Healthy Diet

The number one way to prevent obesity is by eating right and not over eating. Often as Belizean we fail to keep track of what we are eating, how much we eat and if it is healthy. An early adult from the age of 20-30 need around 2,400 calories daily for women and male about 2,600 calories daily.

According to the Food-Based Dietary Guidelines for Belize food that we should consume:

• Emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products
• Includes lean meats, poultry, fish, beans, eggs, and nuts
• Is low in saturated fats, transfats, cholesterol, salt (sodium), and added sugars
• Stays within your daily calorie needs

Food that is healthy, tasty and rich with nutrients can still be consumed. We often believe that healthy food will not be filling or are not taste. If you want to eat right there are many food to choose from. What is important to know, is the portion of foods you need and how many calories you can get from that portion. If you measure your portion and calories you can eat within the calories you need. It is important to incorporate fruits and vegetable to our meals. Eat calcium rich food like low fat milk such as LaLa milk and yogurts. Locate fruits and vegetable are best and healthier because you can get them fresh. Whole grain products are best because it contains fibres making it lower in calories and is more filling resulting in small portion. Whole grain contains fibres which help the digestion and constipation. These include whole wheat, pasta or cracker, oatmeal, brown rice, popcorn etc.

For instance a breakfast that includes two slice of bread 140 calories, and egg 75 calories, and 1 cup of natural unsweetened orange juice 80 calories which will total to 295 calories. Some calories can still be added to this meal.

According to the Dietary food base guideline of Belize vegies such as tomatoes, cucumber, cauliflower, and dark green leafy vegies can be eaten in any amount for portion. Hence a lunch that include some steam cauliflower, ½ cup carrots 36 calories, cucumbers, ½ cup steamed pumpkin, 2 small pieces of pigtail 150 calories and 1 cup of rice 140 calories with ½ cup of stew red beans 160 calories and 1 cup fruit juice with 1 tsp sugar 100 calories will total to 586 calories plus more that are not accounted for within the veggies that can be eaten in various portions.

Therefore out of 2,400 or 2,600 calories within two meals you only consume 881 to 1,000 calories. If you plan your meal and measure your portions you will meet you requirements and still have room for healthy snakes like nuts, fruits, and even pastries. However, pastries should not be consumed daily. Just count your calories and eat the right portions.

 

Physical Activities:

Physical activities are very important to maintain a healthy weight and to lose weight. Most people believe that to lose weight you need to decrease and workout hard. However, this is not the case in order for the body to burn its excess fat or calories the body need a little more than usual to produce energy to burn off the excess. Hence, if you are taking in the right amount of calories it is recommended to add the calories that are burnt to the baseline calories you are taking daily. The baseline requirement is the amount of calories that is needed to maintain a certain weight. For instance, a moderately active 125-pound woman needs 1,875 to 2,000 calories, a 145-pound moderately active individual needs about 2,175 to 2,320 calories and a 170-pound man with a moderate physical activity level requires about 2,550 to 2,720 calories each day to maintain a healthy body weight.

To maintain weight one can simply decrease calories but to maintain weight lose one most do physical exercise. Physical activities varies from person to person however to maintain weight lose it is recommended that one should do 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity, or an equivalent mix of the two each week. Some people may require more, some less. Moderate physical activities are those that increase your heart rate and breathing. These includes briskly walking for about 15 minute a mile, riding a bike, light yard work such as raking, bagging leaves or mowing the lard.  Vigorous exercise is those that increase heart rate substantially and breath is too fast and hard that you can’t even hold a conversation. This includes running or jogging, jumping rope, riding stationary bikes, play competitive sport like football or basketball.

Moderate intensity cardio:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YJkvUXIGi0

High intensity exercises:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs4YFl3eUPo

Maintaining weight:

By eating right and continue with moderate physical activities will help to maintain weight.  Failure to eat the right portions and right calories intake you can gain or loss weight. If you stop exercising you can also gain weight because you are not burning excess calories. However, if you continue to exercise and eat right and still see weight gain them you need to increase the intensity of you exercise as the body will adapt to the exercise that you were doing. This will not be effective anymore.

In this Obesity pamphet from the Ministry of Health in Belize you can fine more information and recommendations.

Behaviour change: Getting rid of bad habits.

The lifestyle that we practice, that is heavily influenced by technology, makes room for bad habits to exist. Like sitting and watch television or surfing the internet all day and feasting on junk food contribute a lot to obesity. Firstly, cutting off junk food from daily diet will help tremendously in weight loss. Also, Belizean love soft drinks, these beverages has too much sugar that the body need in a day and will you drink a coke and eat a couple packs of biscuits or chip you will definitely rack up your calories. Substitute junk food for an apple, a whole wheat sandwich or carrot stick etc.; once in a while it is okay to have cake, pies, brownies and all the good stuff.

It is not healthy to eat while watch television or videos because you don’t realize the amount of food you consume and often end up eating more than required. Some people like eating out or get food delivery, try to eat food that are not high in calories like fry foods, sugary foods etc. If you can avoid take out and prepare your own meal it will be healthier and sometime cheaper. Some family have a day that they go and eat out, if you do eat out more than 5-6 times a week try healthier choices that fast food, pizzas, also watch portions that you eat. Most fast food and Belizean restaurants but serve food by portion but by serving. Sometime a serving can contain two time the portion size or more.

A famous bad habit that early adult surely abuse alcohol consumption. Alcohol contains empty calories which the body has no use for. Therefore, the body will get rid of it and it becomes a priority, this in turn makes the body deficient in burning fat for energy because it will get rid of the empty calories first. This then leave excess fat and nutrients. If you are not eating right and consume alcohol more that you should will definitely make you store more fat; increasing weight. Imagine you start partying from a Friday night drinking beers which is rich in calories, or mix drink that are mixed with soft drinks or creams etc. all these have calories and the rum itself has calories. 1 gram of alcohol had about 7 calories. In a Belikin beer there is 144 caloires alone, multiply it by 8 and you are consuming 1152 calories just from drinking, if you add for meals and snack for the day you will surely pass the daily requirement.