How many times have you failed to lose weight? There are many kinds of crash diets you can try. You lose weight at first but soon when you’re back to your former lifestyle, it begins to crawl up the scale. Your pants begin to feel tight and you decide to wear much looser ones. You’re not that kind of guy? perhaps you are that skinny guy who is so skinny that the t-shirt you bought will look better on the mannequin in the fashion store. You begin to think there must be something wrong with your diet. The simple truth is you only need a healthy and balanced diet plan as well as plenty of exercise to reach your goal.
Remember the rabbit and the turtle? There was a day when the rabbit was boasting about how fast he could run. To his surprise, the turtle challenged him to a race. Just like everyone had thought, the rabbit ran so fast ahead that he couldn’t see the turtle anywhere behind. He then took a rest and slept for a while. He thought he could still win the race if the turtle walked past him. Meanwhile, the turtle walked step by step no matter how hot and tired he was. Each step he made put him one step closer to the finish line. However, the rabbit slept too long. He rushed to the finish line just to find the turtle that had been waiting for him.
There’s no instant success. No pain without gain. Here are a few tips on a balanced diet plan.
Eat 5-6 times a day
No diet without starving. No, it’s not true. Keep that hunger away from a balanced diet plan. Even if you are searching for enlightenment like those monks in the old days, you shouldn’t even think to be hungry. Staying hungry and reducing food intake is one of the biggest mistakes in a diet. When you are on a balanced diet, you need to eat more frequently so that you can have a more active metabolism.
If you reduce your food intake (e.g. eat once a day, godspeed!), your body will switch to survival mode to anticipate the little food intake by slowing down your metabolism, you can also achieve this by boosting Testogen levels in your body as well. Lower metabolism means fewer calories burnt and more fat stored (your body thinks you are suffering from starvation). That’s why a little more food on this diet will make your scale turns to the right fast.
Here is a sample of a balanced diet menu.
Breakfast (7 a.m.)
- 2 omelet or boiled eggs
- 2 pieces of whole wheat bread/ 1 cup of oatmeal.
Morning Snack: (10 a.m.)
- 1 apple/orange/pear
Lunch (1 p.m.)
- 200 grams of chicken breast/ fish/ beef
- 1 cup of brown rice
- 1 cup of vegetable
Snack (4 p.m.)
- 1 slice of whole wheat bread/half a cup of oatmeal
- Grilled fish/beef
Dinner: (7 p.m.)
- 200 grams of chicken breast/ fish/ beef
- 1 cup of vegetable
- 1 cup of low-fat milk before bed
The amount of food above varied depends on your goal. A macronutrients (carbohydrate, protein, fat) composition (based on the number of calories needed per day) of a balanced diet plan for a bodybuilder could be anything like these:
- To gain muscle (Bulking phase)
- Protein: 15-20%
- Fat: 20-30%
- Carbohydrate: 50-60%
- To lose fat (Cutting phase)
- Protein: 20-25%
- Fat: 15-20%
- Carbohydrate: 55-60%
Eat foods high in protein!
A sufficient amount of protein is essential in a balanced diet plan whether you are bulking or losing fat. You can hardly recover from your workout without a sufficient amount of protein. Whenever you work out you cause trauma to your muscle fibers. You will only build muscle when these muscle fibers are rebuilt in the recovery. Guess what it needs to rebuild the muscle? Protein. Consume 0,8 – 1,2 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight for muscle building.
Protein helps control your appetite. One of the amino acids, l-leucine boosts fat metabolism and helps maintain your muscle mass.
Protein is important in a balanced diet because it slows down carbohydrate absorption. Quick absorption of carbohydrates gives abundant energy to your body. This remaining energy is then stored as fat. Other benefits of foods high in protein in your diet are cell regeneration, faster recovery, and better immunity.
Examples of foods high in protein are beef, sirloin, tenderloin, chicken breast, fish like tuna, salmon, nuts, whey protein, soy protein, etc.
Include low GI food in your balanced diet plan!
Everybody loves sugar. Not only does sugar taste good, but it also makes us feel good. Sometimes it even makes life less painful.
“You got me lifted shifted higher than a ceiling
And ooh wee it’s the ultimate feeling
You got me lifted feeling so gifted
Sugar how you get so fly?”
Baby Bash – Suga Suga
Sugar is a form of carb, a source of energy. There are good carbs and bad carbs, or scientifically speaking, high GI carbs and low GI carbs. The glycaemic index, glycemic index, or GI is a measure of the effects of carbon blood sugar levels. Carbohydrates that break down slowly during digestion while releasing glucose gradually into the bloodstream have a low GI; carbs that break down quickly and release glucose rapidly into the bloodstream have a high GI.
Consuming high GI carbs gives you a lot of energy in a short time. When this happens, your body will use the energy it needs and store the remaining energy as fat. In order to prevent it, consume low GI foods. The slower the digestion the longer you feel full. Low GI food is essential in your balanced diet menu.
Low GI foods usually contain a lot of fiber. They don’t taste sweet either. One of the best sources of low GI carbohydrates is vegetables. Vegetables contain carbohydrates and a lot of fiber. They contain many kinds of phytonutrients, vitamins, and minerals. A few other sources of good carbohydrates are brown rice, oatmeal, whole wheat products, and fruits.
More on your balanced diet plan: Less Bad Fats, More Good fats!
Fat is flavor. There must be some fat in your balanced diet plan. Too good to be true, huh? Good news for you, fat helps nutrient absorption, maintains cell membrane integrity, and nerve transmission. An excessive amount of fat is a disaster, think about weight gain, cancer, and heart disease.
Fats are not created equal. There are good fats and bad fats. Good fats lower bad cholesterol (LDL/Low-density Lipoprotein) and raise good cholesterol levels (HDL/ High-density Lipoprotein). Bad fats do the opposite.
Good fats
- Monounsaturated fat
found in olive oil (the best source), nuts, and avocado.
- Polyunsaturated fat
found in fish, whole grain wheat, peanut butter, sunflower seed, bananas, hemp seed, etc.
Bad fats:
- Trans fat
foods containing trans fat are cakes, pies, cookies, candy, crackers, pastries, biscuits, cereals, fatty meat from beef, sheep, and pork, soups, margarine, and some salad dressings.
- Saturated fat
found in animal foods like lamb, beef, pork, cream, butter, cheese, and full fat as well as low-fat dairy products.
You don’t ban bad fats from your diet menu (Thank God!). They can be consumed as much as ten percent of your total fat intake. Fortunately, some of the foods stated above only contain a small quantity of bad fats. To make your life simpler, ban them on your diet day and eat them on your cheat day.
