How to Maintain a Balanced Diet to Take Care of Your Health
It’s important to pay attention to food because a healthy diet will allow you to lead a better quality of life. In addition, it will give you benefits at all levels, both physical and emotional and improve your self-esteem. Therefore, learn how to maintain a balanced diet and enjoy the many benefits it generates.
Why follow a balanced diet?
The reasons that you would follow a balanced diet are varied, not only in starting it, but also so that it becomes a part of your life. Among the reasons are:
- You may be overweight or suffer from obesity.
- You may be a person who loves physical activity, and therefore, you are interested in good performance, and you made the decision to have a balanced diet.
- A third reason that you may have considered has to do with your physical appearance. Who does not want to be attractive?
Common problems when starting a diet
The lack of advice is perhaps the biggest problem that can affect you the most, and from there the others begin to surface. It is possible that you have initiated a diet, but if you don’t have knowledge of the correct nutritional requirements that your body needs.
On the other hand, you may have heard that fats are harmful, but a diet without fat is not good for your health. The same applies to carbohydrates. Also, you have probably considered that you should eat less food. But, that isn’t synonymous with a balanced diet.
The result is another factor that does not make you feel good about yourself. If it’s more the sacrifice than the results you begin what is known as the rebound effect. This is when your body, after losing a few pounds, will seek to stabilize its usual weight.
All this could trigger a hormonal imbalance and could even generate an eating disorder.
Face the challenge of starting a balanced diet
One of the first steps you must take is to visit a health professional. This could be a nutritionist who evaluates you.
By taking this step, you can inform yourself about what you really need, taking into account your current physical condition. Your dietary needs can vary depending on if you’re a teenager, or if you’re already an adult, or maybe a child. Diets can, and indeed vary under this aspect.
Most likely, a professional will also encourage you to supplement a balanced diet with some physical activity.
Taking medical advice into account when preparing and following a diet is essential to prevent possible problems derived from the diet.
How to meet the demands of your body
After being evaluated and verifying that you need a balanced diet, you must fill yourself with optimism and maintain a good attitude. Therefore, take into account the following steps so that you achieve a balanced diet in a simple way:
- Diet doesn’t have to prohibit everything. If you started this kind of diet, we recommend stopping it! You must adapt your body so that you progressively lose weight (fat) and gain muscle mass.
- Don’t skip breakfast. It’s essential to start the day well. Eat a balanced breakfast including dairy, fruits, bread, and cereal.
- Restrict animal fats in your food, such as butter, processed cheeses, and sausages. But remember, to restrict doesn’t mean to prohibit!
- Follow the instructions of the health professional you visited. Perhaps the regime that they stipulated, recommends that you eat up to four or five times a day. The balanced diet will regulate the abundance of unnecessary foods.
- Include foods with fiber, vegetables, or legumes in your meals.
- Be willing to change your cooking technique. Cook on the grill or steam your foods.
- Reduce, don’t restrict salt and sugar in your food and drinks.
- Drink plenty of water, to not only hydrate but to help your body with a good metabolism and absorption of nutrients.
As you may have noticed, to achieve and maintain a balanced diet you must create a plan. Visualize a goal and you’ll see that when you reach it, you’ll feel so good about yourself that you’ll have enough motivation to stick with it.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
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- Carrillo Fernández, L., Dalmau Serra, J., Martínez Álvarez, J. R., Solà Alberich, R., & Pérez Jiménez, F. (2011). Grasas de la dieta y salud cardiovascular. Clinica e investigacion en arteriosclerosis: publicacion oficial de la Sociedad Espanola de Arteriosclerosis, 23, 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0214-9168(11)70001-8
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