Sci/100 Nutrition And Fitness Paper

Nutrition and Fitness Paper

Jacqueline Willard

SCI 100

January 31, 2011
Megan McClaire

Nutrition and fitness in today’s busy society is tougher now than ever before. Men and women work day and night, so squeezing fitness routine is not always the easiest thing. Not only is fitness tough but trying to eat a proper meal is even tougher when fast food is always around. This paper will show how fitness and nutrition is not easy in a busy forty hour plus work week. And some people can make the changes necessary to avoid healthy issues by making the necessary changes in life.

First step to a healthier new me would be to change my current fitness habit, which is not much other than teaching dance and walking to adding
more activity to my week without losing sleep. After looking at what my current fitness routine is teaching two and half hours of dance a week and walking a week for two and half hours I noticed I needed to add more activity to my week.

Within that first step is to set a goal of how much time is needed to be achieved a week and how much time is available to achieve that goal.
I know at least thirty minutes every day is a healthy goal of activity. So adding at least one hour a week of an activity is what I need to do. So adding Wii Dance Routine twice a week for one hour will help out and give me an extra amount to achieve the goal and go above and beyond the goal.

Second step is to improve the area of nutrition, I eat the three meals a day and I even snack a bit for the extra energy kick needed for the day. But nutritional habits are a lot like fitness habits, it focuses on eating right and exercising right. Habits are created to improve or even decrease who we are. So creating a healthy habit is essential to achieve the goal set in front of us. Poor nutrition can lead to obesity which can lead to medical problems in years to
come.

A normal family’s lifestyle can result to unhealthy eating habits with stops at fast food chains.
Families need that cooking time together to eat in a healthier way and create positive habits among the parents and the children. I know my eating habits still to this day are affected by my eating habits as a child. My mother worked day and night and my dad also worked long days and sometime nights. So dinner was not a home cooked meal, sometimes it was McDonald’s or pizza. So now that I work more than the average forty hour work week, I sometimes slip and eat that fast food because it is there and easy. Knowing that I know I need to make the changes to change my bad habits.

Fitting healthy habits into a hectic life is not easy but following a few steps to get more nutrition and fitness in a hectic life is necessary for any person who wants to make their fifth birthday. Here are a few things that can be put into play right now that can make healthy habits an easy part of the day to day routine. Areas that I have started to make improvements in my own health is in red and highlighted to show how little steps can make big steps later in life. Guarino Ph.D (n.d.) 1. Drink water throughout the day (doing my best
currently) 2. Cut back on the amount of soda and coffee drank in the day (already made some cut backs) 3. Replace high sugar foods with low sugar versions 4. Stock up on healthy, portable snacks (eating better snacks during my day) 5. Take the time to plan healthy meals for the week 6. Purchase frozen, ready to cook ingredients 7. Pack your lunch the night before 8. Cook double batches of what your cooking 9. Give yourself some slack 10. Fit in exercise as much as you can (trying to add more fitness in during a busy work week) 11. Take a walk break during the day (getting up at work and just walking around the office to stretch) 12. Whenever possible, walk (parking further in parking lots when I can to increase walking) 13. Get enough sleep (trying for more than six hours, tough but trying) Now going through this list I see many areas I can do to improve my health and I also see those ways can help improve my fitness levels and my stress level at the same time too. By adding some or all of these new healthy habits into my lifestyle today, it can improve the way I feel in no time at all.

Making small steps for me can help promote a new look on my weight management and by doing that it will give me more energy during the day to increase my fitness plan for adding more fitness to my week. Those new habits would help diminish the old habits that have been taught or created over the years by my parent’s poor habits. My mother and her mother were not small people and I don’t want that type of life. They were not obese people but they were not healthy either, obesity is not just being overweight. Obesity can lead to medical problems beyond weight. Obesity can lead to heart conditions, leg problems, back problems, and even mental problems. This is not a life I want and I want to make the changes now before it changes me.

While reading the New York Times today, I came across this article that the government tells people how to eat better is to eat less. “The latest nutrition guidelines released Monday by the federal government reiterates of the advice from previous years: eat less salt and saturated fats, eat more fruits and vegetables and whole grains” (Martin, 2011, para. 1). With this information they tell us by eating the bad we will never lose the weight just keep it on, unless you cut back and eat some more of the better. At the end of the article the writer states it simple “Cut back on the cheese, hamburgers, pizza, cookies and pastries” (Martin, 2011, para. 23). So just cutting back can change your life.

Conclusion Like kids, adults need to make the right food choices to be healthy and must exercise to be healthy. Even in a busy lifestyle they need to make the correct choices if they, plan to live pas the age of fifty years old. My family created poor habits for myself and my brother and both of us noticed the problem and knew it had to change now rather than later. More adults are battling obesity today more than ever and that is because of the busy lifestyle we all lead. By making the changes now as young adults or adults in their mid thirties they can learn how to eat properly and exercise, better to make it to fifty years old healthier than they could of before the changes.

Adults must exercise as much as they can, even with a busy lifestyle. Being aware of the food pyramid, and knowing some basic food guidelines can make small changes huge. Maintain a positive mental attitude and it will leave little room for negative thoughts and fears to creep in. Good nutrition habits can lead to a peace of mind and peace within the body.

References
Guarino Ph.D, M. (n.d.). Fitting Healthy Habits into you Hectic Life. SparkPeople, (), . Retrieved from http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/articles
Martin, A. (2011, January 31). New Dietary Advice from Government: Just Eat Less. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/business/01food.html