Nutrition: The good, the bad, and the ugly

The high school lifestyle is filled with twists and turns. A student wakes up late, throws on some clean clothes, and drags himself to school. The hectic morning usually calls for a breakfast that was forgotten and a lunch that wasn’t packed.

Plaguing hunger pains may not be the only suffering your body will experience. A lack of food can do much worse to a student’s body than he or she thinks. Whether you are a student-athlete, or purely an academic, the student’s body needs fuel to perform.

The most important meal of the day is breakfast. We all hear this, but what does it really mean? Everybody has something called a metabolism, which is the body undergoing chemical reaction to burn and create energy.

Just like a car, the body needs fuel in order to run correctly. So if you’re not able to concentrate in class, it may not be because of the teacher. It may be because you did not properly fuel your body in the morning, and so you will be dragging the rest of the day.

Although breakfast has its perks, every meal is important to help the body function like a well-oiled machine. Nutrition can break down into super complex information that really isn’t needed. As long as we know the basic nutrition rules and what to avoid, students everywhere can boost their energy and their well-being.

If you are a physically active person, you should generally consume 1.5 times your body weight in carbohydrates, 1-1.5 times your weight in protein, and about 30 percent of your calories should come from healthy fats.

For the certain athletes who have the “protein or nothing” mentality, that will get them nowhere. The fats, carbohydrates, and minerals we consume have just as big of role to play in fitness as protein. Consider this your crash-course through general nutrition.

The word fat makes many of us cringe, but it is truly necessary to the body. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats help support muscle development and energy for your body. The downside is that trans-fats and saturated fats, the kind found in cookies and fried foods, have unhealthy traits that hinder blood circulation throughout the body and can eventually lead to health problems such as heart disease. In the end, it’s about the type of fats you eat, instead of the amount. A few foods that have the healthy fats are avocados, nuts, legumes, and hummus.

Even though many of us believe fat is what causes weight gain, this is not what we need to worry about. Carbohydrates on the other hand, will be your buzz-kill if you don’t pay attention. Think about the foods around us every day, in our cupboards, fridges, and snack drawers. Usually, they are full of breads, crackers, snack bars, or maybe even cereals. The list of foods with carbs around us at any given moment is dangerously long. Carbs are packed full of those calories that will pack on the unnecessary weight we all dread.

On the contrary, carbohydrates are what we burn throughout the day in order to function, therefore we need them. Cutting carbs completely out of your diet is bad, all the body needs is less carbs. Great sources of carbs for our bodies are fruits, oats, and yogurts. Certain breads are great, but when looking to cut the weight, it’s something to be strict with.

Now onto the exciting subject of protein, the building block to the beach body. The body uses protein to fill in and make the muscles we work out, bigger. Unlike carbs, protein can be harder to come by if a person doesn’t think about how much they really need. A person can make sure they pack their body with protein by eating certain foods such as meats, nuts, Greek yogurt, eggs, and milk. Turkey and chicken are go-to protein for sandwiches, omelets, and dinners. Whatever the occasion, make sure to fill your stomach with much needed proteins.

So the next time you wake-up late and are tempted to skip that breakfast, grab a yogurt, a banana, or a teaspoon of peanut butter. Maybe then, you can pay attention in class.