Balanced Diet Charts and Balanced Diet Tips for Health

Preparing a daily diet chart will depend on various parameters like your height, weight, sex, lifestyle, level of physical activity, present or past medical history and likes and preferences. A balanced healthy diet focuses on the improvement of your health and at the same time decreases your risk for various life threatening diseases.

Balanced Diet Information and Balanced Diet Guidelines

Try the following tips to make healthy food choices for your balanced diet –

• Get enough calories to maintain a healthy body weight. Learn to strike a balance between calorie intake and calorie expenditure, that is avoid eating more than that your body uses.
• Include a variety of foods in your meal. Your basis of the diet should be whole grains, cereals and its products. Avoid the consumption of refined or processed foods or cereals and grains altogether as the refining process strips away most of the nutrients from them.
• Expand the range of vegetables and fruits that you normally eat as no one fruit or vegetable will provide you with all the necessary nutrients. Grains, fruits and vegetables and pulses will give your complex carbohydrates, fiber and other nutrients necessary for health. You can even start your meals with a bowl full of raw vegetable salads with salt, lemon and pepper. Avoid adding fatty dressings to your salads and making them calorie dense.
• The portion size you consume should be moderate, especially if you plan to indulge in a high calorie food.
• Get your proteins from low fat dairy products, sprouts, eggs (mainly egg whites), fish, and lean cuts of meats, skinless poultry and soy products. Avoid the consumption of organ meats, shell fish, red meats and poultry with skin as they are loaded with cholesterol and saturated fats.
• Choose your fats correctly, besides reducing the total quantity of fats also focus on the quality of fats. Avoid trans fats and saturated fats from bakery products with margarine, butter.
• Also avoid the consumption of fried foods, junk foods, oily foods, calorie dense desserts, sweets, sugars, candies, chocolates, sweetened artificial juices, sodas and carbonated beverages. These foods provide simple calories and carbohydrates without providing any significant amounts of other nutrients.
• Besides following a healthy balanced diet drink plenty of water and avoid any kind of physical or emotional stress. Also increase your physical activity to strike a balance between calorie intake and expenditure. Remember before changing your diet or lifestyle in any major way consult a health care specialist.