Balancing meals:
The average college student is often pressed for time, under a lot of stress and eating on the go. You may find it difficult to avoid bad habits like skipping meals or frequenting fast food restaurants. But eating a healthy and balanced diet can help you feel better, cope with stress and perform better in the class-room and on the athletic field. It really isn't that hard to get started.
Getting all your nutrients from your meals should be your top priority. Each meal is another chance for you to feed your body and take advantage of the abundant variety of foods available to you. So spice it up and try new foods as often as you can.
Here are a few tips from our nutritionist on how to balance each meal:
Breakfast
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Why? Because when you sleep, your body's metabolism slows down and after 8 hours or more of not eating anything, it goes into a state called fasting state, where your body tends to conserve more and burn less. Now breakfast is exactly what you need to Break the Fast and go into a metabolic state where your body will burn more calories and give you the energy you need to go through you day.
So eating something within an hour of waking is essential to get your engine running and prepare for your day. If you don't feel hungry in the morning, it's simply because your body's found a way to adapt to not getting breakfast and it continues working at a slower than optimum level without asking for food. This means you're burning less energy than you could be burning if you ate breakfast.
What do you need to eat in the morning to get your body up to speed with the physically and mentally demanding day ahead?
The four food groups you need for breakfast:
- A whole grain: One serving of any whole grain you like. It could be 2 slices of whole wheat bread, some high fiber cereal, or 1/2 cup of oatmeal, or grab a low sugar cereal bar
- A protein: You can get your protein in the morning from a tablespoon of natural peanut or almond butter, a boiled egg, cheese, a slice of turkey or a small handful of dry roasted nuts
- A dairy: Breakfast is also a good time to get one of your calcium requirements for the day by drinking a glass of milk or having some yogurt or cottage cheese
- A fruit: This can be any fruit you like - have it with breakfast or take it with you to have as a morning snack. Try different fruits often and make you own smoothies with fresh or frozen fruits if you have the time.
Start having all the four food groups for breakfast and see how much better you will feel all day and how your appetite has changed.
Lunch and Dinner
Choosing what to eat from the local restaurant or the dinning hall can be daunting if you don't know what you need to have in your plate. So here are a few tips to guide to make better choices easier.
- Two vegetables: make sure your plate has at least one or two portions of vegetables every meal. Each portion is about the size of the fist of your hand. Try different colored vegetables and choose a variety of different ones every week. Vegetables are low in calories, high in fiber and loaded with vitamin and minerals, so it's a great way to give your body all the nutrients it needs without eating too many calories.
- A carbohydrate: you need to have one portion of carbohydrate with eat meal. That's about the size of your fist. So choose a whole grain bread, pasta or wild rice, or get your carbs from vegetables like potatoes, beets or cooked carrots. The more variety you give your body, the more likely you will be to meet all your nutrient requirements without having to eat portions that are too large.
- A protein: getting your protein requirement with each meal is easy if you make sure you have one portion of meat, cheese, beans, nuts, soy or low fat cheese with you meal. This will ensure you have all the building blocks to build muscle and also to help you get the vitamins you need that are only found in protein rich foods.
So now that you know what are the basic elements needed to balance your meals, it's just a matter of making the best food choices, as often as possible.
It's clear that you can't have a perfectly balanced meal every day, so just learn to balance your meals over a couple of days. So if you had too much carbs at lunch, skip the carbs at dinner, or if you had a big meal at lunch, have a light dinner, or if you didn't get enough vegetable in one meal, try to have extra vegetables the next meal. And so balancing your meals can be as simple as that.
To learn more about balancing your meals contact our nutritionist at 212-443-1122 for an appointment.