As most of us would know, Car­ni­val is one of the biggest and more renowned cel­e­bra­tions in our twin is­land re­pub­lic. In ad­di­tion to at­tract­ing pa­trons from all over the world, it is a time when peo­ple let go of their in­hi­bi­tions and let loose.

It is al­so a time when the hu­man physique is on dis­play and as such par­tic­i­pants want to have their bod­ies in an im­mac­u­late con­di­tion for the fes­tiv­i­ties. Thus the im­por­tance of tak­ing care of one’s body in a holis­tic man­ner can­not be un­der­scored, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the hec­tic pace that comes with the Car­ni­val sea­son.

The word ‘health’ refers to a state of com­plete emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal well­be­ing…some se­ri­ous fac­tors for good health in­cludes ge­net­ics, the en­vi­ron­ment, re­la­tion­ships and ed­u­ca­tion. A healthy di­et, an ex­er­cise pro­gram, screen­ing for dis­eases, learn­ing strate­gies and cop­ing mech­a­nisms with every day stress cer­tain­ly com­ple­ments that health pack­age. In to­day’s hec­tic world that we live in, main­tain­ing our good health is a pri­or­i­ty. It’s very easy to get caught up in the noise and be­fore you know it, stress has tak­en cen­ter stage and put us in a cor­ner where our di­et is ter­ri­ble and poor lifestyle choic­es is our on­ly way.

It is im­por­tant to note that our di­et, ex­er­cise and be­hav­iour­al choic­es can have a sig­nif­i­cant ef­fect on our health. If your di­et is of a poor qual­i­ty and you are in­ac­tive, you are a se­ri­ous can­di­date for chron­ic dis­ease such as heart is­sues, stroke, high blood pres­sure and di­a­betes. Main­tain­ing a gen­er­al­ly healthy body will re­quire you to make sure you are mak­ing healthy choic­es in mul­ti­ple ar­eas of your life.

A healthy weight equals a healthy body; it’s sim­ply a part of the equa­tion. Re­mem­ber calo­ries are a unit of mea­sure­ment. You eat calo­ries from food and that en­er­gy is used to fu­el your bod­i­ly ac­tiv­i­ties through­out the day. How­ev­er if you con­stant­ly and un­wit­ting­ly eat calo­ries that would do the body harm, it’s on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore some­thing goes wrong. It’s very easy for the body to ha­bit­u­ate to the neg­a­tive in cas­es like this and you suf­fer a great deal. With­out a bal­anced di­et it is al­most im­pos­si­ble to main­tain prop­er health.

A bal­anced di­et means that you con­sume foods from each food group most, if not every day. In ad­di­tion, you want to con­sume a va­ri­ety of foods with­in each food group be­cause hav­ing a wide va­ri­ety of foods from dif­fer­ent food groups would al­low you to con­sume a va­ri­ety of dif­fer­ent nu­tri­ents. Note that a bal­anced di­et al­so means eat­ing to pro­por­tions of serv­ings of each food. Pay at­ten­tion to these es­sen­tial fac­tors (car­bo­hy­drates, pro­teins, fats, fi­bre, vi­t­a­mins, min­er­als and wa­ter). Be very aware, there are a wide range of processed foods, in­clud­ing both nu­tri­tious and un­healthy op­tions, many of which are loaded with se­ri­ous calo­ries, fats, sug­ar and preser­v­a­tives. There are tons of foods out there that are con­sid­ered healthy and nu­tri­tious yet be­long to the ‘processed’ cat­e­go­ry I sug­gest that you use these types of foods in mod­er­a­tion or stay away from them en­tire­ly. Chose wise­ly when you are eat­ing more in­dul­gent items such as chips, sweet­ened bev­er­ages, frozen meals, pas­tries and fast foods; read the la­bels on your foods and if you can’t pro­nounce the words, leave that item right there! Do your best to in­cor­po­rate these few things and I as­sure you that your Car­ni­val would be a blast! For more Health tips and in­for­ma­tion, keep read­ing the Health Plus Mag­a­zine in the Trinidad Guardian.

-

Al­loy John­son

Lo­cal­ly known as Doc­tor Groove, he brings a savvy un­der­stand­ing of fit­ness, nu­tri­tion, and psy­chol­o­gy to his train­ing and em­pow­er­ing regimes. A stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern On­tario, he be­lieves in a holis­tic ap­proach to achiev­ing well-round­ed in­di­vid­u­als. He has been com­mis­sioned to in­vig­o­rate many a youth em­pow­er­ment project and has co-opt­ed to dy­namise mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­ing en­gage­ments and in­spi­ra­tional work­shops through­out To­ba­go.