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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Balance between food groups of carbs, protein and vegetables. No need to have all three every day, but on average and most days your meals should be a mix of these unless you have some condition limiting one of these. Bad kidneys generally means care about protein intake and not overdoing that and overweight or diabetes means carefull around carbs.
It also means eating varied. You can have the same or a similar rotation every week but make sure you don’t eat the same meal every day. Somedays rice,, some days potatoes, sometimes pasta. etc. Mix up beef, chicken, vegetarian alternatives, beans, tofu, eggs and cheese etc. for protein. Get seasonal vegetables if you can, make sure you get some fruit most days.
Doing everything in one meal is not needed but can be better. Lunch or breakfast being a lot of carbs, sugar and fat will make you feel worse than whole grains and some vegetables or fruits but if you get all nutrients it is not bad. With food it is also perfectly fine to “sin”. It is absolutely not needed to eat good everyday or every meal. If you do good, have that pancake and syrup breakfast on sunday and grab those fries and a burger and shake. Just don’t do it most days.
Listen to your body aswell. If you are not very active and not hungry you don’t need to eat a full portion. Eat until you think you have had enough and don’t regularly skip meals.
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