Keeping a healthy diet, in addition to a healthy lifestyle overall, might seem impossible to teenagers like me and you. After all, after school we like hanging out with friends and going places to have some bubble tea, donuts, or pizza as lunch. Since our metabolisms are still fairly quick to work, we never think before consuming unhealthy pop tarts or M&M’s between our studies… However, we need to acknowledge the importance of balance!

What is a nutritional balance? Before you say it, no it’s not restricting yourself to 12 almonds a day, or 900 calories a day everyday. It’s about realizing that you can’t have avocado toasts and oatmeals everyday for breakfast without the occasional cupcakes. Don’t get me wrong, oatmeal and avocado toasts are great, especially with the right seasoning! However, for you to feel healthy, and not ‘guilty,’ you as a person need to know that balance doesn’t mean you can’t have whatever you want. In reality you can, but in some sort of balance. Being in a nutritional balance means that you consume just the right amount of calories, macronutrients and micronutrients in your diet. This in no shape or form is indicating what you should and shouldn’t be consuming, because the chocolate cake you brought today also has its own benefits- even if it doesn’t meet your macro/micro nutritional needs. A piece of cake might bring you joy more than anything else in this world! So let it be. 

When talking about healthy lifestyle, always remember that work overload, stress, strict diet all would be impossible to maintain without parties, celebrations, and junk food. We have to know how to work in moderation. Knowing this, let’s talk about snacks. When snacking during the day, always remember what I call the ½ rule. What this means to me is, whatever snack I had last time (a cookie, a chocolate bar), I will now substitute with a fruit, and vice versa. So when in general I snack 3 times a day I do: ‘healthy,’ ‘junk,’ ‘healthy,’ or ‘junk,’ ‘healthy,’ ‘junk.’ Now the reason for such a “complicated” diagram is knowing that I incorporated something healthy or something not so healthy, but mentally needed for me. This way I always have a mental check that even if I didn’t necessarily eat healthy today, I still did something healthy for my body. We can’t forget water and hydration which is the most important part of this lesson. No matter what, stay hydrated, because more than anything else, for you to have a nutritional balance, you need to have water in your system!

So overall when talking about nutritional balance, we have to always remember it was created to keep us notified and aware of what we are consuming. Being in a nutritional balance feels like being in nirvana, you feel at peace because you know you did something good not only to your body, but also to your mental health!