Enjoying a balanced diet is something everybody should focus on and try to get to grips with if they want to live a long life without illness and disease. One of the biggest causes of illness and disease is not fueling the body with the right foods. Eating too much of something can definitely cause problems – although that doesn’t mean you have to eat boring foods for the rest of your life.
Below, you’ll find 6 things you should know about enjoying a balanced diet to get started:
- You Can Have Your Favorite Foods
Hallelujah! You can still have your favorite foods when you eat a balanced diet. Grab your artisanal pretzels and go nuts! This is where many people make a mistake – they think that a balanced, healthy diet needs to be perfect, with foods that they probably don’t even like. Not true!
It’s called a balanced diet for a reason.
2. Tracking May Help You To Get A Handle On Things
Tracking your food may seem extreme, and obviously this probably isn’t something you should do if you’ve struggled with eating disorders and things in the past. However, for many people, it can be an appropriate way to get a more accurate idea of what you’re putting into your body.
Apps like Lifesum and MyFitnessPal can help you to see the macro and micronutrients in a food item. You’ll see if you’re getting enough protein, how much saturated fat you’re getting, and more. It’ll allow you to be more balanced in the sense that if one meal is carb heavy, you can make sure the next one is protein heavy. You don’t have to make a ‘perfect’ choice with every single meal.
3. Try To Get A Lot of Variety
Eating a healthy balanced diet includes foods from various food groups. Below you’ll find where you should be picking them from:
- vegetables
- fruits
- grains
- protein
- dairy
Eating lots of different kinds of vegetables from different subgroups is especially important. If you’re vegetarian or vegan, that’s fine too, there are still many healthy choices you can make to ensure you’re getting lots of vitamins and nutrients.
4. Portion Control Is Key
Eating a healthy meal is great, but you shouldn’t eat until you feel sick. Eating slowly, chewing as much as possible, and really focusing on the food in front of you will help you to feel full and listen to your body. It can be tough to portion out some foods correctly, especially foods like pasta. However, an electronic food scale could help you.
5. There Are No ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’ Foods
There are no good and bad foods – referring to foods this way demonises certain food groups and amounts to food guilt. Instead, there are foods that simply support your body in different ways.
6. Food Guilt Should Not Exist
Changing your mindset around ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods can help to eliminate guilt from eating food that you maybe hadn’t planned to eat. When you feel more relaxed around foods and eating, you’ll be far more likely to stick to a balanced diet.
This is a collaborative post.
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