Our "Everyday’s bread" It should be more than just your daily bread. So what should we be eating?

Many of us will know or have heard the prayer “Give us our daily bread today.” In fact, we all need daily sustenance at least once or twice, but better yet, three times a day. Most animals, birds, and fish continually eat food. Many spend all their waking hours feeding, hunting, and foraging for food. Nocturnal creatures, of course, spend the hours of darkness on a similar quest.

Think of the everyday sight of birds, squirrels, and other creatures constantly running, pecking, or scavenging for food.

Think of us humans. Many seem to spend most of their time eating and snacking or at least thinking about food. Think of the advertising we see. Probably the second most prevalent advertising topic is food and it is in front of us at all times on television, radio, the Internet, billboards, newspaper and magazine ads, bus side ads, and more.

FOOD, FOOD, FOOD! Is that all we think about?

Food is necessary, good tasting food is a bonus, but healthy food is imperative to continue living healthy as our bodies were designed to be.

Is it possible to have attractive, good tasting and nutritious foods all together? Well, of course it is. This is why we have world-renowned and not-so-famous chefs and food preparers who write a host of cookbooks, cookbooks, and recipe books for us to see and eventually smell and taste these culinary delights.

The bad news is that many times, the third food criterion, nutritional goodness, is not always met with the delicious sights and smells of what we eat. Are we brave enough to look past the first two and focus on the third? So are we even more courageous to change our diet so that we can have healthy, easy-on-the-eye, and tasty foods?

The good news is that yes, we can have it all, but we must delve into the nutritional value of foods rather than the culinary “value.” They are not mutually exclusive!

Balancing the proportions of nutrients, vitamins and minerals in food has been greatly simplified with the tools of the Internet. Personally, I use a website called myfitnesspal.com * which seems like a great way to keep track of my daily intake. It allows me to adjust the fat, carbohydrate, and protein ratios to fit my dietary goals. It also tracks up to six nutrients at a time and generates reports from which I can easily see trends in my diet.

It’s imperative to first determine your caloric intake to match your age, weight, required weight changes (if applicable), and then find the foods that meet those goals. Personally, I haven’t greatly changed what I eat, but I have altered how much I eat at each meal and how often I eat something.

A good rule of thumb that has been around lately is the ‘rule of thirds’ whereby you separate (physically if you wish) your plate into thirds and make sure you have one third for protein, one third for vegetables (salad), and one third for third for carbohydrates. It is the size of the plate and the serving size (total calories) that will determine whether you lose weight, gain weight, or maintain weight.

Although we live with our daily bread, we must look at what that daily ‘bread’ offers us in terms of nutrition and nutritional value. If there are deficiencies, then we should consider supplementing our real food with readily available nutritional supplements.

Eat your daily bread more wisely, not more abundantly.

Note: * I do not make any profit from the website mentioned above, but I am offering it only as a suggested tool to track your food) GO

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