What is balanced eating?
If there is one general piece of advice I could provide for all people, it is to eat a balance of macronutrients. What are macronutrients? Protein, carbohydrates and fat.
What do balanced macronutrients look like? This depends on the individual, but generally speaking 22-40% of our daily food intake should come from carbohydrates, 25-60% from fats and 19-35% from protein. Vegetables and fruit should be the primary sources of our carbohydrate intake due to their high fiber content. Dietary fat should come from foods such as nuts, avocado, olive oil, grass-fed butter or ghee, fatty fish, sardines, anchovy, etc. Ideally, protein will come from both plant and animal sources. Focus on quality sources including wild-caught fish, grass-fed beef and pasture raised poultry and eggs.
Eating the optimal proportion of macronutrients for your body promotes balanced blood sugar and more stable energy levels. Have you ever experienced an energy crash after eating a bowl of pasta? This likely happened because there was not enough protein and fat to balance off your high carbohydrate meal. A bowl of pasta with marinara sauce contains mostly carbohydrates, which will make our blood sugar spike when eaten without enough protein and fat. Hence, the energy crash. In order to make this a more macro-balanced meal, you could either top your pasta with a serving of anchovy or make the pasta a side dish to accompany grass-fed steak or pasture-raised chicken.
If you have ever eaten a large meal and been hungry 1-2 hours afterward, chances are your macronutrients were out of balance. .
Balanced macronutrients also help keep us satiated, meaning they keep us full longer and do not leave us craving sweets or snacks shortly after eating. If you have ever eaten a large meal and been hungry 1-2 hours afterward, chances are your macronutrients were out of balance. This can happen with any imbalanced combination (i.e. too much protein, not enough carbohydrates or too many carbohydrates not enough fat and protein). Ideally you want to be able to go around 4 hours between meals without snacking.
Finding your ideal macronutrient ratio is mostly trial and error. It requires being in tune with our bodies, noting our hunger/fullness cues, energy level and even our mood. If you want more quantifiable assistance I recommend tracking your meals through Cronometer or My Fitness Pal. These apps will display the macronutrient percentages and allow you to better understand where you may need more protein, fats or carbohydrates.
