A Balanced Diet...

Week 6

Diet
This week's challenge is to make sure your main meal of the day is balanced, to bring full health benefits.

Good practice
The ideal meal is one where half of your plate cotains starchy foods, such as potatoes, rice,pasta, couscous or bread. Although this is your challenge for this week, you should look at making this a permanent change

Eating a balanced meal is important all the time. If you're trying to lose weight, it isn't healthy to cut out a whole food group of your diet. Instead, eat a balanced meal choosing low-fat or calorie-calorie options where appropriate.

Benefits of carbs
High-carb or starchy foods provide energy, which boosts our brain muscles. Many starchy foods also contain fibre, which can help prevent constipation and protect the bowel from disease. Starchy food is filling and helps control appetite, particulary if it contains wholegrains.

The best way to eat carbs
-Start with cereal or toast every morning
-Sandwhiches or soup containing potato, lentils or beans make a great lunch
-In the evening,rice,pasta or noodles should take up around half of your plate with a smaller portion of meat, fish or vegetarian alternative.

Low carb diets
Some people believe starchy foods are fattening, but this isn't true. Carbohydrates and protein each contain less than half the calories as the equivalent amount of fat - four calories per gram compared with nine calories per gram.

Popular low carb diets increase your intake of protein and fat, which could be harmful in the long run. Both low-carb and high-carb diets give similar results, but studies show that high-carb diets are easier to follow and don't cause unpleasant side effects, such as bad breath. Until scientists check the safety of low carb diet and other cult diets, it's best to stick to the tried and tested high-carb diets.