How Processed Foods Affect Your Health
It takes more than just exercise to be your healthiest. We understand that at Rising Fitness in Houston, TX and include both nutrition and exercise in our program. What you eat makes a huge difference in your health. If you’re constantly consuming junk food and highly processed foods, you won’t have the building blocks to become your fittest and may even be sabotaging your goals to be healthier. It’s more than just empty calories you’re consuming, there are other reasons highly processed food should not be part of your diet.
Sugar is one reason processed foods are so bad.
Whether it’s high fructose corn syrup—HFC, sucrose, or one of the other 56 names for sugar, it’s not good for your body, even if it’s natural. Sugar can cause blood pressure to rise, lead to obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease and dental carriers. The vast majority of highly processed foods contain sugar, even ones you wouldn’t suspect. Food you might think of as healthy, since it’s labeled low fat, may have the fat removed, but it’s replaced with sugar to make it taste better. All take a toll on your health.
Highly processed foods contain man-made additives that affect your body.
If you read the labels of many processed foods, you’ll notice that it’s like reading a chemistry book. Many of the additives are made in the lab. For instance, HFC isn’t natural, no matter what the commercial says. It’s created by adding an enzyme produced by bacteria to the glucose from potatoes or corn to increase fructose, then added to pure corn syrup. The new sugar is between 43 and 55% fructose and the rest glucose. Other types of sugar are unhealthy, but this Frankenstein sugar affects your body even worse because it’s put in a high percentage of processed foods.
It’s also about what processed foods don’t contain.
Processing takes out a lot of nutrients and removes the benefits from the whole food. For instance, refined flour has had bran and germ, leaving only the endosperm. While all the parts of wheat have some nutrients, the part that’s left, the endosperm, is mostly starchy carbohydrates to provide energy. The bran that’s removed is high in fiber, antioxidants and B vitamins, while the germ has healthy fat, protein, B vitamins and minerals. Food with processed flour not only has fewer nutrients, but it has also less fiber to keep you feeling full longer. Since many highly processed foods are high in additives, sugar and refined flour, they pose a triple threat.
- The use of enzymes from bacteria has been increased dramatically in the last 30 years, and so has the problem of obesity. Much of that has come from HFCS. Is the connection to the enzymes or the HFCS?
- Processed meats, like hot dogs and luncheon meat have preservatives that increase shelf life. The nitrates used can increase blood pressure and cause health issues, like increased risk of diabetes and obesity.
- Much of the fiber and healthy fat has been removed from processed foods. Both fiber and fat help you feel fuller longer. Fiber helps prevent blood sugar spikes and healthy fat is necessary to burn body fat.
- It’s not just processed food, but also processed drinks that can affect your health. Even if you opt for diet drinks, studies show it can increase visceral fat, the fat around the midsection that’s most dangerous to your health.
For more information, contact us today at Rising Fitness Gym
Our workouts focus on all types of exercise, since you need all types of fitness. I’ve often been asked why cardio is so good for weight loss. If you’ve read other blogs, you’ll notice that the focus is often on strength building, since it builds muscle tissue as it burns calories, but that doesn’t mean cardio doesn’t isn’t good. In fact, it is. Studies show that cardio torches calories and some cardio does it more than others do. For instance, HIIT cardio workouts, where you modify the intensity, going from high intensity to recovery and back, burns huge amounts.
You may have heard you should stop eating after 6pm or some other arbitrary time like 8 pm and wondered why. There are some good reasons you should do it. Some of the reasons are based in truth and some are founded in fiction. One of the most popular myths is that everything you eat after 6 pm turns to fat. That’s simply not true. A calorie is a calorie no matter what time you eat it, whether it’s six in the morning or six in the evening. However, newer studies indicate the later you eat, the more food it takes to make you feel full.
You need to fuel your body before a workout, contrary to many opposing myths. However, choosing the right food and focusing on the timing is extremely important when choosing pre-workout foods. The closer you get to the time you workout, the less you should eat. You need fuel, but it shouldn’t come from fat either, but be a blend of carbs and protein. Studies show that the right type of fuel can improve your performance and a study involving cyclists showed it even helps burn more fat. There are some good examples of beneficial pre-workout foods that will help you achieve your goals.
If you live in Houston, Texas, you probably have noticed an increase in the options and brands of kombucha at your grocery or local health food store. You probably also note that it is a bit pricey. Is it really worth the price? If you really like the taste, you don’t need to go any further. It’s about the same price as a Starbucks specialty coffee. If you only drink it for its health benefits, finding out whether it’s truly healthy is important.
There are many reasons people experience anxiety. Some of them are obvious, like a letter from the IRS or giving a speech in front of coworkers. Others aren’t quite as obvious and you don’t know the cause, just the feeling of being anxious. You can do several things to avoid that feeling in the pit of your stomach, some of these involve deep breathing, mind tricks or even medication. However, one option that works and has no side effects is eating bananas.
Most people think signs of an unhealthy gut are strictly limited to digestive issues, but that’s just not true. While diarrhea, vomiting and stomach aches are a sign you have something bad going on in your digestion, sometimes the symptoms don’t seem to be related to your stomach at all. A healthy gut is one that has a well-balanced microbiome. Your gut microbiome is the collection of microscopic creatures, like bacteria and fungi, that live in your digestive system. Leaky gut syndrome is another potential from an unhealthy gut.
One reason Rising Fitness in Houston, TX, is so popular is that we not only work on problems you have now, we help prevent future problems. People often complain they can’t lose weight because of a slow metabolism, but that doesn’t mean they can’t speed up their metabolism, so they don’t have to fight weight gain forever. Learning how to boost your metabolism and then doing those things that make a difference may be the most important part of our training. It not only helps you get fit now, it helps you stay fit in the future.
Inflammation is a necessary function of the body to protect it from invading bacteria and harmful substances. However, when inflammation becomes chronic, it can actually cause damage to the body and lead to health issues, which can include cardiovascular problems. You can manage chronic inflammation by making some healthy lifestyle changes, such as switching your diet, getting adequate sleep and hydration and exercising regularly.
Even if you don’t like regular winter squash, you’ll probably like spaghetti squash. It’s a type of winter squash that when cooked, can be separated from the outer shell in strings that resemble spaghetti, but is low in calories and loaded with nutrition. Another big benefit of spaghetti squash is its high fiber content. It has far more than traditional pasta, similar to most vegetables. Fiber is good for colon health and fills you up so you don’t eat as much, making it also good for weight loss.