01 Jul 2013, 3:27 pm
01 Jul 2013, 7:07 pm
I think the first thing you should do is inform yourself about nutrition. An adult with moderate physical activity should eat 2000-2500 kiloCalories per day (somewhat lower for young and very old people). When you eat more than your body requires you gain weight.
You should also check the nutritional information table on the packaging of things you eat, or look it up on the internet for things that don't come in packaging. For example, I took a pizza from the fridge last week, and I looked at the nutritional information. This one pizza had 1047 kCalories, which is about half of the Daily Recommended Intake. Pizza is unhealthy because it generally contains an enormous amount of carbohydrates, salt (sodium/natrium) and fat (the three things humans eat more of than they need) and not so much dietary fiber or vitamins. That pizza was mostly empty calories (Wikipedia: empty calories)
That pizza also contained 99% of Daily Recommended Intake of salt.
If you don't know what any of the things on the nutrional table mean, just look them up on wikipedia and find out which are the healthy and unhealthy ones. You can only make good food choices when you know what's in it.
Some examples of stuff I have in my kitchen, per 100 grams.
Pot of carrots: 18kCal per 100g
Beef/pork: about 250kCal per 100g
Carton of milk: 67 kCal per 100g
Pot of mayonaise: 675 kCal and 72g of fat per 100g
That is why herbivores such as cows are eating all day long, while carnivores such as cats don't need to. Of course humans have become very adept at making high-calorie food such as mayonaise and pizza and so on.
Considering your age I assume you're living with your parents, so you may not have complete control of what you eat. If your dinners at home are not very healthy you could try to introduce some healthier food. Perhaps even cook for your parents, you will probably have to learn that someday anyway. Beans are an example of food that has a decent variety of nutrients: some carbohydrates, some proteins, and a decent amount of fiber. There are probably plenty of healthy beans recipes on the interwebs.
Another thing I noticed is that skinny people are often slow eaters. I mentioned this to a medical researcher I know and he said it takes a certain amount of time for the brain to notice you have had dinner, and only then does the feeling of hunger go away. So when you eat a smaller amount but take the same time to eat it, you may still feel satisfied with the smaller amount.
Drinks are another thing to take note of. Sodas are empty calories, and milk and fruit juice are healthy but also contain quite a bit of calories. Water and tea contain almost no calories. And I'm not saying people should never have a soda or a pizza, just be careful how often.
Humans have evolved as hunter-gatherers that had to fight for every scrap of food. It's only natural we want to eat everything that has sugar or fat in it, because that is high in energy and therefore our tastebuds have evolved tell us we need to eat that. Today many people live in societies where food is abundant, especially high calorie food. I consider it one of the biggest failings of modern society that young people are not taught much about food and nutrition. To me that seems one of the most important things of any education.
I haven't said anything about exercise, because I don't know much about that. I haven't done any sports or exercise for more than 10 years and I still weigh the same as when I was 20. I do get some exercise from taking my bicycle instead of the car, and taking the stairs instead of the elevator. There is a topic in this forum about things like that:Old school exercise
01 Jul 2013, 7:20 pm
