Power Bowls: Four Health Tips
For athletes and active people, nutrition is the key to staying in shape and improving personal bests. Adequate nutrition varies with regard to your level of physical activity and goals, but one thing stays the same: putting fresh produce and homemade meals first and limiting ultra-processed foods is best. This routine keeps sugar, salt and saturated and trans-fats to a minimum.
Hard to accomplish? Not necessarily.
Power bowls, this year’s culinary trend, will make your active life easier: they’re nutritious, fresh and modifiable to please any palate. Plus, they’re super easy to make.
To get great results in terms of taste and portions, we recommend that you do the following:
Make sure the ingredients are balanced properly
One of the main advantages of power bowls is that they contain varied food from multiple food groups. For a perfect balance, your power bowl should have:
- 25% grains: barley, quinoa, brown rice, whole wheat couscous, etc. Grains make up the foundation of your power bowl and give you energy.
- 35% vegetables with the greatest possible variety of colours—you want to get those vitamins and minerals!
- 15% protein, vegetable or animal, such as tempeh, chicken, salmon, tofu or beans—this is to nourish your muscles.
- 10% dressing for cohesion. Take care to check the quantity you put in and make sure the dressing isn’t made up exclusively of fat, like oil or mayonnaise, but contains other things, like vinegar or fine herbs. Don’t add too much salt.
- 30% extras: pita chips, chia, hemp and flax seeds are all options you can explore for a boost of good fat and great texture.
Make small portions
Power bowls have a certain aesthetic that may tempt you to make them in large bowls. The risk here is that you will eat more than you need too and have too great an intake of energy. This can give you bloating, make it hard for you to concentrate, or make you drowsy. In the long term, this excess of calories will lead directly to weight gain. When a meal looks healthy, we have the tendency to eat too much.
The solution is simple: make power bowls in smaller bowls, and start with smaller portions—you can always go for seconds or have a snack between meals if you’re still hungry. It’s better to eat smaller portions more often.
Enjoy variety!
The nutritional value of each power bowl is different, depending on the ingredients used. It’s best to vary your recipes and try out the greatest possible number of ingredients. Variety will help keep you interested, on top of providing you with different types of vitamins, fats and antioxidants.
Take advantage of your experiments to try ingredients you use less frequently and to integrate vegetable proteins, such as lentils, tofu or tempeh, into your diet. Their impact on the environment is much less harmful than that of animal protein.
Tailor your bowl for pre- or post-workout
If you’re planning to eat a power bowl before working out, avoid foods with fat, such as dressing, avocado or nuts, as they take longer to digest. Limit fibre, because it activates digestion (which isn’t ideal while you’re working out). Instead, use seeds and fruit because they contain a lot of energy. If you’re eating your power bowl post-workout, make sure it’s rich in carbs and a great source of protein.
The rest is up to your imagination! Take a look at the leftovers in your fridge or find inspiration on Instagram to test out your power bowl skills and create new recipes that are both healthy and easy.
