Recipes for a balanced diet

There is no fixed and balanced diet that is suitable for everyone. For the vast majority of healthy adults, as long as they follow the flexible framework of "make 3 and a half fists for each meal and eat 20 different ingredients every week", combined with their own metabolic level, dietary taboos and taste preferences, they can already meet the requirements for a balanced diet.

A while ago, I helped my best friend who is in operations adjust her diet. She followed the "standard balanced meal" copied by a fitness blogger and ate 100g of boiled chicken breast, 150g of brown rice, and 200g of boiled vegetables every day. Within a week of eating, she came to me with a sad face, saying that the sight of chicken breast made her sick. After asking, I found out that she had to travel to three or four offline locations every day, and that little carbohydrate could not sustain her consumption. Later, I asked her to replace the brown rice with a fistful of multigrain rice, and add a handful of almonds and a small orange to her afternoon snack. Within two months, her face became rosy, and she did not gain weight.

In fact, there is no need to buy a food scale that is accurate to grams for each meal. Just use your own fist as a reference: half a fist is high-quality protein. Choose from fish, shrimp, poultry, eggs, and soy products. There is really no need to stick to tasteless boiled chicken breasts.； A fist full of high-fiber vegetables, preferably dark-colored ones. The nutrient density of spinach, purple cabbage, and broccoli is much higher than that of Chinese cabbage. If you like it, it doesn’t matter if you eat a few more bites. ； One fist is the staple food. Try to replace half of it with whole grains or potatoes. Brown rice, oats, sweet potatoes, and corn will all work. If you want to run a marathon or train for strength that day, it’s okay to replace it with white rice and steamed buns. ； The remaining half fist consists of low-sugar fruits, such as blueberries, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, and apples, which are perfect as a snack between meals.

Oh, by the way, not everyone has to follow this template. The major diet schools that are making a lot of noise on the Internet actually have their own reasonable logic: for example, fitness enthusiasts who adhere to a low-carb diet can completely replace their staple food with 100g of green leafy vegetables and a quarter of an avocado. As long as they ensure enough high-quality fat intake, they will not suffer from lack of energy.； For vegan friends, if you replace the protein part with chickpeas, quinoa, and tofu, and supplement with some extra B12 every day, you can also achieve a balanced nutrition. There is no need to force yourself to eat animal protein that you don’t like.

Don’t think that you have to start a balanced diet every now and then. It’s too troublesome to stick to it. When it's 8 o'clock in the morning, I buy a multigrain pancake downstairs, ask the boss to put more lettuce, add an egg, remove the greasy crisp, put a small tomato in my pocket, eat it on the way, and this meal meets the requirements of balance. ； Going out to eat hot pot with friends on weekends, cooking more fresh beef, tripe, and green leafy vegetables, and eating less processed products such as fried fish balls and crab sticks with more than a dozen additives, and serving a small half bowl of corn rice is not considered "breaking the pot". There is no need to feel guilty every time you go out to eat.

I have been experimenting for the past two years, and I have a little lazy experience: take 5 minutes every Sunday to make a list of ingredients. You don’t need to plan what to eat on a specific day, as long as you gather 20 different ingredients. This week I listed salmon, chicken breast, eggs, old tofu, spinach, broccoli, purple cabbage, tomatoes, blueberries, apples, brown rice, oats, sweet potatoes, walnuts, chia seeds, mushrooms, kelp, baby cabbage, shrimp, There are exactly 20 kinds of sweet corn. Sometimes I fry salmon with brown rice and stir-fried spinach. Sometimes I cook tofu and kelp soup with steamed sweet potatoes. I change it up and I never get tired of it. During the physical examination last week, all the indicators were green.

Someone asked me before, does a balanced diet mean that you have to eat bland food? Not at all. When I cook roasted chicken legs in an air fryer, I also sprinkle cumin and brush a little honey to enhance the flavor. I also add light soy sauce, spicy millet and a little sesame oil to cold dishes. As long as I don’t add half a bottle of oil and two spoons of sugar every time, the normal seasoning does not affect the balance at all - after all, a recipe that can be sustained for a long time is a truly useful recipe.

After all, many so-called "standard balanced recipes" on the Internet are essentially traffic passwords to attract attention. Everyone's height and weight, metabolic level, amount of exercise and even taste preferences are different. How can there be any menu that is universally applicable? If you really use a gram scale to weigh every meal, you will have to give up in less than half a month. It is better to follow this flexible framework and try it twice more to see whether your own body is comfortable or not, which is more effective than any standard given by experts.