The time is now more than ripe to start the fitness in view of the summer season, especially for those who have seen a few extra pounds accumulate on the scale during the winter. As we always underline, the slimming diet must always be accompanied by a correct and constant one physical activity which, if you are not used to doing it, it is good to start by asking for the support of an expert trainer. Overall, then, the concept of diet is to be understood as a healthy eating style and not just in terms of restrictions at the table to lose weight.
Having clarified this, there are evidently some foods that can facilitate the weight loss and this, as we said, often becomes a priority for many people in view of the summer. However, it is better to avoid do-it-yourself methods or excessively limiting diets recommended perhaps by a friend or colleague in the hope that the miracle. The diet that promises the impossible, in fact, is more often than not a mirage, indeed often in the medium term it ends up recovering (with a lot of inflation) what was immediately lost.
However, good news is coming from research conducted overseas which has identified some foods whose consumption is equivalent to making up to 4 thousand steps. Let’s try to understand more.
Fruits and vegetables must never be lacking in the diet
An abundance of fruit and vegetables must never be lacking on daily tables, and this certainly does not sound like something new. Now, however, a study by the prestigious US university of Harvard published in the specialized journal ‘European Journal of Preventive Cardiology’ has highlighted how much some foods of vegetable origin are essential for weight maintenance, corresponding to a walk of 4,000 steps.
What has emerged, in fact, confirms once more that increasing the portions of fruit and vegetable everyday life is beneficial for physical fitness. In particular, following a balanced diet that includes good quantities of vegetables and fruit even has an effect on the body similar to that of a further session of training.
In the research extract available online, we read that “a higher quality of diet is associated with a better cardiorespiratory efficiency (indicated by the acronym CRF, or cardiorespiratory fitness, ed) in a sample of middle-aged communities and the metabolites show potential shared favorable effects on cardiometabolic health”.
The Harvard study
To arrive at these conclusions, we measured i oxygen levels in a total of 2380 subjects, both men and women, accustomed to the same physical activity. The sample was then asked to answer some questions regarding nutrition considering some specific types of food.
The comparison between the results made it possible to conclude that, in middle-aged adults, diets rich in fruit, vegetables, legumes, whole grains and dried fruit and low in red meat and alcohol allow for better scores. The so-called Mediterranean diettherefore, has been shown to guarantee a level of physical fitness at least equal to that of subjects accustomed to walking about 4,000 steps a day.