Health Tip – Injury Nutrition

ankle-sprain-treatmentAcute injuries do happen from time to time whether it’s from working out, sports, or just accidents around the home. During the injury recovery time it is very important to feed your body the nutrients it needs and consume enough calories to speed up healing. Supplementing with some key micronutrients will help you heal faster and get you back to your routine. These micronutrients are Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Copper, and Zinc. Also, two minerals that play a vital role in injury prevention are Calcium and Iron. So make sure you are setting up a good environment in your body for healing so you can minimize your down time!

Nutrition Tip – Plant Based Diets

If you have decided to minimize or eliminate animal products from your diet and start on a plant-based diet then it’s important to know that you may not be getting adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals. The nutrients that are often low or missing are vitamin B12, fruitVitamin D, Calcium, Iodine, Omega-3 fat, and Zinc. You can increase your intake of these nutrients by eating more vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, and fruits or through supplementation if you can’t get enough through food.

Exercise Nutrition Tip – Recovery Drink

What you eat before and after exercising is very important in your recovery and progress. 20150316_143902-1[1]If nutrition at these times is neglected then consequences such as extended muscle soreness, fatigue, overtraining symptoms, decreased performance, loss or minimal gain of muscle mass, and impaired metabolism may occur. To avoid this make sure you are consuming an appropriate amount of protein and carbs during this time. A good baseline recovery drink recommendation after your workout is for each hour of exercise cosume 600mL of water mixed with a quality protein powder that gives you approximately 30g of carbs and 15g of protein.

Health Tip – Carbohydrate and Water Storage

For every gram of carbohydrate that is stored in your body, 3 to 4 grams of water are also weightscalestored. Therefore high-carb diets can lead to an increase in fluid storage. When starting a low-carb/high-protein diet like the Atkins diet for example, the increase of protein will stimulate fluid loss and the low amount of carbs reduce the water storage. You may lose some weight quickly from this diet at first but keep in mind that this is water weight and your fluid losses will stabilize after the first few days. As always, a more balanced diet combined with a solid exercise plan will lead to true fat loss.