What is the daily amount of a balanced diet?

For most healthy adults who sit in an office and don’t do much high-intensity exercise, the total daily diet converted into raw weight is about 1.8-2.6 kg. If you include liquids such as water and tea, the total intake is about 2.5-3.5 kg. If there is a need for fitness or heavy physical labor, it will increase by 10%-30%.

In fact, there is really no need to use a kitchen scale every time. Several friends around me who have insisted on a balanced diet for three or four years are accustomed to using the "hand measurement method" to quickly estimate, which is easy and accurate: the staple food of each meal is about the size of your fist. If you replace it with whole grains, beans, sweet potatoes and corn, it is no problem to relax it to a fist and a half. After all, digestion is slow, the feeling of fullness is strong, and the blood sugar level is stable.； The amount of protein is about the size of the palm of your hand and the thickness of a finger. You can switch between fish, poultry, eggs, and soy products. You don’t have to be so demanding about eating chicken breasts every meal. ； You should grab at least two big handfuls of vegetables, with dark green and purple ones accounting for more than half. For cooking oil, the amount should not exceed two thumbs per day.

Some people think that this staple food is too much. Supporters of the low-carb diet suggest that you can reduce the staple food by one-third or even half, and eat more high-quality protein and fat to keep hunger at bay. This is suitable for people who want to control their weight in the short term. However, the mainstream in the nutrition field still does not recommend eating this way for a long time. Last year, my former colleague followed the trend and tried an extremely low-carb diet for two months. Although he lost 8 pounds, he later postponed it for two months and kept getting dizzy and losing hair. Later, he added half a bowl of the staple food back to the diet slowly.

If you want to accurately click on the card value, you can refer to the recommendations of the Chinese Resident Diet Pagoda: Adult men with light physical activity should consume 250-400g of cereals and potatoes, 300-500g of vegetables, and 200-350g of fruits per day. , 120-200g of animal food, 300-500g of milk and milk products, 25-35g of soybeans and nuts, 25-30g of oil, and no more than 5g of salt. For women, reducing the overall amount by 10%-15% is about the same.

To put it bluntly, this amount is not a dead end. It is the same as charging a mobile phone: you ran a half-marathon today or moved house all afternoon, which consumes a lot of electricity. It is perfectly fine to eat two more steamed buns and drink an extra bottle of sports drink. If you lie down for a day on the weekend and do nothing, you will not be hungry if you eat less than half a bowl of rice for dinner. There is no need to stick to the gram number, but it will easily lead to eating anxiety. When I first adjusted my diet, I always struggled with "did I eat 20g less vegetables today?". Later I discovered that as long as I can collect more than 20 types of ingredients in a week, the approximate amounts are not much different. Even if I eat an extra cream cake at a certain meal or forget to eat fruit at a certain meal, the balance will not be affected at all, and there is no need to compete with myself.