The Meaning of a Diet + Balanced Nutrition
What is a Diet?
In nutrition, diet is the sum of food consumed by a person. A diet can be good, bad, balanced, unbalanced, healthy or unhealthy. The word diet often implies the use of specific intake of nutrition for health or weight management reasons (with the two often being related). Nutrition involves more than simply eating a 'good' diet, it is about nourishment on every level.
What is Nutrition?
Nutrition is the process of consuming the proper amount of nourishment and energy, and it includes two groups of nutrients. Energy-yielding nutrients, sometimes called macronutrients, which includes protein, carbohydrates and fat, all of which come from a variety of food and fluids. Within those macronutrients are other components called micronutrients. These consist of vitamins and minerals. Nutrition is important for energy, growth, repair and development and for maintaining good health.
What is a Balanced Diet?
A balanced diet is an important part of maintaining good health, and can help you in feeling your best. In order to achieve a balanced diet, you must be consuming a wide variety of foods from the 5 main food groups including; Protein (beans, pulses, fish, eggs, meat), Carbohydrates (higher fibre starchy foods like potatoes, bread, rice or pasta), Fats (unsaturated oils and spreads, to be consumed in small amounts), Dairy (dairy or dairy alternatives such as soya drinks), Fruit and Vegetables (eat at least 5 portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables every day ).
Does each meal need to include all 5 food groups? The answer to this question is no. Individuals should aim to consume a balance of nutrients every day. Every meal does not need to include each of the food groups listed above (although starchy foods should form the base of each meal). Depending on the nutrient, the correct balance of nutrients can be achieved over the course of a few days.
How do I bring balance into daily life?
When it comes to thinking about creating a form of ‘balance’ in our daily lives, it can often set us off-balance and into an over-thinking frenzy. Considering all the ins-and-outs, the rights and wrongs. The idea starts to become more stressful and daunting.
Creating a balanced life doesn’t always necessarily mean throwing everything out and starting over. Sometimes it’s more about tweaking your everyday life in order to get optimal benefits out of the foods you already love and eat.
Consistency is key when wanting to create healthy habits, yet, so is being realistic. Creating a balanced diet is about making little changes that can have bigger impact. For example, swapping out pre-made sauces for homemade. Now this may seem like a small thing, but store bought sauces can often contain many unnecessary extras that we just don’t need. So by switching to making your own, you know exactly what’s in it and are still getting to enjoy the food you love — balance.
This could be said for most pre-made things. Now, we all know how life can creep up on us, so this isn’t about completely restricting ourselves and creating hassle. It’s about recognising what we put into our bodies and developing habits of moderation. It’ll always be easier to grab something quick, but it should be known that isn’t always the best option. For the 80% of our daily lives, we should aim to cook and eat fresh out of our kitchens, with moderated amounts of our store bought helpers. And for the 20% that ‘catches us out’, whether it’s unplanned work days, family life, or outings / occasions with friends, the quick fixers and meals out won’t have such an effect and will balance out when we return back to our 80% rule.
The key is not to overthink or stress! Every minute of the day is a new chance to learn something and put it into practise. And just like any new goal, its best to sometimes start small, and let it grow alongside you.