You’re healthy right? You exercise regularly? You eat well. Smoothies for breakfast. Salads at lunch and protein and veg based dinners. Are you taking your nutrition to another level though? Learn more about how to refine your healthiness and take it to another level.
You drink coffee with meals and when you take your nutritional supplements
Coffee and tea are diuretic meaning you urinate out the minerals and vitamins in the meal you just ate or the supplements you just swallowed if you have them too close together. Try waiting 45 minutes or more to have that much loved caffeine hit to ensure you are not losing precious nutrients.
Drinking fruit filled smoothies
Smoothies are an excellent way to pack in nutrients and fibre in a convenient way. They start to be less health when they are loaded up with too much fruit. You end up with a high sugar and high kilojoule drink. As a rule three vegetables to one fruit is a good ratio to balance sugar load. Berries are the best fruit smoothie addition as they are low GI and high in fibre.
Eating fat-free food
As a general rule when manufacturers take the fat out of a food they will usually increase the sugar to keep it tasting good. The only fat to be afraid of is trans fat and excessive saturated fat. Full fat dairy for those that tolerate it and have good cholesterol levels, is a good thing so eat full fat dairy products and skip the low fat option where you can.
You take vitamin A, D, E or fish oil capsules away from food
Vitamin A, D, E and fish oil are all fat soluble supplements and need to be taken with a fat containing meal. In order for capsules to be broken down and absorbed well lipase is the enzyme that gets activated to emulsify the fat in the capsule.
You leave lemon or vinegar based dressings off your salads
Adding acidic dressings like lemon or vinegar to leafy greens in your salad means you unlock the active form of iron in those greens. By leaving the dressing off you are missing out on a great vegetarian iron hit.
You take zinc, magnesium and/or iron together
To get the most out of taking your minerals you should take them separately. Minerals are best absorbed when taken on their own. To work out when to take what keep in mind that iron is best with a meat meal or at the start or end of the day. Magnesium is best absorbed away from food and zinc is best tolerated and absorbed when with food but away from dairy products.
You’re taking probiotics at the same time as a course of antibiotics
Taking a probiotic to repopulate your gut microbiome when you are on a course of antibiotics is a great idea and beneficial. However it’s important to separate the time you take your probiotic from the time you take the antibiotics by at least two hours to not kill off the probiotic strains of bacteria as well as that nasty bacterial infection you are ridding your body of.
You drink too much water around mealtimes
It’s a good thing to be hydrated right? Timing with drinking water is important to keep in mind. Restricting water intake to no more than 150ml half an hour either side of meal times means you are not potentially diluting gastric juices needed to breakdown food efficiently. We want good amounts of gastric juices secreted in our stomach when we eat to help us absorb protein, zinc, iron and vitamin B12.