9781422269886

Benefits of a Plant-Based Diet Eating Healthier as a Family Eating Whole Foods, Minimally Processed Foods for Peak Fitness Fruits and Vegetables for Health

How to Eat a Balanced Diet Eating in Moderation and Intermittent Fasting Lean Protein for Health Nuts and Seeds for Health What’s in a Label?

Foods for Peak Fitness

By Laura D. Radley

MASON CREST M i a m i

Mason Crest PO Box 221876, Hollywood, FL 33022 (866) MCP-BOOK (toll-free) • www.masoncrest.com

Copyright © 2024 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America First printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Series hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4222-4823-2

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4222-4827-0 Series ebook ISBN: 978-1-4222-6984-8 ebook ISBN: 978-1-4222-6988-6 Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file with the Library of Congress Developed and Produced by Print Matters Productions, Inc Cover and Interior Design by Torque Advertising+Design

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KEY ICONS TO LOOK FOR: Words to Understand: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase readers’ understanding of the text while building vocabulary skills. Sidebars: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together additional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Educational Videos: Readers can view videos by scanning our QR codes, providing them with additional educational content to supplement the text. Text-Dependent Questions: These questions send readers back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented there. Research Projects: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis. Series Glossary of Key Terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase readers’ ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this field. Peak Fitness............................................................73 Series Glossary of Key Terms........................................88 Further Reading & Internet Resources..........................92 Index.......................................................................... 94 Author’s Biography & Credits.......................................96 Chapter 1: How Foods Impact Your Physical Performance..............................................................7 Chapter 2: Carbohydrates and Fats for Peak Fitness......23 Chapter 3: Proteins for Peak Fitness.............................39 Chapter 4: Vitamins and Minerals for Peak Fitness.........57 Chapter 5: Where, How, and When to Eat for

WORDS TO UNDERSTAND

Circulatory System: The system that circulates blood throughout your body. It includes the heart and blood vessels. Enzymes: Proteins made in the body that speed up chemical reactions in the body. Inflammation: Swelling and/or redness in an area triggered by the body’s natural response to injury or sickness. Regenerate: To regrow new tissue. Underestimate: To think of something as less (e.g., less important) than it really is.

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Chapter

How Foods Impact Your Physical Performance

Food. It’s essential to human life. The average person eats about 1,500 pounds of it every single year, including about 150 pounds of meat, nearly 300 pounds of milk and cream, 120 pounds of potatoes, and 80 pounds of fruit. Even so, it’s all too easy to underestimate the all-important role that food plays in helping us enjoy life to the fullest. How Foods Give Your Body Energy To understand how food gives the body energy, it’s important to know a bit about how your body works. As soon as you put a bite of food in your mouth, the digestive process starts. Your teeth break food down into small pieces, and an enzyme in your saliva starts breaking down food starches to enable digestion. When you swallow, the food goes down your esophagus and into your stomach. Once the stomach has completed its part of the digestive process, the food moves into the small intestine. The complete breakdown of most foods happens in the small intestine, after which the food molecules are absorbed into the

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Six stages of digestion.

walls of the small intestine and from there are transported to various parts of the body via the circulatory system . Because the body cannot use food material “as is,” it converts the food into glucose, lipoproteins, and amino acids. Lipoproteins are stored by the body for future use, and amino acids are used as “building blocks” to construct new enzymes, proteins, or even tissues. Glucose, on the other hand, is a simple sugar that provides the energy your body needs for day-to-day activities. If you think of your body as a vehicle, glucose is the fuel that helps it run. However, there is a lot more to the process than that. As you’ll discover in this book, some forms of “fuel” are better

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Foods for Peak Fitness

than others because they provide long-lasting energy rather than a short energy burst followed by a lack of energy. What’s more, you also have to make sure you’re giving yourself just the right amount of fuel. If you consume more food than your body needs, the extra energy is stored as fat for the body’s future use, and too much body fat can cause problems for your heart, circulatory system, liver, and other organs. On the other hand, if you don’t eat enough food, your body will use stored fat to provide energy. If it still comes up short, it will start burning amino acids that are supposed to be used as building blocks to maintain your body, so you can grow and develop properly. How Foods Help You Heal after Injury The human body has an amazing ability to regenerate . You’d never know it, but every two to four days your small intestine regenerates itself. Your lungs and stomach regenerate every eight days, your skin regenerates every two weeks, your red blood cells regenerate every four months, and your skeleton regenerates every ten years.

Q: If our bodies continually regenerate, why don’t we live forever? A: Your body’s ability to regenerate declines with age, which is why senior citizens often have more health problems than young people. Many people die of sicknesses or long-term health problems, some of which are caused, or made worse, by an unhealthy diet.

Chapter 1: How Foods Impact Your Physical Performance

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As soon as you suffer an injury, your body immediately starts a healing process to help you recover. Antibodies tag any pathogens that enter your body through an open wound so that phagocytes, which are white blood cells that act as natural killers, can destroy them before they cause infection. Your blood clots in order to prevent excessive bleeding and close the wound to foreign invaders. Then your body starts fixing broken blood vessels, and new tissue and skin grow over the area. If you’ve broken a bone, your body sends extra blood and bone marrow to the spot to start the process of forming new bone tissue or repairing a fracture. When you’re injured, your body needs even more of the right fuels to power the recovery process. Food alone can’t heal a wound or a broken bone, but it can give your body the energy and components it needs to get the job done. Specific nutrients

Learn how a wound heals.

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Foods for Peak Fitness

Food alone can’t heal a broken bone, but it can give your body the energy and components it needs to get the job done.

help your blood to clot and empower your immune system to fight infection. Other nutrients act as building blocks to help your body create more bone and bone marrow. If you don’t provide your body with the fuel it needs in the form of a healthy diet, it will attempt to get what it needs from its existing stores of fuel. In a worst-case scenario, the wound will simply never heal properly. It will become a chronic wound with symptoms such as soreness, itchiness, inflammation , and a bad smell.

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How Foods Work in Conjunction with Each Other

Some foods are more nutritious than others. There may be times when you’ll need to up your intake of a certain nutrient to combat injury or help your body address a particular health problem. If you’re constipated, for instance, your body will need more fiber in order to get your digestive system working properly again. However, for the most part, your body gets all it needs from a balanced diet that includes healthy grains, fruits and vegetables, meat and/or legumes, and foods from the dairy group such as milk, cheese, and yogurt. Foods work with each other to provide your body with the fuel it needs to boost physical performance. Some nutrients enable your body to absorb other necessary nutrients to get maximum benefits from the healthy foods you eat. While some nutrients are good for your heart, others may be good for your lungs or liver. While every nutrient might not give your body energy, many help your immune system combat disease, so your body can focus on energizing itself rather than recovering from a sickness. The Importance of a Long-Term Healthy Diet If you want your body to work at peak performance, you need to give it all the nutrients it needs to stay healthy and function properly. What’s more, you can’t just do that sometimes or even most of the time. That would be like starting to train for a race a few days before it, or cramming training sessions to try to get ready for the big day instead of adjusting your schedule to prepare in advance. Giving your body what it needs, when it needs it, empowers your immune system to prevent disease. That enables you to

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Foods for Peak Fitness

For the most part, your body gets all it needs from a balanced diet that includes healthy grains, fruits and vegetables, meat and/or legumes, and foods from the dairy group such as milk, cheese, and yogurt.

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regularly engage in healthy activities that boost your health, including exercising and spending time with friends and family. A healthy diet also fuels your brain, so you’ll feel happy and positive about yourself and life in general. Even more importantly, a consistent healthy diet gives your body extra nutrients to have on hand in case of an emergency. If, for instance, you break an ankle while playing sports, your body will have the fuel it needs to start the healing process right away.

Q: How does food affect my mood? A: Your brain, like all the other parts of your body, runs on glucose. If it doesn’t get enough glucose, you’ll likely feel grumpy and tired. Of course, it’s important to bear in mind that there can be many reasons for a bad mood, and automatically grabbing a bite to eat whenever you’re upset isn’t necessarily a good idea, especially if you’re craving unhealthy snacks.

Conversely, failure to eat a consistently healthy diet can cause damage that is difficult to undo. If you gain more weight than you should, it could take months to get rid of the unnecessary pounds to get back down to a healthy weight. In the meantime, the extra weight can cause problems for your heart and circulatory system. If you don’t get the nutrients you need to protect your body from sickness, what would have been a small sickness could turn into a serious one that requires medication and bed rest.

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Foods for Peak Fitness

Drinking Habits Matter, Too The human body can survive for weeks without food, but you’ll die in two to four days without water. Over 60 percent of your body is made up of water, and your body needs this liquid to make saliva, keep your digestive system working properly, deliver oxygen to all the parts of your body, absorb certain nutrients from the food you eat, protect your brain and spinal cord, regulate body temperature, and more. Children and teens should drink between six and eight cups of water every day. However, you may need more water if you exercise a lot or spend time outside on a hot day. One good, albeit unpleasant, way to tell if you’re getting enough water

Children and teens should drink between six and eight cups of water every day.

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each day is to take a look at your pee. If it’s clear or light yellow, you’re good. If it looks like apple juice, you probably need to drink more water. Water is probably the most important liquid to include in your diet, but it’s not the only healthy liquid. Milk is a nutrient rich food. It’s especially important to drink enough milk as a teen because milk is rich in calcium, a mineral that helps your bones grow properly and builds bone density to prevent problems such as osteoporosis as you get older. Furthermore, the calcium in milk prevents cavities in your teeth while the protein in milk helps your body create new cells and repair existing ones. Q: What is milk, anyway? A: In this book, “milk” refers to cow’s milk, not substitutes such as oat milk, soy milk, or nut milk, which do not have the same nutrients as cow’s milk. However, milk can be substituted with servings from the dairy group, including cheese and yogurt. You can also choose low- or no-fat milk if you are trying to lose weight, or pick lactose-free milk if you’re allergic to the lactose in milk.

Juice is yet another potentially healthy drink, but it’s important to choose one that is 100 percent fruit juice, because those with sugar and/or other additives can be harmful to your health. Most other beverages should be avoided, however, as they do your body more harm than good. Energy drinks, for instance, tend to have a lot of sugar, and, as we’ll cover below, sugar ruins short- and long-term physical and mental fitness.

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Foods for Peak Fitness