What Is a balanced diet?
Ashley Koff, RD explains that the concept of a "balanced diet" is an overused term and a bit of a myth and shares her concept of a healthy diet.
Transcript
So if I'm having stimulants, I want to make sure that I have a plan for recovery in my diet. I want to make sure I have magnesium-rich foods.
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I don't know if I really like the term balanced anymore. I think like natural and some of the other ones, it's just really gotten overused, overmarketed.
And the reality is when we think about the body and we think about health, health is dynamic. It's not static.
And we don't really ever get to achieve balance. So in your diet, you really don't ever get to achieve balance.
In my head, if I was asked to think about-- and I am being asked to think about-- what does balanced mean, it means always making sure
that you're catching up with yourself. So for example, if I want to have chocolate or coffee, then I need to know that those are stimulants.
So if I'm having stimulants, I want to make sure that I have a plan for recovery in my diet. I want to make sure I have magnesium-rich foods.
Or if I'm consuming-- say I want to have a small latte. Then maybe I want to make sure I have it with almonds or something else.
So if I'm getting the stimulant and also the carbohydrate, the quick energy from maybe milk or soy milk, then I'm getting the protein
and the healthy fats from the nuts so that I don't go up and down like this. I go up and I kind of go like this. So balance to me, to give you a visual, is rolling hills.
You're always going to have some highs and lows. But let's try to keep it from being like a high mountain down to a fjord in that way.
diet nutrition
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