Creating a Balanced Plate

The term balance is often thrown around when discussing health, wellness and nutrition, but what does “balance” mean?

For many decades extreme diets have taken the spotlight including diets that eliminate entire food groups, detoxes and diets that focus on only consuming one type of food for extensive periods of time. One of the things these diets have in common is that they all may (emphasis on may) work for a short time but eventually lead to relapsing into an unhealthy diet pattern again, but this time sprouting an unhealthy relationship with food.

Balance is the “diet” that will eliminate the relapse, food shame, disordered eating and will increase your overall health and wellbeing. When you balance your life and balance your nutrition you ensure that your body is getting all the nutrients you need while also granting yourself the freedom to eat foods that make you happy.

So how do we build a balanced plate? My favorite way to incorporate all food groups into my meals and keep my nutrition balanced is to make sure all of my plates contain protein, fat, fiber and color. For example, instead of a dinner with just pasta, I would spice up the meal by adding a bolognese sauce and some steamed broccoli. This meal now has protein (beef), fat (beef and olive oil), fiber (pasta and broccoli), and color (the tomato sauce is red, broccoli is green, beef is brown, pasta is beige).

You can translate this balance of the plate to balancing what you eat throughout the day. If you love having a donut on Sunday morning, maybe have some eggs with peppers before-hand, then have your donut! Later that day maybe you have a taco bowl for lunch and dinner is a salad with chocolate sorbet for dessert. This day was balanced, full of nutrition and you still were able to enjoy your favorite treat!

Implementing balance is essential to optimal health and allows for you to heal your relationship with food as well. If you are interested in learning more about balancing your nutrition and healing your relationship with food after patterns of yo-yo dieting, send me an email to nutrikaywellness@gmail.com and let’s chat!