In today’s fast-paced world, maintaining a healthy diet can be challenging. However, by adopting a few simple habits, you can improve your overall health and well-being. In this blog post, we will discuss the importance of balanced nutrition, meal planning, and healthy recipes, and provide you with eight healthy eating habits to incorporate into your daily routine.
- Calorie Balance: Consume the right amount of calories for your activity level to maintain a healthy weight. Excess calories are stored as fat, leading to weight gain, while insufficient calories result in weight loss.
- Variety of Foods: Eat a diverse range of foods to ensure your body receives all the necessary nutrients for a balanced diet.
- Recommended Caloric Intake: Men should aim for approximately 2,500 calories a day (10,500 kilojoules), while women should target around 2,000 calories a day (8,400 kilojoules).
Importance of Balanced Nutrition
Balanced nutrition is essential for overall health and well-being. It provides your body with the necessary nutrients to function properly, including carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals. A balanced diet can help prevent various health conditions, such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
Meal Planning
Meal planning is a great way to ensure that you are eating a balanced diet. By planning your meals in advance, you can make healthier food choices and avoid last-minute unhealthy options. Additionally, meal planning can save you time and money, as you can buy ingredients in bulk and prepare meals in advance.
8 Healthy Eating Habits
Base your meals on higher fibre starchy carbohydrates
- Starchy carbohydrates like potatoes, bread, rice, pasta, and cereals should make up just over a third of your diet.
- Choose higher fibre or wholegrain varieties like wholewheat pasta, brown rice, or potatoes with their skins on.
- These options contain more fibre than white or refined starchy carbohydrates, keeping you full for longer.
- Include at least 1 starchy food with each main meal.
Eat lots of fruit and vegetables
- Aim for at least 5 portions of a variety of fruits and vegetables daily.
- They can be fresh, frozen, canned, dried, or juiced.
- Examples include adding a banana to your breakfast cereal or swapping snacks for fresh fruit.
- A portion of fresh, canned, or frozen fruit and vegetables is 80g, while dried fruit (to be kept to mealtimes) is 30g.
- Limit fruit juice, vegetable juice, or smoothies to 1 glass a day as they can be high in sugar.
Eat more fish, including oily fish
- Aim for at least 2 portions of fish a week, including 1 portion of oily fish like salmon, trout, or sardines.
- Oily fish is high in omega-3 fats, which may help prevent heart disease.
Cut down on saturated fat and sugar
- Limit saturated fat intake to no more than 30g a day for men and 20g for women.
- Choose foods with unsaturated fats like vegetable oils, spreads, oily fish, and avocados.
- Limit sugar intake and avoid foods and drinks high in free sugars like sugary fizzy drinks and sweets.
- Use food labels to check sugar content, aiming for less than 22.5g of total sugars per 100g.
Also Read : 10 Types of Diabetes
Eat less salt
- Limit salt intake to no more than 6g a day for adults.
- Check food labels for high salt content, aiming for less than 1.5g of salt per 100g.
Get active and maintain a healthy weight
- Regular exercise can reduce the risk of serious health conditions.
- Maintain a healthy weight by eating fewer calories and being more active.
- Use the BMI healthy weight calculator to check your weight status.
Stay hydrated
- Drink plenty of fluids, including water, lower fat milk, and lower sugar drinks.
- Avoid sugary soft drinks, even unsweetened fruit juice and smoothies, limiting intake to 150ml a day.
Do not skip breakfast
- A healthy breakfast high in fibre, and low in fat, sugar, and salt can be part of a balanced diet.
- Examples include wholegrain, lower sugar cereals with semi-skimmed milk and fruit.
Conclusion
In conclusion, adopting healthy eating habits, such as balanced nutrition, meal planning, and using healthy recipes, can help you maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Disclaimer. We can not guarantee that the information on this page is 100% correct.