When you think of healthy foods, you probably consider unprocessed meat, fish, eggs, milk products, vegetables, and fruits as good for your body. I will not go into further discussion about specific diets or philosophies here. Still, I will look at it from a bodybuilder's perspective, a body shaper.
All the foods mentioned above are great fuel and building material for your body. Some macronutrients provide building material to recover our muscle tissue, such as protein, and others that provide energy, the carbohydrates. Fats can support both muscle recovery and energy supply. Carbohydrates are sugar molecules that can be easily digested and burned by our brain and muscles or stored as glycogen in the muscles and the liver.
Think of an orange; you know it is famous for being a source of Vitamin C and comes in many shapes, including fruit juice or ice cream. While fruits are generally packed with vitamins and minerals, they are also an excellent fast energy source; think of bananas. When we want to lose fat, we try to convince our body to use its energy storage as much as possible. That means we want it to burn body fat. The body prefers burning carbohydrates because they are available immediately.
In contrast, fat needs a more prolonged process which includes oxygen, to produce energy for the muscles. When we eat an orange, made of mainly carbohydrates and fibers, and a piece of cheese, which is made of protein and fat, then we can assume that our body will prefer to burn off the orange first as its energy is readily available. In contrast, the digestion of the cheese takes much longer.
The carbohydrates in fruits trigger the body to use the sugar, excrete insulin and shuffle it into the muscles or turn it into fat inside the liver. When you want to lose body fat, it would be advisable only to have fruits when you either need quick energy, such as before, during, or after a workout, or to have them when you plan to have a carbohydrate meal that includes rice, noodles or bread for example. If you have oatmeal in the morning then adding fruits is a good option, whereas if you have eggs and bacon in the morning, you shouldn't have fruits.
To sum it up:
- Have fruits when you need quick energy or when you will have a regular carbohydrate meal anyway.
- Deduct the calories from the original carbohydrate source and exchange them for fruits.
- Don't have fruits together with fat sources if you aim to shape your body efficiently.
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