Nutritional diet tower

There is no universal nutritional diet tower that is suitable for everyone. All diet towers that can be implemented in the long term and can really help you improve your health are personalized versions adjusted based on a universal baseline. If you copy the template, it is easy to get into trouble.

The baseline version that everyone is most familiar with now is the Resident Diet Pagoda released by the Chinese Nutrition Society in 2022, which is formulated for ordinary healthy adults aged 18-64: the bottom layer is 250-400g of cereals and potatoes per day, and the upper order is 30 0-500g vegetables, 200-350g fruits, then 120-200g fish, poultry, meat and eggs, 300-500g milk and dairy products, 25-35g soy nuts, the top layer is limited to no more than 5g of salt and no more than 25-30g of oil. This standard is an average reference value calculated from large-scale population nutritional data. It is not an "imperial edict" that cannot be changed. Last year, I helped a young girl who had just graduated to adjust her diet. In order to lose weight, she copied the "Perfect Diet Tower" on the Internet. She only ate 200g of grains a day, no polished rice and white flour, and only egg whites for protein. As a result, her aunt did not see her for three months, and she went to the hospital to find out that her estrogen was falling almost to menopausal levels. Later, she increased the amount of grains and potatoes to 350g, added 100g of white rice, and added a piece of chicken leg as big as the palm of her hand every day. Within two months, her aunt came back. To be honest, I have seen too many people get stuck in the gram, and in the end they make it difficult for them to eat. It is completely unnecessary.

There has been a lot of controversy about diet towers in recent years. For example, supporters of the low-carb ketogenic diet feel that the proportion of carbohydrates in traditional diet towers is too high, especially refined carbohydrates, which is very unfriendly to people with abnormal sugar metabolism. I once had a client in his 40s whose fasting blood sugar had been hovering between 6.1 and 6.3. He was in the early stage of impaired glucose tolerance. He used to eat strictly according to the dietary pagoda, eating 300g of whole grains every day, and his blood sugar often spiked to 8.5 two hours after a meal. As mentioned above, we later cut off 40% of his cereals and potatoes, replaced them with more green leafy vegetables and deep-sea fish, and replaced all polished rice and white noodles with yams, pumpkins and other root vegetables that raise blood sugar slowly. In less than a month, his post-meal blood sugar was stable below 7.8. There are also vegetarian researchers who have launched a special vegetarian diet tower, replacing the original animal protein with soy products, mushrooms, and fermented foods, and adding an additional level of B12 supplements. This type of tower is completely unsuitable for people with kidney function problems, but for those who insist on being vegan, it has a much higher reference value than the general tower.

I have been using this estimation method for almost five years, and I don’t need to bring a food scale at all: I measure the amount of cereals and potatoes in each meal according to my fist. If I want to run a marathon or go to the gym to train strength that day, I will add half a fist; vegetables should be the amount that can be held in both hands, and they should be as dark green as possible. half; protein is the size and thickness of the palm of your hand. If you are a vegetarian, replace this position with the same amount of old tofu or mushrooms; cooking oil is the amount of a thumb cap. If you want to eat hot pot that day, cut off all the oil during the day, and you don’t have to feel guilty. Some friends used to argue with me, saying that the official standards are correct and it would be unscientific to modify them on my own. In fact, if you think about it, the universal diet tower is like a one-size-fits-all T-shirt sold in a brand store. It can be worn by people with a height of 160 to 175cm, but if you are a big man of 190cm or weigh less than 90 pounds, it will definitely be uncomfortable to wear a one-size-fits-all shirt. The same is true for diet. If you sit in an office and type on the keyboard every day, and if you are a deliveryman climbing dozens of floors every day, the energy required is almost doubled. If you apply the same standards to the same tower, you will either be so hungry that you feel dizzy or you will gain weight quickly.

An interesting point is that many people tend to ignore the adaptability of food culture. For example, it is impossible for people in Sichuan and Chongqing to insist on eating only 25g of oil a day when they eat hot pot every day. Instead, they can replace part of the cooking oil with rapeseed oil and butter, try to avoid the old oil that is repeatedly cooked in hot pot, and eat less invisible oil in pre-packaged snacks. It is much more reliable than giving up spicy hot pot completely - a diet that can be adhered to for a long time is a useful diet.

In fact, there is really no need to worry about which diet tower is the "correct" one. After you adjust it, you won't feel sleepy at work during the day, your physical examination indicators are normal, your bowel movements are regular, and you won't get hungry after eating for two or three hours. Then this diet tower is the perfect version for you, and it is better than the standard answer given by any expert.