Healthy eating is not about strict dietary limitations, staying unrealistically thin, or depriving yourself of the foods you love. Rather, it’s about feeling great, having more energy, improving your health, and stabilizing your mood. If you feel overwhelmed by all the conflicting nutrition and diet advice out there, you’re not alone. It seems that for every expert who tells you a certain food is good for you, you’ll find another saying exactly the opposite. But by using these simple tips, you can cut through the confusion and learn how to create a tasty, varied, and nutritious diet that is as good for your mind as it is for your body.

Eating a healthy diet doesn’t have to be overly complicated. While some specific foods or nutrients have been shown to have a beneficial effect on mood, it’s your overall dietary pattern that is most important. The cornerstone of a healthy diet pattern should be to replace processed food with real food whenever possible. Eating food that is as close as possible to the way nature made it can make a huge difference to the way you think, look, and feel.

How much food do I need to have a healthy diet?

A healthy diet should provide us with the right amount of energy (calories or kilojoules), from foods and drinks to maintain energy balance. Energy balance is where the calories taken in from the diet are equal to the calories used by the body. We need these calories to carry out everyday tasks such as walking and moving about, but also for all the functions of the body we may not even think about. Processes like breathing, pumping blood around the body and thinking also require calories.

So, foods and drinks provide the calories we need to go about our daily lives, but consuming more calories than we need over a period of time will cause weight gain. This is because, any extra calories we consume but we don’t use, will just be stored as fat.

Over 50% of adults in the UK are overweight or obese. There is also a huge concern about childhood obesity, where 1 in 3 children aged 4-5, and 1 in 5 children aged 10-11, are overweight or obese. Being overweight as a child increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some cancers in adulthood. So, maintaining a healthy weight is really important for health.

How much energy you need from foods and drinks depends on many different things, such as how active you are. But, on average:

Eating only as many calories as you need will help to maintain a healthy weight. However, the foods and drinks you choose need to be the right ones, and in the right proportions to stay healthy.

A balanced diet is one that gives your body the nutrients it needs to function correctly. To get the proper nutrition from your diet, you should consume the majority of your daily calories in:

Fresh fruits
Watermelon
Berries
Cantaloupe
Honeydew
Peaches

Fresh vegetables
Cucumbers
ceberg lettuce
Celery
White mushrooms
Swiss chard
Spinach
Broccoli
Bell peppers
Zucchini
Cauliflower
Asparagus

Whole grains

There are many kinds of whole grains, including:

Oatmeal
Popcorn
Millet
Quinoa
Brown rice
Whole rye
Wild rice
Wheat berry
Bulgur
Buckwheat
Freekeh
Barley
Sorghum

Legumes

Legumes are quite controversial these days.

They are either incredibly nutritious or uniquely harmful.

Some people even choose to eliminate legumes from their diet altogether.

The legume family consists of plants that produce a pod with seeds inside.

In this article, we use the term “legumes” to describe the seeds of these plants.

Common edible legumes include lentils, peas, chickpeas, beans, soybeans and peanuts.

The different types vary greatly in nutrition, appearance, taste and use

Nuts

Nuts are high in calories.

This is because a large part of them is fat, which is a concentrated source of energy. One gram of fat contains 9 calories, while one gram of carbs or protein contains just 4 calories.

Nuts contain mostly unsaturated fat. This type of fat is associated with protection against many different diseases, such as heart disease.

Walnuts
Brazil nuts.
Almonds
Pistachios
Cashews

Lean proteins

Protein makes up the building blocks of organs, muscles, skin, hormones and pretty much everything that matters in your body.

For this reason, you should eat high-quality protein at every meal.

Here is a list of delicious foods that are high in protein.

Eggs
Almonds
Chicken Breast
Oats
Cottage Cheese
Pumpkin Seeds
Fish (All Types)
Tuna
Broccoli
Milk