Balanced Diet

A balanced diet that results in weight loss should be low in fat and moderate in both carbohydrates and proteins consisting of the proper quantities and proportions of foods needed to maintain health or growth. Besides carbohydrates, fat, proteins, vitamins, and minerals should be an integral part of your diet. Diets with high protein content have been proved to be ineffective. Similar is the case with high carbohydrates. Here the notable point is that saturated fats and refined carbohydrates should be completely avoided. Saturated fats result in a higher insulin level in the body, thus increasing hunger cravings for fatty food and subsequently deposition more fat. Higher insulin levels also increase cholesterol and with it the risk of susceptibility to heart diseases. However, our body does need certain fats to function well. The most important step to eating a balanced diet is to educate yourself with what your body needs and read the nutrition label and ingredients of all the food that you eat. An unbalanced diet can cause problems with maintenance of body tissues, growth and development, brain and nervous system function, as well as problems with bone and muscle systems.

Eating a balanced diet keeps energy level up and improve overall health. With our busy lifestyles we often don't allow time to prepare meals, opting instead for something quick and easy. Yet even when you are choosing healthy foods, how you prepare them can impact their value in vitamins. For example, overcooking vegetables or steaming them too long may cause you to lose the valuable vitamin C they normally furnish.

Tips on balanced diet

• Eat whole grains and pastas
• Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, this should constitute major part of your diet
• eat one serving of fish or lean meats or legumes for proteins.

A typical balanced diet can contain

• 3 to 5 servings of Whole Grains per day.
• 3 servings of Fruit per day.
• 3 servings of Vegetables per day.
• 2 servings of Legumes per day.
• 2 mg of Vitamin B12 per day.
• 8 to 9 servings of Water per day.

In addition, foods combined with other foods work to trigger the release of nutrients throughout the body. For example, if you eat turnips with beans and grains, the vitamin C in the turnips will enhance the absorption of the nonheme iron in the beans and grains. Eating an orange with your meal can boost your body's absorption of iron from plant foods by as much as 400%.