2. Only fat, protein and carbohydrates can provide calories. These basic nutrients are called "three major nutrients". Although vitamins, minerals and water are also necessary for human life, they do not provide heat.
If we consume more calories than our body consumes, we will get fat, which is called "positive energy balance" in nutrition. If you eat less calories than you take in, you will lose weight, which is called "negative energy balance".
4. Fat is an essential nutrient for human body. Without a continuous supply of the right amount of essential fatty acids, the human body cannot survive, because the human body needs to use essential fatty acids when making hormones and building cell membranes. But fat is also the main source of calories, so eating a lot of food containing fat, especially when it exceeds the consumption of the body, will make people fat. Therefore, it is very important to eat low-fat but enough essential fatty acids.
5. When building body tissues, such as muscles, you need protein provided by protein foods, such as meat, dairy products, beans, nuts and seeds. The human body needs to make muscles every day, so we must take enough protein every day. This is especially important during weight loss, because during weight loss, the body will start the process of burning muscles to provide the calories needed by the body. But if you eat too much protein, these protein are not used to make muscles or provide calories, but will be converted into fat by the body and stored.
6. We need carbohydrates to provide calories. Carbohydrates can be divided into monosaccharides (such as sugar and honey) or polysaccharides (such as fruits, bread, rice, wheat, potatoes, corn and other cereals); Carbohydrates (whether monosaccharides or polysaccharides) that are not used to provide calories will be stored as liver sugar or fat. All carbohydrates are broken down into monosaccharides-glucose, fructose and galactose. Fructose and galactose will eventually be converted into glucose in the body. Glucose is a source of heat for the nervous system of the body. In order to function normally, the human brain must have a stable source of glucose.
7. It doesn't matter whether the excess calories come from carbohydrates, protein or fat. If we eat more than our bodies need, we will get fat, no matter where our calories come from.
Protein and fat can be converted into glucose to provide calories, but carbohydrates and fat cannot be converted into protein to build muscles. Only protein can build muscles, so you must take enough protein every day; Otherwise, muscles will be consumed or lost. The quality and quantity of our body muscles also determine the speed of our metabolism, which will also determine the speed at which our body burns calories. The more muscles, the faster the body's metabolism. Therefore, for maintaining the ideal weight and losing weight, muscle consumption and loss are very unfavorable.
9. We need to properly balance carbohydrate, fat and protein in order to provide heat for body tissues and organs and maintain a healthy weight. We should not ignore any kind of food, even the high-fat food we have been smelling is necessary for our health. If there is no fat in the diet, it will be impossible to produce hormones and build cell membranes, and it will also lack the absorption and digestion of fat-soluble vitamins, which are of course necessary for our health. Of course, the fat we eat should be the omega-3 essential fatty acids that our body needs, not the trans fat or saturated fat that we consume in large quantities in modern daily life.