In nutrition, the diet is usually the sum total of all food ingested by an organism or individual. It includes all food sources plus liquid and any semi-solid products that would pass through the gastrointestinal tract. The word “diet” actually refers to the quantity of calories that an organism gets from food. An organism can survive on either less or more diet, and in both cases, it would be adaptive to get a balance. But the definition of “diet” as used in this context would include all food sources including milk, meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts.
This definition of diet therefore refers to the number and/or the quality of nutrients in foods that would cause an organism to adapt and stay healthy. Foods having these qualities are generally referred to as “balanced diet.” In fact, a balanced diet is not just about what an individual eats but also about the quantity of the intake of the nutrients. For example, in most developed countries, most of the calories come from fast food because these are packaged and marketed as healthy foods that provide an important part of the necessary vitamins, minerals and proteins needed for the body.
In such a society, it is not very easy to stick to a diet due to so many temptations, and if you do it could become unhealthy for you. Therefore, a recommended diet is one that is rich in calcium, sufficient in potassium and other trace minerals and which contains low fat. The consumption of foods that contain a lot of fat would have a negative effect on your diet, especially if your diet includes meat, which is one of the sources of animal fats. In order to achieve a low fat and high nutritional diet, you would need to change your eating habits.
The first step would be to avoid or reduce the consumption of foods that are high in calorie content. Carbohydrates such as breads, pastas and potatoes are often consumed as primary sources of energy. For most people, changing to a healthy diet is quite hard, because the taste of most carbohydrate rich foods are far superior to the taste of vegetables or fruits. However, you should compensate for this by eating more often, and you can also eat vegetables and fruits but in small proportions. You should try to eat as much protein as you can in your diet.
There are two types of dieting – one is low calorie dieting and the other is high protein dieting. For those people who are looking forward to going on diets, either of these two types is advised. If you are looking forward to low calorie dieting, you should limit your intake of protein and focus instead on low fat foods and fruit. However, if you are looking forward to high protein diets, you can make the diet even more restrictive by restricting the consumption of dietary fat as well.
If you want to lose weight, you should try to cut sugar from your diet as much as possible, including eating any kinds of confectionery which has sugar. Instead, try and substitute all kinds of sweet foods with alternatives such as honey, maple syrup, agave nectar or brown or white sugar. You can also drink water instead of buying drinks that contain sugar. As far as proteins are concerned, you can increase your intake of fish and eggs or take them alternately. While eating healthy is not about deprivation, it is about replacing unhealthy food choices with healthy alternatives.