Tips to leading a healthier, nutrition-conscious life

Students of Mines: do you want to know a simple way you can improve yourself both inside and outside the classroom? If so, this article is one you will want to read.

The answer to this question is, of course, a good diet! Eating healthy can do a lot for your body, including being more productive, less stressed, and having more energy during the day.

A good diet all starts with managing calories and macronutrients. Macronutrients consist of three things: fat, carbohydrates, and protein.

Calories in food reflect the total quantity of macros. The caloric breakdown of macros is as follows: nine calories per gram of fat, four calories per gram of carbs, and four calories per gram of protein. This is why foods high in fat have more calories. A good starting point for your caloric breakdown would be 35% protein, 25% fat, and 40% carbs.

Let’s do a simple example of this. Say you have a target of 2000 calories per day. Simply multiply 2000 by 35% to get 700 calories, which is the number of calories from protein you should be getting per day.

Divide this by four, since there are four calories per gram of protein. This yields 175 grams of protein per day.

Follow this same process to get a complete macro breakdown for your diet. To calculate your caloric requirements, the simplest way to get a fairly accurate estimation is to use a calorie calculator online. I use Scooby’s Workshop, which is a great resource.

All three macros are obviously important to the body’s well-being, but I prioritize protein over the other two. This is the core idea of many diets, one of which is the Atkins Diet. After macros, it is highly important to get enough water.

Water is good for your body all-around: from your brain to your skin. Water also improves muscle recovery and mental fatigue from all the studying!

Over time, you should avoid drinking soda entirely and only occasionally drink sweet drinks, such as juices. Water and milk are staples of my liquids consumption per day.

There is so much more to nutrition that I could write about, but unfortunately that would require several articles and pages to fully detail diets and well-being.

As the saying goes, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” and revamping a diet to be healthier is no different.

Simply adjusting your caloric intake, macro breakdown, and liquids consumption will make you not only able to make it through you day, but also able to dominate the day and take advantage of more of the opportunities that you come across!