This week we’ll go through the how the Dietary Guidelines apply to men 19 years and older. It’s really just the number of serves per day of each of the food groups that change between men and women.
Serving Sizes: The serve sizes are the same for people of all ages weather male of female it’s just the number of serves that vary. For meat, fish and poultry the serves are generally in grams. This isn’t usually too hard to work out because generally these things are sold by weight. A serve of red meat for example is 100g raw, so if you buy 500g it will give you 5 serves. A small can of tuna is about 1 serve of fish. So if you had 1 small can of tuna for lunch and 1 ½ serves of red meat for dinner that’s that food group covered. A serve of nuts or seeds is 30g. 30g of nuts is about one hand full and 30g of seeds is about 2 tablespoons. For vegies, legumes, dairy and some fruits the serves are in half cups or cups. Below are a few things that are around the same size as a half a cup. If you picture those things as you serve up your meals, you won’t go too far wrong. A little bit either way won’t make too much difference, just be as close as you can. The table below gives you the number of serves per day for each of the 5 groups for men. Well that’s about it for The Australian Dietary Guidelines. I hope you’ve found it useful. As I said last week, I'll begin putting up some sample daily eating plans and recipes soon. If you have any healthy recipes that I could analyse and share over the blog, let me know. As always if you have found this post helpful please share it with your friends on Facebook or share the link to the Astute Fitness Blog www.astutefitness.com.au/blog to help use get our message out, Thanks, Daryl
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Now that we’ve covered all the food groups I need to give you an easy way to put it all together! This week we’ll go over the info women aged 19 to 50 will need. There are just a couple of changes for women 51 to 70 and 70+ which I will include. Serving Sizes: For meat, fish and poultry the serves are generally in grams. This isn’t usually too hard to work out because generally these things are sold by weight. A serve of red meat for example is 100g raw, so if you buy 500g it will give you 5 serves. A small can of tuna is about 1 serve of fish. So if you had 1 small can of tuna for lunch and 1 ½ serves of red meat for dinner that’s that food group covered. A serve of nuts or seeds is 30g. 30g of nuts is about one hand full and 30g of seeds is about 2 tablespoons. For vegies, legumes, dairy and some fruits the serves are in half cups or cups. Below are a few things that are around the same size as a half a cup. If you picture those things as you serve up your meals, you won’t go too far wrong. A little bit either way won’t make too much difference, just be as close as you can. The table below gives you the number of serves per day for each of the 5 groups for women. That gives you an easy way to construct a healthy eating plan that suits you! To get results though, you’ll need to be consistent. This should be part of a long term lifestyle change.
I will start putting some sample daily eating plans and recipes on the blog in a few weeks! As always if you have found this post helpful please share it with your friends on Facebook or share the link to the Astute Fitness Blog www.astutefitness.com.au/blog to help use get our message out, Thanks, Daryl Sugar has been getting a lot of attention in diet books, magazines and TV over the last few years. When they talk about sugar they are referring to refined sugars like sucrose (table sugar). This type of sugar has definitely contributed a lot of empty kJs to our modern diet, displacing good nutritious food. A lot of the foods that are high in sugar are also high in fat and low in fibre. Foods like cakes, pastries, biscuits, ice-cream, confectionaries, soft drinks and fruit juices all contain a lot of refined sugars.
In a few fad diet books doing the rounds at the moment, they give the impression that sugar is toxic. Anything in large enough quantities can become toxic, but It’s important to understand that refined sugar is just a carbohydrate (glucose combined with fructose) and all carbohydrates are broken down to either glucose, fructose or galactose during digestion before being absorbed into the blood stream. We all need carbohydrates we just have to make sure that we mostly get our carbs from relatively unprocessed fresh produce, so we not only get glucose and fructose but also get fibre and the many other nutrients available from whole foods. Fructose has been getting a bit of bad press over the last few years, and not without some justification. In the USA it is used as a cheaper alternative to sweeten processed foods and drinks and has added a lot of empty kJ’s to the American diet. The refined form of fructose which is part of table sugar is something you should aim to minimise in your diet, but just because the natural sugar in fruit is fructose doesn’t mean you should avoid fruit. All fruits contain a lot of water and fibre, so are quite bulky and hard to over consume. In comparison to their volume they don’t actually contain a lot of fructose and they are packed full of essential nutrients. If you choose foods form the 5 food groups in the recommended servings, you won’t need to worry too much about refined sugar. Refined sugar is mainly in the category of discretionary foods which are ok if they are not part of your everyday diet (save party foods for parties). As always if you have found this post helpful please share it with your friends on Facebook or share the link to the Astute Fitness Blog www.astutefitness.com.au/blog to help use get our message out, Thanks, Daryl Bench press is a great exercise for building strength in your shoulders, chest and triceps. to get the most out of this exercise it's important to have good technique! the following video will give you the basics of how to do the barbell bench press. As with most exercises, it's sometimes hard to monitor your own form while you are actually doing the exercise. Having your PT correct you while performing the lift will give you a better chance of developing good technique habits. It's also important to make sure the weight isn't to heavy. If you use a weight that is to heavy, you'll lose form and build bad habits. In the long term you will be way in front by slowly developing good exercise technique. An important note to make is that you need to make sure that you balance this exercise out by working the opposing muscle groups. exercises like bent over barbell row, dumbbell bent row, bent lateral raises and seated row are great for balancing out the strength in your upper body and helping to maintain good posture and healthy shoulders joints. I will be putting up videos on these exercises and more over the coming weeks and months. Share the link to our you tube channel with your friends!! Astute Fitness You tube Salt is needed for good health, but like most things you can have too much of a good thing! Too much salt in your diet is a risk factor for high blood pressure, stroke and kidney disease. A lot of the excess salt in the Australian diet comes from processed and packaged foods, just another reason to stay away from these foods as much as possible. It’s also a good idea to minimise the amount of salt you add to cooking and to not add extra salt at the table!
We all need some salt in our diet, but most people will get enough from the food they eat without adding extra. Salt (Sodium Chloride) is about 40% sodium. Sodium is easily absorbed through the intestinal tract. Once absorbed into the blood stream sodium is filtered out by the kidneys which then precisely returns the exact amount needed to your body. The excess sodium is excreted by the kidneys. Sodium is involved in maintaining fluid balance in your body. Its main role is in maintaining extracellular fluid (the fluid outside and between cells). Sodium also maintains acid balance in your body and is essential for nerve signal transmission and muscle contraction. Too much salt in the diet is linked to high blood pressure. Reducing salt intake has been shown to reduce blood pressure in both people with or without high blood pressure and causes no harm to either. For this reason, the Australian Dietary Guidelines advise that you should choose foods low in salt and not add salt while cooking or at the table. The Upper Level of Intake advised in the Australian Nutrient Reference Values (NRV) is 2.3 grams (approximately 1 teaspoon). We can generally get enough salt through eating unprocessed foods, without the need to add extra salt while cooking, through processed foods or by adding salt at the table. If you follow the Australian Dietary guidelines, you shouldn’t have to worry too much about excess salt in your diet. As always if you have found this post helpful please share it with your friends on Facebook or share the link to the Astute Fitness Blog www.astutefitness.com.au/blog to help use get our message out, Thanks, Daryl There a few types of fat that we come across in our diet each day, some are considered healthy and some not so healthy. The thing to remember is, whether healthy or not healthy they can all be unhealthy if over consumed. All types of fat contain 37 kilojoules per gram compared to carbs and protein which contain around 17 kilojoules per gram. A lot of fatty foods are also low in fibre and in most cases contain no fibre at all, making them very energy dense. It’s very easy to add a lot of extra kJs to your day if your diet is too high in fat. If you’ve been following my “Healthy eating made easy” series, you’ll understand how too many kJs are a major cause of a lot of health issues in Australia.
The types of fat that are considered healthy are the unsaturated, mono unsaturated and poly unsaturated fats. Mono unsaturated fats are found in things like olives, some nuts, avocado and canola oil. Poly unsaturated fats are often talked about for their health benefits. You might know them as omega 3 and omega 6 oils. The omega 3 oils that get the most press are the long chained variety DHA and EPA. These are found in fish, especially oily fish and also in lean red meat. The short chained variety can be found in nuts, seeds and vegetables. These short chained omega 3’s can be converted to the longer chained omega 3’s in your body. These unsaturated fats help to reduce the risk of heart disease, and lower cholesterol among other health benefits. The Mediterranean diet is relatively high in mono unsaturated oil, as well as omega 3 and omega 6 oils. These fats are all liquid at room temperature. The less healthy fats are saturated fats and trans fats. There are certain fad diets that suggest that saturated fats have no negative health impacts, but there is very little evidence to support this. There is however a huge amount of research showing the benefits of a diet lower in saturated fats. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that trans fats are definitely not good for you and have been shown to increase the risk of heart disease. Trans fats occur naturally in small amounts in certain foods such as dairy and meat products but are also produced in some types of food processing such as the hydrogenation of polyunsaturated oils to produce margarines. Look for margarines that are free of, or low in trans fats. Trans fats are also found in many packaged foods, another reason to stay away from packaged and highly processed foods. Cholesterol is another type of fat which has been misunderstood over the years. There was a time when we thought that dietary cholesterol was the main cause of arthrosclerosis (a build-up of fatty deposits on the inner walls of arteries), we now know that saturated fat and trans fat are the major contributor to this condition. How can you tell if it’s a good fat or a bad fat? Generally, the fats that are considered healthy fats are liquid at room temperature and bad fats are solid at room temperature. That’s ok if you are looking at the fats on their own, but it’s not always that easy to tell when the fat is contained in a food. For instance, avocado and nuts contain healthy fats but you can’t tell if they are liquid or not because they are contained within the food. In general, if the fat is from a plant based food it will be unsaturated, but this isn’t always the case. Coconut oil for instance is one of the most highly saturated fat available. If you limit the amount of packaged and processed foods and other high fat foods like pastries, cakes, deep fried foods and red meats you will be fine. I think we all know that anyway, the hard part is actually doing it. If you can the benefits are well worth the sacrifice. You don’t have to get to carried away with reading nutritional tables on packaged foods, just minimise those types of products and try to stick as closely to the Australian Dietary Guidelines as you can. In a few weeks I will summarise this into a simple set of steps, that will make it easy for you to keep on track! As always if you have found this post helpful please share it with your friends on Facebook or share the link to the Astute Fitness Blog www.astutefitness.com.au/blog to help use get our message out, Thanks, Daryl |
AuthorDaryl Maddern Archives
July 2019
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