Meal(s) for a whole day: A fixed amount (wight) of diversified foods.

Are you disturbed about your food habits or food intake patter? To address it properly, let’s check your concerns that fall in one or multiple aspects of the followings-

• Your body weight,
• Your health and nutritional status,
• Meal frequency,
• Total amount of food taken per day,
• Food composition,
• Healthy foods and unhealthy foods,
• Whole foods and processed food,
• Water and other fluid intake per day,
• Food related diseases, etc.

One of the possible options may be a fixed amount (weight) of foods including diversified foods consumption per day. So, we need to calculate the difference/scopes for eating diversified foods (D) = Ideal or Expected Body Weight-Existing Body Weight.

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Then grab/collect that amount of food (D) for that day by weighing all types of food that are available, or that you want to eat in different times or meals of the day. As the amount would be equal to D. So, there is fair possibility of achieving or maintaining or reducing weight of an individual if assessed as underweight, normal and overweight or obese respectively.

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Here we may need to consider following things:

• One need to include diversified foods all groups of foods those are recommended.
• One needs to avoid monotonous foods/diet.
• Any disease and physiological conditions need to be considered.
• Food may be restricted or limited or prohibited due to some disease conditions.
• Here we need to be less concerned about total number of foods in a short period of time if your culture, economic conditions, etc. does not allow you to have access and available of foods.
• If we do not see changes in any aspects (such as gain or maintaining or decrease as need for underweight, normal and overweight or obese person respectively), then we may need to add or remove both calory dense or non-caloric foods including total water and other beverage intake. These would help us to regulate both nutrient and fluid homeostasis in our body.

What’s benefits expected?

• It may generate less food wastes,
• It would decreased chances of forced feeding for finishing foods on a limited time period or it would allow flexible time period to finish that (1).
• It would help to achieve or maintain regular consumption of diversified foods as recommended.
• It may support appetite, satiety, and satiation based on diurnal variations or circadian rhythm of an individual.
• It may produce effective and sustainable benefits for long term instead of short-term benefits (2)
• It would also help us assess food or body wight-metabolic health benefits in different time periods.
• It would also help calculate diet especially carbohydrate to regulate blood sugar: Instead of being worried one may have small and frequent amount from the total foods for that day.
• There would be less possibility of escaping or refusing specific food(s) if someone does not prefer or avoid specific food(s) in a family setting, etc.

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So, let’s enjoy taking or providing a fixed number of foods (D) to a person(s) to attain and maintain proper health and nutritional status gradually.

References:

1. Time-Restricted Eating: Benefits, Mechanisms, and Challenges in Translation – PubMed
2. 8-hour time-restricted eating linked to a 91% higher risk of cardiovascular death | American Heart Association (NHNES Data; National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey-CDC)
   

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