Fat Burning with A Balanced Diet

Along with exercise, a balanced diet is essential for burning body fat. A balanced diet means obtaining the correct amounts and types of foods to supply nutrition and fuel for maintaining body tissues, cells, and organs. The term "balanced" implies that a diet meets your nutritional needs and not supplying too much of any nutrients. A balanced diet provides enough energy and nutrition for growth and development. To achieve a balanced diet, you must eat a variety of foods from each of these food groups: meats and Protein, grains, fruits, vegetables, diary and fats and oils.

General Guidelines:

- Balance the amount of calorie intake and the amount of calorie burn, that is do not eat more than the body uses.
- Eat small and frequent meals throughout the day instead of three large ones.
- Skipping meals or fasting has adverse effect to overall fitness, it does not help burning body fat. A mechanism within the body tells it to retain fat when food is in short supply. Therefore skipping meals leads to a reduction in activity level rather than burning body fat.
- Every meal should include carbohydrates, protein and good fats, in the ratios of 40% carbs, 40% protein, 20 % fat.
- Drink plenty of water, water helps to flush your systems.
- Limit cholesterol intake to less than 300 mg per day.
- Use less than one teaspoon of sodium per day.
- Avoid processed and fast foods, this means giving up sodas, candies and chips, replacing processed foods with fresh and natural food, like fruits, vegetables and lean meats.

Myths and facts about Carbohydrates, Proteins and Fats

Carbohydrates provide a source of energy. Carbohydrates are found in potatoes, rice, whole grain cereals, yoghurt, vegetables, beans and bread. The digestive system converts carbohydrates in food into glucose. The glucose, in turn, is broken down into carbon dioxide and water. Any glucose not used by the cells is converted into glycogen - another form of carbohydrate that is stored in the muscles. However, glycogen capacity in your body is limited to about 350 grams, once this maximum has been reached, any excess glucose is converted into fat.

Proteins are used for growth and repair of muscle and other body tissues. Sources of proteins are meat, fish, poultry, eggs and plant foods like beans, peas, nuts, seeds, grain, and soybeans. Proteins contain Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Sulphur. Proteins are large molecules, so it cannot get into the blood directly, they are broken down into amino acids by the digestive system. There are over 20 different amino acids. The body cells can turn the amino acids back into protein in the correct order. There are millions of possible combinations or sequences of amino acids, your DNA has the information and know how to make proteins. The body cells get their amino acids from the blood stream.

Fats are a group of compounds made up of fatty acids and glycerol. The fatty acids are the base units of fat and it is their chemical structure that determines if a fat is saturated or unsaturated. Saturated fats are a type of fatty acid and they are found in animal foods like meat, poultry, whole milk dairy foods. Plant fats are found in coconut, palm and palm kernel oil. Saturated fats cause the liver to make more of the bad cholesterol, thus increasing the risk for heart disease.

Unsaturated fats are divided into two types, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. Monounsaturated fats, which are found in canola and olive oils, help reduce the bad cholesterol and can boost the good cholesterol. Polyunsaturated fats lower both the good and bad cholesterol and are found in corn, safflower, sunflower and soybean oils.