Fit For Life: New Year, New Nutrients The under-looked health change for this year

New Year, New Nutrients

The under-looked health change for this year

By Bradley Morris

Diversifying your nutrient intake is important because different nutrients do different things. One of the things to keep in mind this new year is while everyone wants to cut calories or exercise more to lose weight and get in better shape, one of the more underlooked sides of health is ensuring you’re getting the nutrients your body needs to help keep you healthy.

One thing to remember about supplements is they can affect everyone differently, and one thing to remember about everyone is our bodies don’t always need the same thing. It’s always important to talk to your doctor or a nutritionist before beginning to take any new supplements as some can have adverse reactions depending on your current health or medications. Believe it or not, the best way to get vitamins into your system isn’t to take a multivitamin but rather to eat a variety of healthy foods. It’s easy to just try a very streamlined diet that allows you to eat the same thing every day – while some people get bored of that approach, some really need to turn off their brains to avoid the temptation that comes from a wandering mind thinking about food. While eating almost nothing other than broccoli and chicken will probably help you lose weight if you’ve got some excess weight to lose, that sort of diet won’t give you a multitude of nutrients. Even making small changes such as snacking on different types of apples or carrots can give you more complex nutrient intake while helping you stay the course. Supplements vary a lot from nutrient to nutrient and some supplements only really show an effect on certain demographics. Some supplements can be harmful, such as taking an excess of vitamin E or vitamin K. It’s easy to get too much of these if you take supplements but much more difficult if you get them by eating fruits and vegetables. For example, avocados have both vitamins E and K, but you never hear warnings about overdosing on either being a risk of eating avocados. The point of this article isn’t to convince you to throw away all your supplements and stop taking them. In fact, food has progressively become less nutritious, and fruits and veggies are bread for appearance and taste rather than nutrition. As such, it’s important to be realistic that sometimes we need that extra help, but doing so in addition to eating a diverse set of foods is often the best way to go. Supplements absolutely have a place in our health and can help us cover up nutrient blind spots, but trying to cover those blind spots by changing up what we eat can have such a bigger impact on our health, while it’s so easy to just focus on your scale and eat your health food of choice, ensuring we’re giving our body everything it needs to protect our health is also important. This year, try something new to give your body an extra boost of health.