A well balanced diet is when you eat according to your macronutrients, or macros. Everyone is different- in weight, metabolism, goals (to loose weight or gain muscle), and thus requires a different intake of calories, protein, carbs, fat, etc.
One of the ways I monitor my macros based on my goals are through MyFitnessPal. Let’s say I want to loose 5 pounds in a month. In order to do so, I’ll need to loose about 1.5 lbs a week. Based off of these two factors, it tells me how many calories, carbs, protein, and fat I should consume daily. To monitor my macros throughout the day, I just type in the name of what I’m eating, or simply scan the barcode, and select the serving amount. It’s that easy.
Why is nutrition so important? You are what you eat. Your body runs off of the food you put into it. So if you’re consuming more calories than you are actually using, your body will store it as fat.
It is also important to note that a proper diet should not consist of processed foods. For example, shelf food products. They’re loaded with preservatives and other chemicals that are harmful to our bodies. You want to purchase and eat foods that are as close to the food source as possible. Canned vegetables may first seem like a healthy choice, but upon further inspection, the food label says a bunch of names you have no idea of what they are. So what’s the alternative? In this case, it’s frozen veggies.
It may not always be easy or convenient to eat well; whether you’re at school, work, or on-the-go, being hungry can be annoying. The quickest thing may be to pull through a drive-thru real quick, or get a bag of chips out of the vending machine. But these things offer no nutritional value whatsoever. Eat to fuel your body, not just to feed it.
Hannah Miller Fitness Blog 