your body moving at FREE classes during FITWEEK, it is important to make sure it’s getting all the nutrition it need to help keep you healthy and fit!  Elm City Market, a FITWEEK sponsor, has a whole schedule of FREE cooking and wellness classes during FITWEEK that can arm you with all kinds of great tips! 

Check out the schedule: http://www.elmcitymarket.coop/fit-week-2012/

Here’s a list of tips to get you started:

• Environmental toxins, cigarette smoke, alcohol consumption, additives, and artificial ingredients can deplete nutrients from your body and possibly lead to disease. If you engage in physical activity, your body requires more micronutrients and phytonutrients to supply energy for your cells.  By supplementing with a multivitamin, you can help prevent deficiencies and improve the overall state of your health.  Calcium supplements are also important, particularly for women over the age of 35, when bone mass may not be replaced as quickly as it is lost.
• Antioxidants are found in a wide-range of superfoods, including berries, tomatoes and green tea. Nutrient-rich superfoods can attribute most of their ability to help prevent deficiencies and improve overall health to a high level of antioxidant compounds. Enjoying antioxidant-rich foods helps to reduce unstable oxygen molecules. These oxygen molecules degrade the cellular structure, and are through to be one of the fundamental causes of aging and chronic ailments, such as cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and arthritis.
• As your parents said growing up - Eat your greens!  These are good sources of vitamin B and minerals, adding a wide variety of leafy greens to your plate, every day, ensures that you will reap healthy benefits!
• Experience Hunger: Right before you enjoy a meal or snack, turn your attention to your sensation of hunger. On a scale of 1 – 7, with 7 being as hungry as possible, and 1 being not hungry at all, where are you on the scale? Mindfully consider how you want to use this awareness. Do you still want to eat? If so, how much?
• Experience Fullness: As you enjoy a meal or snack, let yourself connect with the feelings in your stomach. Pay attention to how the hunger signals from your stomach shift and disappear. Continue eating and focus your awareness on your sensation of fullness. On a scale of 1 – 7, with 7 being as hungry as possible, and 1 being not hungry at all, where are you on the scale? Consider how you want to use this awareness. Do you want to eat more? If so, how much?
• The antioxidants found in superfoods are a class of vitamins, minerals and enzymes that help eliminate chemically active oxygen molecules thought to contribute to aging and disease. Substituting superfoods for mainstays in your regular eating plan is a simple lifestyle change that’s not only painless, but delicious too.
• Beans and lentils, members of the legume family, are an excellent source of hearty, low-fat plant protein.  Simmered in soups or blended into tangy spreads, legumes are a versatile and delicious introduction to superfoods. Soluble fiber from beans and lentils, as a part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, may reduce the risk of heart disease.