Balanced Diet Tower

There is no standardized balanced diet that is suitable for everyone. It is essentially a logical framework of "stratified intake according to nutritional priority." All universal pagodas marked with fixed weights and fixed food classifications are just reference templates. They must be adjusted according to your age, physical activity, underlying diseases, dietary preferences, and even the supply of local ingredients before they are useful.

In the five years I have been working as a family nutritionist, I have seen too many people get stuck on the grams of the official dietary pagoda and become depressed after eating. Last year, in order to lose weight, a young girl who just graduated used a food scale to weigh 250g of cereals and potatoes, 300g of vegetables, and 50g of lean meat every day. She didn't dare to touch an extra bite. She didn't come to see her aunt for three months, and her face was sallow when she came. I directly changed the bottom layer of the diet tower for her, and prioritized meat and eggs at the same level as vegetables. I reduced the grains and potatoes to 150g of whole grains and added an additional 20g of original nuts. In the second month, my aunt came back and her weight did not rebound.

Don’t think that the universal pagoda is made up. It is actually the greatest common denominator template for most healthy adults in China who exercise moderately and have no underlying diseases. For example, if you are a farmer who goes to work in the fields every day, or a long-distance runner who runs 10 kilometers three times a week, it is perfectly fine to eat the 400g of cereals and potatoes in the pagoda, and you may even need to increase the amount. But if you sit in an office for eight hours a day, drive to and from get off work, rarely climb stairs, and eat enough 400g of refined rice and noodles, the excess carbohydrates will only turn into fat and pile up on your waist, and you will easily feel dizzy in the afternoon.

Interestingly, different nutrition schools have been arguing for so many years, but there is no logical difference in the "layered priority" of the diet tower. It is nothing more than a difference in what is placed on each layer and how much it accounts for.

In the now popular low-carbon ketogenic circle, their diet tower directly moves the traditional grains and potatoes layer to the top, or even deletes it directly. The bottom layer is replaced by high-quality fats such as avocados, olive oil, and nuts. The second layer is meat, eggs, and seafood, the third layer is low-carb green leafy vegetables, and the top layer is the cereals and fruits that can be touched occasionally. This set of towers is really friendly to people with insulin resistance and unstable blood sugar. A type 2 diabetic patient around me has been using this set for half a year, and his hypoglycemic drugs have been reduced by half. However, there have always been voices of opposition. Many experts in the nutrition field believe that a long-term high-fat diet will increase the burden on the liver and kidneys, and is completely unsuitable for people with liver and gallbladder diseases. Ordinary people who follow the trend are prone to hair loss and constipation.

The vegetarian diet tower is another look. It replaces all the meat, egg and milk layers with soy products, mushrooms, and fermented foods, and also adds an exclusive level of B12 supplements. This set is much more practical for long-term vegetarians than the general tower. However, if you have poor digestion and eat too many soy products and cause flatulence, you have to make flexible adjustments, such as replacing some soy products with high plant protein grains such as quinoa.

Oh, by the way, I practice strength training four times a week. My diet tower is completely made up by myself: half of the bottom layer is green leafy vegetables and high-quality protein, chicken breasts, shrimps, eggs, and tofu alternately. The second layer is 100-150g of low-GI whole grains, and sweet potatoes, oats, and quinoa are eaten in rotation. The third layer is about 10g of nuts or a small piece of avocado. The top layer is iced milk tea and fried chicken wings that I must eat twice a week. Don't think that eating "junk food" is unhealthy. As long as you eat enough nutrition at the bottom and happy food at the top accounts for less than 10%, it will not affect your health at all. On the contrary, it will make it easier for you to persist for a long time and not be tempted to overeat.

Many people struggle with the details of the food tower. In fact, it is completely unnecessary. Just grasp the core logic: the lower the ingredients, the more you need to eat enough every day, and the higher the ingredients, the more you need to control the amount. Just like building a house, the bricks on the bottom floor must be solid, and you can change the decoration on the upper floor as you like. Today, if your friend makes an appointment, go eat hot pot. If you are craving for milk tea tomorrow, buy it. As long as you eat enough vegetables and protein on the bottom floor, there will be no big problems at all. I saw a study before that said that people who eat strictly according to stereotyped dietary standards for a long time are three times more likely to develop eating disorders than ordinary people.

Really, eating is a happy thing. The diet tower is a tool to help you eat healthier, not a shackles to restrain you. The one that suits you is the best.