Balanced Diet Weight Loss Nutrition Tips Guide

Balanced Diet And Daily Exercise Program

By Tracy Kerr-Walshe

Balanced diet is a nutritional program, to ensure you are eating the most important food groups to maintain your health, and lose weight at the same time. As most people know, too much of anything is no good for you, so if you eat the most important foods in moderation, then you should be able to stay healthy.

You want to avoid fatty foods, like fast take away food at greasy joints. Many of these takeaway places are slowly being replaced by better establishments selling healthy food. Even some of the fast takeaway restaurants, now have a salad bar and offer low carb food as an option, to compete against restaurants selling much healthier foods.

Burning Calories On An Exercise Bike

Along with eating the right foods, you need to ensure you are also burning off the calories with an exercise program. The exercise can begin with a rather basic program, starting with 10 minutes on the exercise bike every morning and then after a couple of weeks, increase the time on the bike to half an hour each morning.

After a period of time, you will start to feel much healthier and fitter, just by sticking to an exercise program and eating the right foods as part of a balanced diet.

Taking A Radical Step To Lose Weight

I’ve often heard that the key to good health and fitness is combining regular exercise with a balanced diet. Sounds easy enough, but when I stop and think about it, what exactly is a balanced diet?

Four Food Groups Replaced By The Food Pyramid

When I was a child, they told me there were four food groups. Eating well meant eating an equal amount from each food group, I suppose. Actually, they were never very clear about that. The food groups seemed to be more about categorizing food items than about eating a balanced diet. But four is such a balanced number, so somehow it made sense, at the time.

By the time I became an adult and actually had to start caring about nutrition and a balanced diet, the four food groups were a thing of the past. Instead, we had the food pyramid – again a very balanced graphic representation of food.

Bread, Cereals And Other Carbohydrates

Pyramids don’t fall over, after all. They’re well balanced. The food pyramid indicated that bread and other carbohydrates should make up the bulk of our diet. Hence it was at the bottom of the pyramid.

Above carbohydrates on the pyramid were proteins, then at the top were fats and sugars. So instead of eating the same amount of each food group, now we were to understand that a balanced diet demanded that we favor breads, cereals, pasta and rice.

Eating All Those Starches

Of course, that notion of the balanced diet went out the window pretty quickly, when we were told by diet experts that carbs were the enemy. Eating all those starches would make us fat, the new wisdom dictated.

We wanted to eat protein and fat, and lots of it. At least, that’s what the Atkins diet recommended. On the other hand, some experts claimed that we should eat a diet made up of 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat.

Not All Carbs Are Equal

Sounds quite balanced, doesn’t it? Then the South Beach Diet came out, and insisted that not all carbs are equal. We must eat only low glycemic carbs – whatever that means! According to that approach, the balance in a balanced diet has nothing to do with food groups and everything to do with something called the “glycemic index.” It was getting too complicated for me.

After years of experimenting with every kind of balance, I’ve discovered that eating a balanced diet is not complicated at all. It just means that you don’t eat too much of any one thing, and you don’t completely cut out any one thing.

You know that wisdom your mother and grandmother taught you, so many years ago? Eat your vegetables. Don’t snack between meals. Don’t pig out. Skip dessert most of the time. Next thing you know, you find that you’re eating a balanced diet after all.

Three Mini Meals And A Snack In Between Each Meal

But, some people may be on a special diet and need to eat all day, to maintain metabolism and reduce their weight. These people are on a balanced diet, often devised by a dietitian, and do not eat too much of anything. They may have three mini meals and a snack in between each meal. This kind of diet allows for the consumption of all essential nutrition requirements, to maintain good health and lose weight at the same time. Any excess calories, are burned off by regular exercise.

The exercise program, does not have to be an extreme program. With the help of your gym instructor, you may be able to arrange a regular exercise program. If you do not like the idea of doing your exercise with other people all around you, then you can buy a home gym system, have a gym instructor come to your home and help devise a helpful exercise program.

After a period of time, you may realise you can continue with your daily exercise program, without the assistance of an instructor. Using a customized exercise program and a balanced diet, will help you meet your goals.

This Article was about Balanced Diet.

About the Author:
Tracy Kerr-Walshe is an author of dieting articles including Effective Weight Loss, Full Body Detox, Juice Fasting.
Keep a lookout for more of her articles coming soon.