IMPORTANCE OF BALANCED DIET IN A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE

The importance of a balanced diet can’t be emphasized enough for a healthy lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle can be attained by maintaining a balanced diet and keeping into consideration to meet all the essential nutrients required by the body. A proper meal plan helps to attain ideal body weight and reduce the risk of chronic diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular and other types of cancer.

What is a balanced diet? 

But what exactly is a balanced diet? In simple words, it’s a diet that offers the nutrients to help your body function properly. The importance of diet lies in the intake of the right amount of calories. Your body gets the right nutrition when you consume a wide variety of food rich in calories such as fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and proteins. 

Calories

Calories are an indicator of the energy content in the food. Once you intake the food, the calories are consumed when you walk, think, or breathe. On average, a person may require about 2000 calories a day to maintain their body weight. Generally, a person’s calories may depend on their gender, age, and physical activity. Moreover, men need more calories than women. Again, people who are more into exercising require more calories in comparison to people who don’t. It’s also important to remember that the source of calories is equally important as the amount. Stuffing your food with empty calories, i.e. those that don’t contain any nutritional value doesn’t help in any way. Empty calories can be found in foods such as: 

• Sugar
• Butter
• Cookies
• Cakes
• Energy drinks
• Ice cream
• Pizza

Importance of a Balanced Diet

Eating a healthy diet is all about feeling great, having more energy, improving your health, and boosting your mood. Good nutrition, physical activity, and healthy body weight are essential parts of a person’s overall health and well-being.

There’s no questioning the importance of healthy food in your life. Unless you maintain a proper diet for a healthy body, you may be prone to diseases, infection, or even exhaustion. The importance of nutritious food for children especially needs to be highlighted since otherwise they may end up being prone to several growth and developmental problems. Some of the most common health problems that arise from lack of a balanced diet are heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. 

Being physically active manages many health problems and improves mental health by reducing stress, depression, and pain. Regular exercise helps to prevent metabolic syndrome, stroke, high blood pressure, arthritis, and anxiety.

What falls under a balanced diet? 

A balanced diet includes some specific healthy food groups under it: 

• Vegetables such as leafy greens, starchy vegetables, legumes like beans and peas, red and orange vegetables, and others like eggplant
• Fruits that include whole fruits, fresh or frozen fruits but not canned ones dipped in syrup
• Grains such as whole grains and refined grains. For example, quinoa, oats, brown rice, barley, and buckwheat
• Protein such as lean beef and pork, chicken, fish, beans, peas, and legumes 
• Dairy products such as low-fat milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, and soy milk 

A wide variety for the selection of food choices should be from each of five food groups in the specific amounts recommended. These food sources from each food group provide a similar amount of key micro and macro-nutrients to meet the body requirements.

Scope of the Journal: Obesity, Eating Disorders and its associated areas of research

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Journal of Obesity and Eating Disorder