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An adequate or healthy diet should contain carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, and water in the right quantities to ensure growth, immunity, and also energy for daily activities

Eating healthily to prevent diseases in the future takes deliberate efforts.

The diagram above describes what a healthy diet should look like and what it shouldn’t.

There are five colors in the circle (plate) representing different food groups

Yellow  represents cereals and grains, roots and tubers like rice, yam, potato, bread, spaghetti, cornflakes, and Golden Morn

Green represents fruits and vegetables like apple, carrot, watermelon, pineapple, garden egg, cucumber, cabbage, strawberry, banana,

Pink is for animal protein foods like fish, meat, eggs, chicken, turkey.

Blue represents milk and milk products like cheese, yoghurt

Purple/ Lilac represents oils.

1. At the top left-hand corner of the picture, you will see a note that says you should always read the information on the processed foods you buy. Check for how much fat, vitamins, sugar, minerals, and other nutrients the food contains so that you can know if you should take a lot or just a little. The best way is to check what percentage of the daily recommendation of a nutrient the food gives. If it gives more than 10% of the daily recommendation of fats, sugar, salt per serving, it is better to avoid such food.
2. The top right-hand corner of the picture says you should take 6-8 glasses of water per day. Water has a lot of functions in the body like being the medium in which many reactions of the body take place, helping to regulate body temperature (that’s one of the reasons why we sweat). It helps to remove waste products from the body (through urine) and makes it easier for our food to be digested (that is why we find it easy to defecate when we take enough water), etc. An adult is expected to take about 3.7 liters of water per day. Inadequate consumption of water can lead to fatigue, exhaustion, and dizziness.
3. At the bottom left corner of the picture, you will see that cutting down on foods is important. So you can take just a little quantity of sweets, cake, chocolate or just one bottle of soft drink (Coke, Fanta, Pepsi, etc) when there is a birthday celebration at the office or any other special occasion.

Now, let’s go to the colours.

1. The green and yellow sections take up a lot of space on the plate. This shows that when you are eating you should carefully combine cereal/ grain/ roots and tuber foods like rice, bread,  amala ( made from yam which is a tuber),  eba (made from cassava which is a root crop), or any other energy-giving food with vegetables (like efo riro, cabbage, lettuce, garden egg). You can also add fruits like orange, banana, apple, pineapple. Simply put, each meal should contain a vegetable and a fruit. For instance, you can take rice and cucumber slices with an apple. But the green and yellow portions are not the only foods on the plate, so let’s check out other colours.
2. If you observe the pink and blue parts, you will see that they are not as big as the green and yellow parts but, it is important that you include them in your diet. The pink part represents animal protein like eggs, fish, and meat. A perfect meal combo can be; A delicious plate of rice with either one meat, an egg, or fish, and a few slices of cucumber and apple on the side. Truth is, there are some nutrients in animal foods that might not be easily absorbed from plant foods or that are not present in plant foods (especially some vitamins and minerals), but you have to be careful to ensure that you don’t take fatty fish or meat. Be careful not to take more than one meat or fish or egg per meal-whichever one you choose.
3. The blue color is for milk and milk products. They contain proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals- a lot of them. A very good advantage of milk is that it is a good source of calcium in the diet. Calcium is needed for bone formation with other nutrients like Vitamin D, Phosphorous which are all found in milk. The ideal recommendation is about 3 glasses of milk per day but if you take up to 3 glasses of full cream milk per day with other foods, you might be exceeding your fat requirement for the day. So, you can go for low-fat or skimmed milk like Marvel milk, Dano Slim, 3 Crowns milk. If you can’t take up to 3 glasses, you can take a glass per day. You should also try to stay outdoors for up to 5-15 minutes per day so your skin can synthesize Vitamin D. Vitamin D helps in the absorption of Calcium into the bloodstream, if Vitamin D is low, calcium will not be well absorbed. Vitamin D can also be gotten from egg yolk, milk, oils, etc.
4. The purple/ Lilac portion is very narrow, which means that you should take very little quantity of it. This purple/lilac section is for oils. Oils are good for the body, they are needed for the functioning of fat-soluble vitamins (Vitamins A, D, E, K), they are needed for building cells in the body, producing hormones, as a source of energy, etc. Add just a little oil when cooking, choose plant oils like olive oil, sunflower oil Canola oil for cooking, reduce fried foods like buns, puff puff, fried fish, fried eggs, fried plantain, fried meat. It is better to mostly boil your animal protein.
5. Other tips:

• Try to stay healthy by exercising often but don’t stress yourself. Exercise helps to build strong, healthy bones.
• Limit your salt intake. Use just a little quantity of salt in your food that will be just enough for you to taste.
• If you feel the salt in your cooked food is not sufficient, you don’t have to add salt from the dining table. Just eat it like that. You might even add more than necessary when you sprinkle salt on the dining table.
• Eat a variety of fruits to get all the nutrients. Pawpaw has a lot of Vitamin A that is good for the eyes and can boost immunity and growth. Oranges have Vitamin C that helps to maintain the integrity of healthy skin, and Bananas have potassium that is good for the heart.
• Don’t take too much butter, mayonnaise, peanut butter because of their fat content.
• Make sure you preserve and cook your foods properly to prevent food-borne diseases.
• Lastly, always wear a smile and be happy. It’s good for the health.

Do you know that your gender can affect your weight status? This is so true. Women tend to have more percentage body fat than men. Also, the places women store fat are different from the places where men store fat, and contraceptives can play in role in causing weight gain.

More so, research suggests that some women may gain weight during pregnancy and might not be able to return to the original weight after delivery. Nonetheless, weight gain during pregnancy is a normal thing. It comprises the weight of the baby, the weight of the placenta, increased breast tissues, maternal fat stores, amniotic fluid, etc. *Thus, weight loss after delivery should be done with caution. It should be gradual and guided. Also, a woman who is either pregnant or lactating will need more food than a woman who is not.

For Children and adolescents, normal weight is not measured using the Body Mass Index. The ranges of underweight, normal, overweight, and obesity are not appropriate for children. For example, a BMI of 18 is normal for a 16-year-old and this is considered as underweight for the adult population.

Different researches have been done to define what weight is normal for children and adolescents because they are still growing actively. So, we have charts like BMI for age, weight for age, and weight for height charts that we use for children and adolescents so that your slim 14-year-old brother/ sister/ son might have the correct weight for his/ her age and height. These are some of the things we consider when parents come to us for either weight gain or weight loss in children or adolescents. Some nutrients are very important that we prioritize when monitoring the growth of children.

Elderly people ( 60 years and above) should be slightly overweight to have some form of cushion against falls and fat stores that can help them not to become underweight when they lose weight during an illness. A decline in strength can lead  to a decrease in physical activity that makes them gain weight

Did you know that some conditions like thyroid disease can lead to uncontrollable weight gain? Also, weight management in this kind of condition is different. Additionally, when people are diabetic (type 2) or hypertensive, they are also overweight or obese. Thus, weight loss usually becomes an important aspect of managing their condition and this has to be done with caution, considering the signs and symptoms they have due to their underlying condition(s)

Interestingly, exercise is very important in weight control. That’s why we don’t counsel people without incorporating an exercise plan…we follow WHO recommendations and standards.

Exercise is important to us because we know that it helps to keep your bones, heart, lungs, and other organs healthy. It also helps to increase the rate at which your body uses energy even after you are done with an exercise session, especially for those who want to lose weight. Exercise also helps to reduce the composition of fat in the body and increase muscle, which is a good thing.

Our clerking session will help us to know how to incorporate the diet and exercise plan into your daily schedule.

Throughout the world, people differ in color, weight, height,