What is a Balanced Diet and How to Keep Your Diet Balanced - Many of us might be leading this year (2019) with a resolution to eat healthily. Dont worry, this year, it is actually going to happen with a perfect combination of a little knowledge and little efforts. In order to know the commandments of a balanced diet, we first must know what a balanced diet comprises of?
We all know, balanced diet includes both vegetables and fruits, and to be precise, a perfect balance of these two in it. However, we sometimes struggle in knowing what actually to include in our everyday diet chart? We are going to answer these questions in this article but first, lets know what a balanced diet is?
What is a Balanced Diet?
A Balanced diet is the one that ensures that our body gets enough nutrients, vitamins, enzymes, minerals, and most importantly, protein. Vegetables and especially, green leafy vegetable should be a part of our diet for it to suffice to be called a balanced diet.
At the same time, a balanced diet makes sure to maintain a long distance with processed foods and sweetened beverages. There are several benefits to adopting a balanced diet, but the most important one is that it alkalizes blood, which keeps your digestive tract healthy.
How to Have a Healthy Balanced Diet?
Before we start, we want to suggest everyone start simple. You dont have to include extravagant meals just for the sake of having a healthy balanced diet. We can prove to you that you can attain a healthy diet chart for yourself even by keeping it minimalistic.
1. Diet Food is NOT ALWAYS Healthy:
If you are on a strict diet or are just finding ways to live off salads, it is quite clearly no a perpect way to live as you are missing out on many othe protein-rich substances. You can find various other healthy ways to lose extra fat off your body, and still be able to eat food substances from every group.
2. Find a "Balance” in Your Meals
Each of your meals should be a source of carbohydrates, fats, and most i mportantly, protein. You can introduce healthy fats in your meal by simply cooking your meals in olive oil (or by including avocados in your diet).
Broccoli is a good source of protein so you can add broccoli to your lunch meal.
At the same time, you can eat potato + rice in order to have enough quantities of carbohydrate in your diet.
3. Protein-Rich Food Keeps You Full
One of the biggest diet-blunders that we commit is having 4+ meals in a day. Here’s a tip: Proteinrich food keeps you full for longer, and also provides enough macro-nutrients to your body. Ideally, you should never have meals that are deep fried as they add unnecessary fat to your body.
Make sure to resist your urge to eat more than 4 times in a day (3 being the ideal frequency to attain), in order to make your digestive tract to function properly.
4. Avoid Alcohol
Undoubtedly, there’s no room for alcohol when it comes to a healthy diet. Apart from that, there’s no room for fizzy drinks, packaged juices, and sweetened shakes as well. On a diet or not, make sure to minimize, if not quite, the consumption of these drinks.
We often miss the catch, when these drinks are marketed to us in the name of "healthy and delicious", that these drinks contain a good amount of preservatives in them that are not considered healthy for your body.
5. Switch to Healthy Alternatives
Thankfully we are blessed with the boon of the Internet which lets us know about the healthy substitutes to va rious unhealthy foods we guiltily love. At the same time, there are things we binge-eat without realizing, they are simply ruining our fitness quotient.
Take pizzas for instance, despite being unbelievably tasty, pizzas are doing no good to our bodies. However, we can always substitute the pizza base to brown bread, and add healthy vegetables as toppings on it? Okay, maybe it’s a little less tasty but it serves the purpose of being 'healthy' and kills your urge to eat pizza as well.
BONUS: How many calories do you need in a day
According to various research papers, we can agree to believe that an adult needs somewhere between 2000 to 2400 calories in a day in order to maintain a perfect height-weight ratio.
However, this isjust a vague figure. In reality, the number depends on various factors including your present height, age, weight, gender, activity level, and even muscle mass. Another study reveals that a person's metabolism also plays a huge role in determining the magic number of calorie intake per day.
Eating a bowl of different fruits in it is yet another way to keep a healthy diet up for your body type. Apart from whole grain breads and cereals, different fruits such as apples are superrich in fiber, and thus can be eaten or included in breakfast meals.
huge role in determining the magic number of calorie intake per day.
Eating a bowl of different fruits in it is yet another way to keep a healthy diet up for your body type. Apart from whole grain breads and cereals, different fruits such as apples are superrich in fiber, and thus can be eaten or included in breakfast meals.
Here's a list of what not to eat:
- Sugary foods, sauces, and gravy-rich meals -
- Foods that have excess sodium in them
- Fatty foods
