Nutrition Analysis

While I was monitoring my diet, I found that while I thought that I was eating a lot of extra food, I actually am not eating such a balanced diet as I thought I was. I realized that while I am eating more fruit on weekdays, I am not eating a lot of fruit on the weekends and I eat less vegetables during the week than I do on the weekend. Diet monitoring has helped me see how much I actually need to eat and will help me improve my diet in the future.
Not only have I learned from the diet monitoring, I have also learned a lot from the Falcon Market. During the market as I was examining various nutrition labels, I realized that foods that I originally thought were healthy, weren't that healthy. I learned that hydrogenous oil can be just as bad for the body as trans fat, and that if the amount of trans fat in a product was lower that a gram, then companies don't have to put it down in the nutrition label. Examples of such products include peanut butter, where the nutrition label states that it has hydrogenous oil and lots of sugar. If peanut butter was really healthy, then the main ingredient would be peanuts, not sugar! 
After I realized that some of these foods weren't as healthy as I thought they were, I decided to improve my diet. 
To do this, I could try to eat more vegetables, especially when they are in season because I do not really eat them as much as I should, especially on week days. I can also continue to monitor my diet and try to balance it out more by eating more nutrient-rich foods from all five categories on the food pyramid. What I found from the days when I was monitoring my food was that I have been so paranoid about overeating, that I haven't actually been eating enough of all the food groups and I usually have a deficiency of all five nutrients. I should be consuming about 2000 calories a day according to the super tracker, but in reality I am usually eating about 800 calories each day that I was tracking my food. To help improve my eating mentality, I have started exercising more so that I feel better about eating more food in a balanced diet, and as an added bonus, the exercise helps keep my body in good shape.

If I had the opportunity to coach someone on proper health and nutrition, I would tell them to try and make sure they eat nutrient-rich foods from all five of the main food groups every day. I would also tell them to make sure they exercise daily in order to burn off extra empty calories so the body doesn't have as much unhealthy fat. Lastly, I would suggest that people eat foods such as kale, broccoli, strawberries, and other seasonal fruits and vegetables when they are in season. Seasonal foods generally are cheaper and more fresh when they are bought in season so that the consumer receives more nutrients for a lower price.

What is Health?

Fitness/health is one of the most widespread topics in our daily society, but a subject that people know the least about. Many people believe that health only affects our physical fitness and how in shape shape we are, however, health is the combined social, mental, and physical aspects of our life.

In our ever-changing society, with our busy lifestyles, it is important to maintain a balance between these three sections of our health so we can continue to function as human beings. To maintain a balance for physical health for instance, it is important to exercise and eat healthy. While people may know they need to eat healthy, they might not know that they should eat from five different food groups every day in order to have a balanced diet. The five food groups include: vegetables, fruits, grains, proteins, and dairy; and all five of these groups make up the nutrition section of the Five Pillars of Health.
The Five Pillars of Health are the different aspects of our lives that we need to balance in order to live a healthy lifestyle. There's nutrition, that provides support, and energy needs. Exercise, which uses the body to get energy, and staves off disease. Sleep helps rest and restore the body so that it's ready for the next day. Stores manages constant changes to the body and the mind, and lastly, the social pillar is the way we interact with our environment. All five of these "pillars"are important to creating a stable mental, physical, and social heath. For myself, I could work on stress management as I often try to accomplish more activities and take on a higher workload than I should and therefore am more stressed than I should be. However, socially I have a great group of friends who I can trust and physically I am doing ok despite having a higher carbohydrate consumption level due to the after-school sports that I am apart of.

Unit 1 Reflection

In Unit 1 our class learned about the different anatomical terms used to define positions and the proximity of locations in the body. We also learned about Histology and the four major types of tissue: epithelial, connective, muscle, and nervous. Each tissue preforms a specific role in the human body that helps keep us functioning throughout our lives. For example, connective tissue helps connect all the organs inside the body and acts as a transportation system for circulating nutrients throughout the body and for removing waste.

Some themes in this unit included how form fits function. This saying means that the function of the particular cell, tissue, or organ depends on how it was built, where it is located, and what structures it contains. For example, skeletal muscle is closely attached to our skeleton and consists of long, cylindrical cells with multiple nuclei. This particular muscle helps us move our limbs and accomplish a range of activity from running around to picking up a pile of books.
After all of the work we have done in the class so far, the one thing that I would like to improve on is my tissue classification. Before this class, I never needed to know the classification of so many tissues or which category of major tissue they fell under. I have gained a lot of new insight that has helped me classify tissues now, but I still mix up a couple of the tissues and would like to improve in the future.
For the next unit, I know a little bit more about anatomy and physiology now than I did before I started the class. I can refer back to this knowledge while learning new material. However, I will still try to work on memorizing more of the vocabulary and I will try to picture the different anatomical structures working together such as the lungs working with the circulatory system to pump oxygen through the body, or a cell's nucleus and ribosomes working together to create proteins.
A real world job where I can use the knowledge I gained from this unit is the job of a veterinarian. Even though what we are learning mostly refers to human anatomy and its physiology, many animals have the same organs that accomplish the same function as ours do. My logic is to have an understanding of how an animal's body works as a vet, one must first gain a greater understanding of how a human body works as well.

Tissue Lab

In this lab I learned that even though certain types of tissues are classified under four main categories- muscle, nervous, connective, and epithelial tissue; there are lots of different subcategories of tissues in each of the main categories. For example, elastic cartilage is different from fibrocartilage, but both are classified as as connective tissue.
All four of the main tissue types have their similarities and differences. Epithelial and connective tissue both cover the body and help protect its organs, muscles, etc. However, while the epithelial tissue mainly helps with protection, absorption, and filtration, connective tissue helps bind and strengthen body tissues, protect and insulate internal organs, store and transport energy, and is the site of immune responses. Muscle tissue helps with voluntary and involuntary movement of organs and limbs, and nervous tissue helps transport electrical signals from one cell to the other and helps with tissue regeneration.
The anatomy and location of any particular tissue can help determine its function. For example, one can assume that skeletal muscle attached to the skeleton is there so it can help move the bones in limbs and help with voluntary movement. Another example would be the location of nervous tissue around the spinal cord. By its location, a person can assume that the nervous tissue is there to help send electrical signals through the body and into the brain because of the spinal cord's close proximity to other organs.