Читать книгу The alli Diet Plan: Your Essential Guide to Success with alli - Литагент HarperCollins USD, F. M. L. Thompson - Страница 35

A healthy, balanced diet contains the right amount and mix of nutrients and energy for your individual needs. Not too much and not too little – a sort of Goldilocks principle.

That sounds all fine and dandy, but who knows exactly how much energy you need or which particular vitamins and minerals you need the most? Few people do, and even then it will vary week by week. So we need a way of showing what this may be for an average healthy person.

There are different ways this can be done. Sometimes a pyramid of food and drink is used, or a basket depicting a range of food groups. The UK model is called the Eatwell Plate and represents the type and amount of different foods that should form part of a healthy diet.

The idea is to show you the relative proportion of food groups you need to eat as part of a healthy diet. There are five groups:

1. Fruit and vegetables

2. Bread, rice, potatoes, pasta and other starchy foods

3. Milk and dairy foods

4. Meat, fish, eggs, beans and other non-dairy sourced protein

5. Food and drink high in fat and/or sugar

If we all managed to eat these types of foods in suitable portions and were sufficiently active, we’d all have a healthy, balanced diet and be more likely to be a healthy weight. Unfortunately, most of us eat more of one group than another, especially the fatty and sugary foods group, and not enough of the fruit and vegetables group, so we end up with a poorly balanced diet, which can lead to overweight.

Let’s take a closer look at each food group and how it fits into your weight-loss diet.