10 tricks to optimize your nutrition

Your body is a biochemical organism. The chemicals you add into this system dictate how efficient it functions. Or in other words: You are what you eat!

Your food intake helps dictate your energy levels, your moods, your ability to handle stress, and your ability to fight off infections and stay fit.

Research suggests that your diet can also have a measureable positive influence on your life-expectancy. Some suggest eating the right food could enable you to live up to 10 years longer.

So here are some basic guidelines to help you stay fit.

Eat food as fresh as possible, go for variety and avoid processed foodstuffs. Check out our Nutritional Guide, and choose foods from the yellow and green sections.

Eat six small meals spread throughout the day, and not three main meals. This helps your digestive tract process your food more efficiently, ensures you absorb nutrients properly, keeps your blood sugar levels more stable, and helps maintain your mood and energy levels. It is a good idea if one of these meals is made up of only fresh fruit.

Avoid going hungry. Starving yourself leads to low blood sugar levels and 'catabolic' loss of muscle tissue.

Drink at least 2 litres of healthy fluids per day: water, herbal teas, fresh fruit juices, broth, soup. When taking part in a sporting activity which makes you sweat a lot, you should drink roughly 500 ml per 30 minutes.

Avoid refined carbohydrates and sugars. You normally find these in cookies, cakes, sweets, white pasta, white rice, white bread, ready-to-cook meals, etc. Eating these leads to nutritional deficiencies. Always choose wholegrain products.

Avoid pre-cooked foodstuffs in tins or jars. These usually contain added sugar and preservatives. Most vitamins will have been lost due to cooking at high temperatures.

Eat high-quality, protein-rich foods that are low in fat with most meals. The normal food sources are low-fat dairy, chicken and fish. Avoid fat from red meat products. You can supplement your protein intake with whey protein.

Avoid toxins that distort your body's functions. These include nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, ecstacy, speed, etc. These toxins cause your liver, pancreas, lungs, heart and adrenal glands to become less efficient. You can use many herbs to stimulate your body in a healthy way.

Avoid saturated fats and cooking fats. These include chip-pan fats, pork and bacon fat, sausages, fat from beef, margarines. These fats harm your immune system, block your arteries and veins and usually are immediately stored on your buttocks or around your stomach. Check out our Nutrition Guide for the good unsaturated vegetable and fish fats which you do need. You can also supplement these.

Use a high quality multi-vitamin product which contains all of the micro-nutrients your body needs. Research suggests that however healthy you eat, your body will react positively to many additional vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and anti-oxidants. This is especially true if you are physically active!