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’Tis the Season for a Slice of Wellness Training

Amanda Hagerty
Reading time 3 Mins
Published on Dec 17
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I’m sure you’ve heard that good nutrition is important to good health. But how?

Well, good nutrition helps you in many important ways.  For example, eating healthy food helps to prevent diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure and maintain a healthy weight.  In order to get the nutrition you need every day to stay healthy, you must develop and maintain healthy eating habits. Unfortunately, many Americans have very unhealthy eating habits.

Healthy eating means eating three nutritious meals a day, consuming reasonable portion sizes, limiting intake of fat, sugar, and salt, snacking sensibly between meals, avoiding fad diets, and balancing calorie intake with physical activity.

Proper nutrition depends on a well-balanced diet that includes:

  • Carbohydrates – Carbohydrates give your body the energy it needs to function effectively all day.  Carbohydrates are found in fruits, vegetables, bread, cereal, pasta, rice, and milk and milk products.  In fact, 45% to 65% of your daily calorie intake should come from carbohydrates.
  • Fiber – you need about 14 grams of dietary fiber for every 1,000 calories you eat.
  • Protein – you should get 10% to 35% of daily calories from proteins.
  • Some unsaturated fat – To keep healthy, you should consume less than 10% of your daily calorie intake as fat.  Most of your fat intake should be unsaturated, as opposed to saturated, fat.  Saturated fat is found in foods such as high-fat cheese, high-fat meat, butter, and ice cream.  Nuts, vegetable oil, and fish are good sources of poly- and monounsaturated fats.

Sugar is found naturally in foods such as fruits, vegetables, and milk and milk products.  Some foods include added sugar, and these foods are less nutritious than foods containing only natural sugar.  To keep healthy, try to avoid added sugar, which provides no nutritional value and also contributes to tooth decay.

Also, remember that fluids, vitamins, and minerals are part of good nutrition, too.  You need about eight glasses of water or other low-sugar fluids a day.

Finally, even though you’ve got a lot of great choices here in your fridge, I’m sure you eat out sometimes.  When you do, remember to make healthy choices.  Restaurant or takeout food can be high in fat, sugar, and salt, and low in required nutrients.  When you eat out, try to pick lower-fat foods, choose smaller portions, go broiled or baked instead of fried, order a vegetables or salad, and skip dessert.

These tips can help keep your employees healthier, more focused, and productive at work.  Happy (and safe) Holidays from everyone at Sheakley UniComp!

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