Best Ways to Maintain a Balanced Diet Chart

A balanced diet plays a very important role in our lives - it keeps us healthy and helps us remain active throughout the day by giving us the energy to perform our daily activities. A balanced diet also helps in boosting our immunity, which leads to a disease-free life.

To maintain a balanced diet, we can make use of a balanced diet chart since it enables us to check what is the right food for us and the right time to eat it. A balanced diet comprises all the macronutrients and micronutrients that are essential for our body and need to be consumed daily to keep our body and mind healthy.

What is a Balanced Diet?

A balanced diet contains an adequate amount of all the nutrients required by the body to grow, including proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals. A balanced diet keeps us healthy and disease-free. It fulfils the necessary energy requirement, protects against vitamin, mineral, and other nutritional deficiencies, and builds up immunity.

What is a Balanced Diet Chart?

A balanced diet chart is a representation of a healthy diet chart that contains all the required nutrients such as proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals. A balanced diet chart includes all the meals including early morning, breakfast, mid-morning, lunch, evening, dinner, after-dinner, etc but it can vary as per the individual’s requirements.

Importance of a Balanced Diet Chart

A balanced diet chart is a helpful tool that we can easily follow to fulfil our daily nutritional requirements. We generally skip our meals in this  fast-paced lifestyle so we can get help from a balanced diet chart and replace large meals with small meals while fulfilling sufficient nutritional requirements at the same time.

A Balanced Diet Chart Can:

Every individual has a different choice in food, so their dietitian/nutritionist makes their diet chart according to their food preferences, enabling them to enjoy their meal while at the same time follow their diet chart and maintain their diet for the betterment of their health.

Nowadays, people generally eat food at any time because of their busy schedules, but their diet chart helps them to take their meals on time, enabling them to get the right nutrition at the right time - timings matter while having food.

Every person needs a balanced amount of nutrition for their body - a diet chart helps them to maintain and fulfil their nutritional requirements, helping them remain more active throughout the day.

Tip - We can go to a nutritionist for a personalised diet chart as she has better knowledge of food, food groups, the right food combination, the right time of eating food, and diets for individuals with diseases.

Components of a Balanced Diet

There are two major components of a balanced diet:

Carbohydrates, Proteins and Fats

Vitamins & Minerals

Macronutrients are the components of food that our body needs in large amounts.

(A) Carbohydrates:

Carbohydrates, including wheat, grains, and legumes give us 60% of the energy that we need for our functioning.

(B) Protein:

Protein, found in paneer, tofu, chicken, sprouts, and beans helps us in muscle growth and maintains healthy skin and hair. We need 10-12% protein through the diet.

(C) Fat:

Fats, found in nuts, seeds, olive oil, salmon and sardines, provide the maximum calories to our body, We should take good fats from our diet as they help us to maintain our body temperature and help absorb fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K.

Micronutrients are the components of food that our body needs in lesser amounts. They include:

(A) Vitamins:

There are 13 essential vitamins but the ones we must take daily are vitamins A, C, B, and D. Fruits and vegetables are a good source of vitamins.

(B) Minerals:

Minerals, found in fish, meat, beans, cereals, nuts, and seeds, help release energy from the food we eat and promote organ health. Some essential minerals are iron, calcium, potassium, iodine, and sodium.

Weekly Balanced Diet Chart -

A seven-day balanced diet chart helps build daily life habits which leads us towards healthy dietary changes.

Below is a table of a weekly balanced diet chart.

Days	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner	Snacks
Day-1	Muesli with milk + 1 Apple	Roti+ Dal+ Rice+ Mix Veg + Salad	Roti + Dal + Mixed Veg	Fruits/Seeds/Smoothie /Chai+Biscuits
Day-2	Bread Omelette + Coffee	Veg/Non-veg Biryani + Rayata + Salad	Roti + Veggies + Salad	Fruits/Seeds/Smoothie /Chai+Biscuits
Day-3	Oats + dates + milk	Makki Ki Roti + Sarso ka sag + Salad	Biryani (Veg/Non-veg) + Rayata	Fruits/Seeds/Smoothie /Chai+Biscuits
Day-4	Chilla + veg chutney + tea	Bajra Roti + Dal + Veggies + salad	Multigrain Roti + Dal + Salad	Fruits/Seeds/Smoothie /Chai+Biscuits
Day-5	Poha + tea	Brown Rice + Dal + Veggies + Curd	Brown Rice + Dal + Salad	Fruits/Seeds/Smoothie /Chai+Biscuits
Day-6	Namkeen Daliya + Curd	Roti + Mixed Veg + Butter Milk + Salad	Multigrain Roti + Mixed Veg	Fruits/Seeds/Smoothie /Chai+Biscuits
Day-7	Bread Toast + Half Fry	Jowar Roti + Dal + Veggies + Curd + Salad	Dal + Rice + Mixed Veg	Fruits/Seeds/Smoothie /Chai+Biscuits

Nutritionist-Recommended Balanced Diet Chart for Women-

Different food or food groups are specially recommended for females, so we add those foods to women’s diet chart. Such diet charts boost energy as well as balance female hormones.

Meal	Functions	Comprises of
Breakfast	Boost up metabolism	Oats porridge with sprouts salad
Mid-morning snack	Reduce meal gap & prevent hunger	Dry fruits
Lunch	Regulate Sugar level in blood & helps in improving focus	Dal/chicken/fish/paneer/tofu + roti +mixed salad
Mid-eveing snack	Keep energy level up	Mixed Fruits
Dinner	Overnight growth & repair	Veg/Non-veg soup + Salad + Veggies

Nutritionist-Recommended Balanced Diet Chart for Men

A diet chart is different for men as their diet chart helps them to reach their energy level for performing daily life activities more efficiently.

Meal	Functions	Comprises of
Breakfast	Boost up metabolism	Eggs/ sprouts /upma/ Oats + dry fruits
Mid-morning snack	Reduce meal gap & prevent hunger	Peanut butter + multi grain bread along with banana
Lunch	Regulates Sugar level in blood & helps in improving focus	Dal/chicken/fish/paneer/tofu + multigrain roti +mixed salad
	Keeps energy level up	Roasted Makhana/Khichadi with chutney
Dinner	Overnight growth & repair	Veg/Non-veg Biryani + Salad + Veggies

How to Maintain a Balanced Diet Chart

A balanced diet chart includes all meals: early morning meal, breakfast, mid-morning, lunch, evening snacks, dinner, after-dinner for normal people and includes pre-workout, post-workout meals for those who are into fitness or sports. A chart is not that tough to maintain - it is just that we need to start following a balanced diet chart beginning with small changes and then making moderate changes with time as we adapt. A well-balanced diet chart provides us with the energy we need to be active throughout the day. A Balanced diet chart has nutrients you need for growth and repair. It helps you to stay strong and healthy and helps prevent diet-elated illnesses, such as obesity and chronic diseases like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer, etc.

So we need to keep in mind that a balanced diet chart helps sustain good health.This is because:

Balanced diet charts help us follow the right time for having food. It is very important to eat food at the right time. If we eat food at the right time, it is used more efficiently by our body.

A balanced diet chart provides us with sufficient nutrition which keeps us more active (physically and mentally) throughout a day, helping us perform our daily work with more productivity, which keeps us motivated.

A balanced diet chart maintains a healthy food list, so we get to stay away from unhealthy food that is bad for our health. Thanks to a balanced diet chart, we get all the nutrients such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals which helps us to keep healthy for longer life.

Proteins provide us with strength, help build muscles and are very important for a healthy body. A right diet chart always includes a sufficient amount of protein. Check Steadfast's whey protein range. 

All fats are not bad for our body - there are good fats too, eg- omega-3. Such fats improve joint health and improve levels of good cholesterol. A balanced diet chart makes sure that there is less amount of bad cholesterol which can harm our body and can hamper our cardiac health.

Carbohydrates are an important component of food that our body require- a balanced diet chart includes sufficient amount of carbohydrates for each individual as per their body’s requirement.

This is because there is an addition of more good food that easily replaces processed and unhealthy food.

What to avoid in a Healthy Balanced Diet

There are certain foods which we need to avoid in a healthy balanced diet, eg:

This is because carbon dioxide gas is incorporated into beverages at high pressure, which is not good for health.

Avoid packaged foods since they have been prepared in advance and packed in a way that extends their shelf life so they are not fresh.

It should be avoided because they are loaded with calories, sodium and unhealthy fat also they are low in nutrients.

because they may cause bloating, stomach pain and diarrhoea so they may impair your gut microbiome, also they may lead to weight gain and obesity.

because they can lead to an increase risk of obesity and chronic diseases like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer etc.

Following a balanced diet chart is the key to maintaining our daily dietary requirements in a balanced manner. Every individual needs a personalised diet chart through which they can follow the same diet in an easy way to maintain their nutritional requirement per day. Every individual needs a sufficient amount of calories, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals. A personalised balanced diet chart has all the nutrients focusing on an individual’s diet choices which makes it easy to follow.