I have a really poor relationship with food. Growing up, my parents never enforced the idea of ‘eat your greens,’ and my mom was mostly focused on body shaming. I’m trying not to slip back into an ED spiral, as I’ve just gotten out of it, and I’m working on disciplining myself—something I was never really taught. I’ve read countless articles, but I’m still struggling to grasp what a balanced diet actually looks like. For example, if I have mostly fats and carbs for lunch, fruit as a midday snack, and protein for dinner, is that balanced? Or should I have a little bit of everything in each meal? And those percentages they mention in articles—how do you even figure those out? I naturally have a small appetite, and I find it really hard to eat as much as I’m ‘supposed’ to. Honestly, I’m clueless when it comes to balanced meals and would love some clarity.
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I’ll go for an actual ELI5 answer.
Having a balanced diet is like filling out a coloring book. If food are your crayons, a lot of different colors, or sources of nutrients, are going to make your picture really pretty. If you only have one or two crayons, or nutrient sources, it’s going to be hard to make a nice picture. Junk food are like big chunky cheap crayons – they don’t cost much and are easy to buy, but it’ll make your picture ugly. Special glitter crayons like sugar can make your picture pretty, but it’s really easy to misuse them and ruin everything. Alcohol is like whiteout, it can get rid of a mistake but it leaves an obvious mark! Sometimes people have diets because they have special goals so they limit themselves to a only a certain color of crayons because they want their picture to look a certain way, but they still should use a lot of different colors. Like a vegetarian diet has dozens of shades of green or a keto diet has lots of different reds and yellows. But for most people, as long as you have a lot of different colors and don’t overuse any color too much you can make a pretty picture. And pressing too hard or light on your crayons, i.e eating too much or too little, won’t make a pretty picture either. Just use a lot of different colors in moderation and you’ll be just fine.
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