Healthy diet

A human being needs a balanced diet for healthy survival, and that means being able to have a strong resistance to disease and at the same time carry out all those duties and functions that need the healthy functioning of body and mind.

So what does a balance diet consist of? A balanced diet needs a proper combination of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals. Now let us take a close look at what all these constituents do so that we can have success in our weight loss efforts.

Carbohydrates of course are the main source of energy for the body and any human being no matter the work the person does, needs energy. Many of us go along with the presumption that only those who do manual labor need a lot of energy. Wrong! For the working of the brain too, energy is required.

Proteins are rather tricky because these things undergo a lot of changes, inside our bodies, get broken down into amino acids and these in turn carry out a lot of functions which are imperative for the well being of our bodies. Vitamins are needed for certain specific activities and functions in the body and only if these vitamins are present in enough quantities can a person remain healthy or else we get what doctors call deficiency diseases.

Minerals too are needed but maybe not in the same quantities as the other nutrients and many of these minerals are referred to as trace minerals because they are needed in very small quantities only.

And that’s it, all the nutrients that a person needs are there and our list is complete. Not quite, because if you examine the list that we had mentioned above you will see that fats have not been included in the description. And that is because fats and oils are the only part of your diet that is not really indispensable. Fats are more like energy reserves. The fat content of your food is broken down to simpler sources of energy like simple sugars and these are kept ready for the body requirements.

But often the body does not require so much energy and then what happens is that these simple sugars cannot be stored as such in the body so they are again converted in storable forms that is fat and this fat is stored in various convenient parts of the body like that over eager midsection.

So the only part of your diet that you can really do away with is the fat content. This is the only thing that has a substitute and that is the simple sugars and carbohydrates that form part of your diet. Everything else is essential for your body and now you can judge for yourself how true those fad diets are. But there is another issue over here and that is that you should take in only that amount of simple sugars and carbohydrates that your body needs.