What is a balanced diet?
What comes across our minds when we think of a balanced diet? An equal balanced measuring scale of fruits and vegetables? Equal amounts of fats and protein? Well, a balanced diet is slightly more complex than that.
Our foods are separated into two types of categories- macronutrients and micronutrients. Macronutrients include the big food groups required in large amounts- Carbohydrates, Fats, and Protein. While Micronutrients are trace amounts of Vitamins and Minerals found in foods that ensure metabolism and normal growth and development. To keep your diet in check, be it for weight management, or weight loss/ gain, it is important to understand the ratios of your “macros” first.
For an average person to maintain their body weight it can be assumed that he/ she needs to eat macros in the ratio of 30% fats, 40% carbs, and 30% protein. However, this ratio changes from person to person, depending on their fitness goals, activity level, and body type. This ratio is not to say that you can eat any fatty foods while maintaining a ratio, and call it a balanced diet. If you eat sweets high in sugar content as part of your “fats”, and copious amounts of salted chips/ white potatoes and pasta as part of your daily carbs intake, it doesn’t equate to a balanced diet.
Base your meals around the carbs; have potatoes with skin, as the skin has fiber and vitamins (Micros), switch white rice, pasta, and bread for brown rice, whole-wheat pasta and whole-meal bread. As for fats, in contrast to popular belief, you can eat healthy fats to your heart’s content. These include low-fat milk, cheese, yogurt, nuts, even butter. Although ghee is better than butter and other oils, so it’s good to substitute that for ghee whenever possible. Protein can be consumed from different sources, like eggs, lentils (daal), beans, and of course, meat. It is best to avoid red meat as much as possible and have more lean meat (chicken, fish), as red meat has more saturated fats and cholesterol than lean meat. Oily fish are also rich in omega-3 fatty acids, essential fatty acids that your body needs.
There are many aspects of healthy living, but having a balanced diet is a start.
