Just working out isn’t enough to look and feel your best. You have to eat healthy, too. At Body Sculptors Personal Training in Louisville, KY, we focus on both working out and healthy eating, since you can’t out-exercise a bad diet. During the winter months, getting adequate vitamin C is important, so it’s important to eat more citrus. What is citrus fruit? You probably recognize the grapefruit, orange, lemon and lime as citrus, but maybe not the yuzu, pomelo or calamondin. There’s a number of citrus fruit, but they all have a leathery skin and grow on flowering trees or shrubs. They all have high amounts of vitamin C.
Not only are citrus rich in vitamin C, they have many other nutrients.
Vitamin C is important to keep your immune system, blood vessels and skin healthy. However, citrus fruits also contain other nutrients that are important for the body. They have B vitamins, phosphorous, potassium, copper, and magnesium. Citrus fruit contain phytonutrients, too. It contains flavonoids, carotenoids and essential oils. The vitamin C helps synthesize collagen, which helps blood vessels, skin, bones and basically all the body. One orange has enough vitamin C to meet your daily requirement. The folate (vitamin B-9) in citrus aids in the synthesizing of DNA and is linked to reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s and depression.
You’ll fill up, not out when you eat citrus fruit.
Not only are citrus fruit low in calories, they’re high in fiber and fluid. Those juicy fruits can help add to your liquid intake, while tickling your taste buds in the process. Just a cup of orange segments can provide over an eighth of the fiber you need daily. Fiber also fills you up and helps feed the beneficial bacteria in your gut for digestive health. The fiber also helps lower cholesterol levels. Meanwhile, all that goodness doesn’t come with a high calorie price tag. A half grapefruit is just 39 calories, while a medium orange is 62. One study found that people who ate more citrus fruit weighed less. It’s easy to see why.
You’ll lower your risk of kidney stones when you eat more citrus.
Kidney stones are extremely painful. They’re mineral crystals that form when you have high amounts of stone forming minerals in your urine or have very concentrated urine. If it’s deep yellow, you could be primed for kidney stones and need to drink more water and eat some citrus fruit. Kidney stones can develop when you have lower levels of citrate in the urine, which is contained in citrus fruit. Even drinking the juice provides benefits. It can be a natural alternative to chemical means of raising citrate levels.
- Citrus fruit may lower your risk of specific types of cancer, such as lung cancer. One study showed that drinking one serving of grapefruit juice each day lowered the risk of lung cancer and other studies showed increasing citrus reduced the risk of breast, stomach, esophageal and pancreatic cancer.
- Improve your heart health with citrus fruit. Studies show that people who ate more citrus reduced the rate of stroke and heart disease. Eating more citrus can lower bad cholesterol levels and blood pressure too.
- Citrus fruit can help protect the brain. The flavonoids help reduce inflammation, which is believed to be part of the cause of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The hesperidin and apigenin in citrus protects brain cells.
- The best way to increase citrus is to eat the fruit, rather than drink the juice. Too much juice can increase your blood sugar, since there’s no fiber to slow the absorption. You’ll also feel less full and consume more calories.
For more information, contact us today at Iron Fit San Antonio