Appropriate nutrition is so important to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, reducing your risk of chronic disease and improving your physical and mental health. Healthy eating is widely debated and can get over complicated however we have broken it down to provide a general guide to help you make the right food choices based on the Australian dietary guidelines.
Guideline 1:
To achieve and maintain a healthy weight, be physically active and choose amounts of nutritious food and drinks to meet your energy needs:
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- Children and adolescents should eat sufficient nutritious foods to grow and develop normally. They should be physically active every day and their growth should be checked regularly.
- Older people should eat nutritious foods and keep physically active to help maintain muscle strength and a healthy weight
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To understand your physical activity guidelines look at our previous article https://prohealthphysio.com.au/exercise/exercise-right-week/.
Guideline 2:
Enjoy a wide variety of nutritious foods from these five groups every day:
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- Plenty of vegetables, including different types and colours, and legumes/beans
- Fruit
- Grain (cereal) foods, mostly wholegrain and/or high cereal fibre varieties, such as breads, cereals, rice, pasta, noodles, polenta, couscous, oats, quinoa and barley
- Lean meats and poultry, fish, eggs, tofu, nuts and seeds, and legumes/beans
- Milk, yoghurt, cheese and/or their alternatives, mostly reduced fat (reduced fat milks are not suitable for children under the age of 2 years)
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Also don’t forget to drink plenty of water. A good general guide is to drink 35ml of water per Kg of bodyweight per day. e.g. if you weigh 60kg then you should be drinking around 2.1L of water per day as 60 x 0.035 = 2.1.
Guideline 3:
Limit intake of foods containing saturated fat, added salt, added sugars and alcohol
Limit intake of foods high in saturated fat such as many biscuits, cakes, pastries,
pies, processed meats, commercial burgers, pizza, fried foods, potato chips,
crisps and other savoury snacks.
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- Replace high fat foods which contain predominantly saturated fats such as butter, cream, cooking margarine, coconut and palm oil with foods which contain predominantly polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats such as oils, spreads, nut butters/pastes and avocado.
- Low fat diets are not suitable for children under the age of 2 years.
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Limit intake of foods and drinks containing added salt.
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- Read labels to choose lower sodium options among similar foods.
- Do not add salt to foods in cooking or at the table.
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Limit intake of foods and drinks containing added sugars such as confectionary, sugar-sweetened soft drinks and cordials, fruit drinks, vitamin waters, energy and
sports drinks.
If you choose to drink alcohol, limit intake. For women who are pregnant, planning a pregnancy or breastfeeding, not drinking alcohol is the safest option.
Guideline 4 :
Encourage, support and promote breastfeeding
Guideline 5:
Care for your food; prepare and store it safely
These are some basic recommendations to help guide you towards healthy eating habits. If you are more interested in understanding how to maintain a healthy lifestyle through nutrition or physical activity come into PROHEALTH for a consult with one of our treating exercise physiologists who specialise in developing an individual program based on your goals that includes nutrition, exercise prescription and lifestyle change behaviours to reduce your risk of chronic disease and improve your physical and mental health.
For more information, please contact us or refer to:
Source: Eat For Health – Australian Government
Title: Australian Dietary Guidelines
Read Time: 5-10 minutes