Better Health and Fitness
Better Health and Fitness

Fitness Tip - Breads and Vegetables

Breads and Vegetables? What do these have in common? Not much. The reason that we want to consider these two staples of a diet is for opposite reasons.

Breads are a nightmare for many people trying to cut down on the carbs in their diet. There is good reason to cut the carbs as most people are taking in too many carbs in the first place. In saying that cutting down carbs is good I am not writing about a zero carb policy like with the Atkins diet but instead just talking about cutting a quarter or half of your carbs out and not replacing them and thus you will have cut your calorie intake quite substantially. Bread as any diabetic can tell you is a very addictive food. To most people the cutting of bread from their diet is one of the biggest sacrifices they can make and once it is out of your diet for a week or two you will feel better and will not have those cravings anymore. I know this from experience as I have a bagel every morning (equivalent to 5 slices of bread) and for a week I went without and felt badly in the morning but by the next week I was not missing it at all.

Vegetables are also carbs but are much better for you and in the typical North American diet most of us would be very short of the six or so servings that we should have. The advantages to increasing your vegetables are threefold. First vegetables are fairly high in Water and fiber which helps your body to keep everything running smooth. Secondly vegetables are a great source for most of your vitamins and minerals and thirdly vegetables are filling and will keep you from getting up after your meal to grab something sweet.

Here are a couple of strategies to follow:

When Eating a meal look at what is white on your plate and try to cut it down on the amount you eat. This mean that you would stop eating Bread, rice, potatoes. These are all carbohydrates and even though carbs are usually fine in a diet they usually are eaten to excess.

Colorful foods on your plate are the veggies. If you are hungry from not having enough of the carbs that you took off of your plate you can replace them easily with vegetables. These veggies will give you more nutrients especially the minerals most people are lacking.


Copyright 2005 Bill Nadraszky
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