Healthy Diet Plan

A healthy diet plan constitutes planning a person’s food and nutrition intake on a daily basis. All human beings are unique thus they have their preferences in food items and their body reacts to different food items in a certain way. Some people have fast metabolism whereas some suffer from slow digestive processes. Some people have serious problems like overeating or eating disorders. Thus one cannot define a universal healthy diet plan as it is impossible to include a population of about 7.7 billion. 

The first step towards having a healthy diet plan and a healthy body is to get to know your body, understand your rate of metabolism, understand your immunity, understand the food items that you are allergic to, find out what is the basis of your diet, is it weight loss? Is it weight gain? Or just to maintain your current weight. Once you have carved out your main goal then you can prepare a healthy diet plan according to it, for weight loss one needs to go in a calorie deficit and for weight gain, one has to consume more calories than what they are burning.

A generalized healthy diet plan overview:

  • A very common mistake that most of us do for weight loss starts eating lots of home-cooked meals. But even after switching to these meals for more than six months, we get disappointed because of no definite weight loss. Now the fault here is of food portions. We often are told that home-cooked meals are healthy so you can eat them as much as you want with no consequences but this is not the case. Every food if eaten in access will add to your calorie intake and maybe you are consuming more calories this way than what you would have had from processed food items. Thus always limit your food portions according to your future body goals.
  • Whole grains: With the trend of fast food, its cost, and availability, people started ignoring the health problems caused by these food items. Fast food is processed in a way to makes it insatiable. If we cannot stop eating them at once we have to start somewhere, like making a few healthy changes such as using whole grains such as wheat, barley, brown bread, oats, quinoa instead of refined grains. Whole grains reduce your extra calories coming from refined grains and have milder effects on insulin and blood sugar.
  • Healthy plant oils: This is also a small gesture that will bring wonders overtime for us. Partially hydrogenated oils include trans fats which are unhealthy instead switch to healthy plant-based oils such as olive, canola, soy, avocado, corn, or even sunflower.
  • Skip sugary drinks: Our soda drinks or fruit juice bottles are very precious to us. Who doesn’t enjoy a soda can in hot summers or a bottle of coke with pizza? But these sugary drinks are a dangerous affair for our bodies. You see one bottle of coke (500 l) consists of  50g of sugar equivalent to 12 teaspoons of sugar. Now can you imagine yourself consuming so much sugar directly from the sugar box, no, right! So, eliminate these drinks from your life as soon as possible and switch to tea, coffee, especially fruit juices extracted at home.
  • Have fruits: Fruits are the type of food that provides vitamins, water, minerals, and other nutrients. It is recommended to eat at least 3 portions of fruits every day and the best part is there is no specific time for eating fruits, you can have them whenever you need. Remender, fruits can also be used as munchies or snacks accompanied by some sides such as peanut butter, thus reducing your dependence on unhealthy snacks.
  • Dairy: Dairy is very important in a healthy food diet and until and unless you are vegan try to consume dairy in its various forms. Yoghurt is an excellent dairy product that is known to provide you with lots of nutrients and protein with very few calories. Milk is the first product when we think of dairy and it is necessary for protein enrichment and calcium content in our body. Nighttime is highly recommended for milk consumption.
  • Eggs are a high source of protein and their consumption in the morning breakfast is recommended. Eggs can be consumed in many forms and are included in breakfasts all over the world.
  • Other protein sources such as lentils, soybeans, chicken, fish are also recommended in adequate quantity. The reason why protein is recommended so much is that it is a building block of your body. It helps your body repair cells and makes new ones. Not only this, but proteins take more time to digest thus you won’t feel hungry for a long time

A healthy diet plan consists of a fulfilling breakfast, healthy brunch, a good amount of lunch, healthy snacks and a light dinner. A light dinner is always recommended because our last activity after dinner is to sleep and our body goes into rest at that time, thus the food is digested at a very slow pace and if one consumes a heavy dinner then it won’t be digested well. Also, it is recommended to have your dinner 2-4 hours before your bedtime as it provides enough time for the food to get digested. 

References:

  1. https://www.academy.alimentarium.org/en/learn-play/academy/adults/food-and-nutrients/adult/a-balanced-diet?utm_term=balanced%20diet&utm_campaign=cours+academy+-+gsn+-+en+-+pays+anglophones&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=6119745849&hsa_cam=1589234820&hsa_grp=57425054062&hsa_ad=299178025417&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-10369171&hsa_kw=balanced%20diet&hsa_mt=e&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=Cj0KCQiA8vSOBhCkARIsAGdp6RRquinU5YzF84a7VDg-ESAZdL-z4nmhgXN6lTjRcz_HkHxtrq1JyQIaAq5VEALw_wcB
  2. https://www.pcrm.org/onehealthyworld?gclid=Cj0KCQiA8vSOBhCkARIsAGdp6RSXITmyxSNHYlTpU5RRD8Fatca6AvArGD64em9SaS0rvLPj9t_PeokaAszvEALw_wcB
  3. https://isaacscenter.org/food-and-nutrition
  4. https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/
  5. https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/eat/calories.htm
  6. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-plate/
  7. https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/eat/calories.htm
  8. https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/healthy_eating/index.html
  9. https://www.webmd.com/diet/default.htm
  10. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/healthy-diet
  11. https://selfprinciple.org/?gclid=Cj0KCQiA8vSOBhCkARIsAGdp6RRo44Rk9qLwjnDz710wz73aZ1uihoA3WDWjTGX7bgedj4UGr6ELEX8aAk21EALw_wcB