Effects of Eating a Balanced Diet

Have you ever wondered what a balanced diet can do for your overall health? Balance is an essential ingredient to fulfilling your goal on any diet, whether looking to gain weight, build muscle, lose fat, or improve your overall health and well-being.

A well-balanced diet supplies the body with all the essential minerals, vitamins, and nutrients it needs to function optimally. A proper serving of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and liquids is crucial when eating a balanced diet.

If you want to increase your energy levels, fight several diseases, sleep better, improve your eyesight, and brain function, as well as maintain a healthy mind, skin, and body weight, then you should be eating a balanced diet. Not eating a balanced diet or trying to eliminate any essential macronutrients, such as fats or carbohydrates, can lead to ill health. 

The importance of consuming the proper nutrients for our bodies cannot be over-emphasized, especially as we grow older. The foods that we choose to eat each day can either keep us healthy or make us sick in the long run. So choosing to eat a balanced diet daily can have four major effects, among many others!

1. Maintain a Healthy Body Weight

Eating a healthy balanced diet/nutrient-rich foods like whole grains, fruits, leafy veggies/root veggies, beans, nuts, seeds, and tubers helps you to maintain healthy body weight. It also reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes, abnormal blood pressure, and other terminal illnesses. Eating too many processed foods and fatty or sugary snacks that are void of essential nutrients can wreak havoc on one's body weight. The body has little to no use for these foods and will end up getting stored rather than used for energy, leading to excess body fat. 

2. Prevents and Fights Diseases

A balanced diet filled with a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, tubers, nuts, and seeds that are low in trans and saturated fat, increases the production of infection-fighting white blood cells and elements that help stave off bacteria and infections from binding themselves to cells in the body.

Without proper circulation of blood around the body, the immune system cannot function effectively. Adequate blood flow will help provide disease-fighting cells to areas of need instantly. Deficiencies in specific areas can impair immune system function, such as iron, vitamins A, C, B-vitamins, vitamins E, and Zinc.

When you eat a balanced diet, you are reducing the risk of getting sick and developing chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Vitamins like vitamin C Increases levels of good cholesterol (HDL) and lowers blood pressure. Vitamin C also helps reduce the effect of fat being transformed into plaque in the arteries. Essential fatty acids also protect the body against damage from overreactions to infection. 

3. Improves Your Mood & Keeps You Energized 

 A healthy balanced diet not only improves your overall body function but your mind as well. Vitamins play a vital role in the operation of neurotransmitters. Nutrient-rich foods can also increase your energy level, which in turn can help you strive well daily, resulting in a better mood – so eat a healthy balanced meal.

Also, make sure to increase healthy fats, like coconuts, avocados, nuts, and seeds which the body will utilize for energy more, compared to unhealthy saturated and trans-saturated fats. These unhealthy fats can make you feel slow as the body fights to break them down and absorb toxic byproducts. Foods that are also rich in iron, like dark leafy greens, can also help provide an increase in energy because iron helps distribute oxygen to working muscles and the brain, which is what they run on.

4. Improves Your Sleep Patterns

 Without adequate sleep, the body cannot function properly. Adequate sleep rejuvenates the brain and enables our muscles to recover from the day’s activities and workouts. Also without proper sleep, we begin to experience sluggishness, and low energy, and our focus and concentration become affected, and cravings for less balanced food are triggered.

Poor eating habits frequently cause digestive issues like constipation and bloating, due to the toxins that may be released into the bloodstream. Acidity increase can also stress the digestive system, making it very impossible to get a good night’s sleep. So, eating a balanced diet can automatically improve your sleeping patterns. 

I hope you enjoyed reading this article. Tell us in the comment section the positive effects you have experienced while eating a balanced diet.

RELATED LINKS

https://www.comfortkeepers.com/articles/info-center/seniors-and-nutrition/5-major-impacts-of-a-well-balanced-diet

https://www.snapfitness.com/us/blog/5-benefits-of-a-balanced-diet/