Fara 26 December 2008 Healthy Eating 757 views No Comment/Trackback Print This Post  Email This Post

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Healthy Eating Plans for Underweight People

While many are trying to lose weight and trying very hard to integrate healthy eating lifestyle in order to achieve that mission, there are a few people suffer from being underweight instead.

Therefore, when you feel that you’re thin, ask yourself this – am I underweight? Get to know the causes and the right and healthy eating plans for it.

Everyone likes to look slim, but almost everyone likes to look healthy and slim too. Being extremely slim does not necessarily means that you are at your optimum health condition. It is true that there are some people who can eat and eat and did put on anymore weight than an ant does. If you are someone who is blessed with a great deal of metabolism level, than indeed you are among the lucky ones, and have all the rights to make an overweight person envious. However, this is not usually the case.

Basically, underweight is the failure to maintain optimal weight for height, which can be measured by BMI (body mass index). Among the causes of underweight are:

• Digestive disorders, hydrochloric acid deficiency, pancreatic enzyme deficiency, mal-absorption syndromes.

• Hormonal imbalance

• Hyperthyroid, cancer and other wasting disease

• Improper diet, bulimia, anorexia nervosa

• Lack of appetite

• Excess exercise or energy output

• Emotional factor – stress and anxiety

What really happens, what cause of underweight?

More frequent than not, these underweight individuals have a very inefficient digestive system. Their body seems almost like an empty and useless tube; what gets in, gets out of the body system literally just in the same context. In other words, they are absorbing very little from the food that they have eaten. Actually, digestive enzyme deficiencies, failure of food absorption, mal-absorption syndromes due to allergy and food insensitivity are common problems that an underweight person may have to go through.

Through proper dieting, a person is able to counter his/her underweight problem. However, it is advisable to have yourself checked by a professional physician before embarking on an eating plan for underweight people. This is to ensure that the main reason to the weight loss was not caused by anything serious that need proper treatment and cannot be regularized by dieting and supplementation alone, such as cancer and hyperthyroid.

Eating plan proposal for underweight:

It is not all about eating a lot, but also eating the right foods…

Breakfast
Suggested food – you can eat a lot of whole grain products from cereals to oatmeal, as well as breads; poached or boiled eggs with 2 slices of whole grain bread, yogurt and wheat germ and warm milk or buttermilk, fruits (that are not too sweet) and nuts (not peanuts). Another choice is unsweetened granola bars.

Mid-morning & Mid-afternoon
Suggested food – snack with nuts and seeds at a moderate amount. Other than that you can have a go for a few servings of whole grain crackers, biscuit, bread or other source of unrefined carbohydrates. Drinks; try low fat yoghurt or unsweetened herb tea (it will taste horrible if it is sweet, anyway).

Lunch & Dinner
Suggested food – avocado salad with lemon served with whole wheat sandwich with cheese and cooked lean chicken breast; or brown rice, millet or buckwheat noodles (like the Japanese soba) with fish, chicken, or lean meat, of which you can cooked it by boiling, grill or stir-fry with vegetable or olive oil. You can even have baked potato!

Among the things and foods that should be avoided are alcohol, coffee, smoking and dried fruits. You might wonder what difference the menu makes from a menu for a person who is trying to loose weight. Well, first of all, healthy eating is essential for everyone, not just for certain category of people. Secondly, an underweight person can eat more than the portions of a person who is trying to loose weight, and they do not have to worry or feel guilty for a little indulgence here and there. By right, they can eat as much as they want to if it is good food and they are not restricted by the doctor due to diseases that they might have. Last but not least, an underweight person is not required to exercise that much, perhaps only once or twice a week and that should be simple exercises and not rigorous as a person who is trying to loose weight might have to do. In one way or the other, exercising is essential nevertheless.

Author’s Note: This article, Healthy Eating Plans for Underweight People can also be found at a Triond’s sponsor site since I’m a regular writer for it under the nickname ‘ebazaar’.

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