March Is National Nutrition Month. How Are You Celebrating It?

March 10 2014

March Is National Nutrition Month. How Are You Celebrating It?

St. Patrick’s Day isn’t the only notable event during March. It’s a little-known fact that March is National Nutrition Month. Whether you’re goal is to build muscle or lose weight (or both), you should celebrate National Nutritional Month by analyzing your data and making changes to better your health and well-being. Even small changes can yield significant results, so don’t underestimate the important of a balanced, nutritious diet.

Ditch The Sodas

Whether it’s cola, lemon-lime, orange flavored, etc., you should eliminate all sodas from your diet. It’s a common assumption that only drinking one soda per day isn’t going to have a negative effect on a person’s health. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. The website hepfd.com reports that drinking soda per day translates into 36 pounds of sugar over the course of a year!

What’s even more alarming is that drinking just a single soda per day yields an average of 15 pounds to your waistline in a year. The massive amount of sugar floods the system where it wrecks havoc on organs while contributing to weight gain.

Add Color To Your Plate

Forget the old food pyramid that teachers once touted back in grade school. If you’re interested in achieving better health through greater nutrition, try building your meals around color. Creating meals with a variety of different colors offers a better range of vitamins and nutrition.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with basic white chicken or fish on your plate, but you shouldn’t overlook the importance of color as well. Adding a few colorful side dishes like carrots, sweet potato and broccoli is a great way to boost then nutritional value of your meals.

According to EatRight.org, National Nutrition Month is:

“The campaign is designed to focus attention on the importance of making informed food choices and developing sound eating and physical activity habits. NNM also promotes the Academy and its members to the public and the media as the most valuable and credible source of timely, scientifically based food and nutrition information.”

Tips For National Nutritional Month

• With the warm spring weather right around the corner, there’s no better time than now to get outside and start exercising!
• Try to reduce or even eliminate refined sugars from your diet.
• Add healthy polysaturated and monosaturated fast to your diet with extra-virgin olive oil, peanuts, almonds, etc.
• Remember, fresh and frozen vegetables are more nutritious than canned vegetables.
• Eat lean meats, such as chicken and fish, for your primary source of protein.