No matter your goal is to lose weight or gain muscles, all depends what you eat. So we need better understanding that what is required by our body and what are source for those.
Food Basics
Before jumping to discuss about foods, let’s understand food components first. Our food is divided into many components:
Carbohydrates – This is main fuel for our system to be functioning. Our digestive system breaks food into Glucose, a hormone called insulin is released by pancreas to absorb this glucose to use or store in bloodstream. This glucose is being used by our brain and other body parts to keep functioning.
Proteins – Protein is used to build and gain muscles. Our body break protein and convert into amino acid. Protein also can convert into glucose if body did not find enough glucose from carbohydrates.
Fats – It convert into fatty acid like Omega-3. Fats can also convert into glucose when body do not find enough glucose from Carbs. Other components are Vitamins required for chemical reactions, Minerals to functioning properly, Fiber for better digestion, low cholesterol and water.
Healthy Food
Fruits and vegetables are healthy because they contain a lot of water and fiber. Fiber calorie does not count because that is not digestive by our body.
Food, high in protein is also good because our body has to work 20% -30% extra to digest protein food to generate glucose, which is good if you are losing fat because it will burn our calories. Egg, meat, milk, beans, lentils are good source of protein. Protein is must for maintaining and gaining muscles. So even if you are losing weight, to maintain muscles, you should take food which is high in protein.
For Carbohydrates, brown rice, sweet potatoes and oatmeal are good. Simple sugar foods are not good because our body do not need to work to digest them to generate glucose. Overall food which is not processed is healthier, processed foods have a lot of sugars and preservatives, which reduces nutrition quality of the food.
Can I Eat Pizza?
Our body do not care what is source of food, if that is getting what they need. But I will not recommend you to eat junk foods because they are processed, dense in calories and tasty. So when you will start eating them, chances are high that you will eat more and ultimately will end up taking more calories than what you should. Another reason is that if you take limited junk food, you will feel hungry all the time. One small pizza slice contains 300 calories which is equivalent of 600 grams of apples. So if you eat one slice, pretty soon you will by hungry and eat more.
No matter what your fitness goals are, your diet is most important. You will see a lot of people who do a lot of hard work in gym but still overweight. It is very unfortunate that people always jump on exercise but never think about nutrition.
Overall at the end of day, calories matters. You take fewer calories than required, you will lose weight. You will take more than required, you will gain muscles and weight. So if you losing weight, carefully choose your meal which should have high protein, fiber and other components with fewer calories like fruits, vegetables, oat meal, brown rice, egg white, chicken breast, lentils, nuts and tofu. It will help you stay away from feeling hungry, maintain your muscles and still you will see results.