Eating a nutritious, balanced meal plan can provide a wide range of health benefits. It can increase your energy levels, reduce your risk of developing some diseases, promote better sleep, and improve performance at work or during exercise. A well-designed meal plan can also help you to achieve your weight goals. The 2020-2025 USDA Dietary Guidelines acknowledge the importance of eating a well balanced diet both in the short-term and throughout the lifespan.1
How Many Calories Do You Need?
On average, an adult will need somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 to 2,500 calories per day to maintain their current weight. The number of calories you need depends on your natural size, muscle mass, activity level, age, and gender. There are calorie tables and calculators that will help you estimate your daily calorie needs. But keep in mind these really are estimates—since you may have differences in your metabolism, you may need a few more or a few fewer calories than what the calculators show. Over time, you will know to adjust your overall calorie intake up or down by monitoring your weight.
Keep a Food Diary
If you need to lose weight, gain weight, watch your fat, protein, or sodium intake, you’ll have an easier time if you use a food diary. You can use a notebook, or you can use a web-based diet program, to keep track of your diet online.
Start by just writing down everything you eat for three or four days before you start a diet, so you can see how many calories you’re currently consuming. Look at how many healthy foods you eat now and how many unhealthy foods you choose as well. Make sure to include at least one weekend day as many people eat differently on the weekends than they do during the rest of the week.
Once you understand your current eating style and patterns, it will be easier to identify which foods you need to consume more often and which types of foods you would benefit from eating less often.
Choose the Right Foods
Once you know how many calories you need, your next step is to choose foods that will offer lots of good nutrition for the calories you take in.
For example, at snack time you may decide to choose a cup of blueberries for 85 calories over a small glazed 100 calorie donut. Blueberries contain fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Although the blueberries only contain 15 less calories than the donut, they are more likely to make your feel full and provide an array of other important nutrients that you need to consume daily
Considering how food is prepared is another step to eating more healthfully. For example, consuming a piece of broiled, baked, or grilled salmon would be a better choice then consuming fish sticks because the salmon won’t have as much sodium as the fish sticks, and can be prepared using other beneficial ingredients like lemon and herbs. This doesn’t mean that you can never eat fish sticks. Rather, consider choosing them less often.
In general, foods will be lower in saturated fats, sodium, and sugar if they are not covered in creamy sauces, deep fried, heavily refined, or processed. Again it doesn’t mean that you can never eat dessert or French fries. It simply suggests that it’s better to consume whole foods more often. Some examples include:
- Swap apple pie for a whole apple or apple slices with nut butter
- Swap fried chicken for broiled steak or baked chicken or turkey
- Swap red meat such as hamburgers for lean protein like chicken and fish a few times per week
- Choose whole grain breads more often (at least 50 % of the time) and when you do choose refined grains make sure they are fortified.
- Choose whole grain breakfast cereals over sugary cereals
Eating a healthy, balanced diet also means eating a variety of foods. Choose foods from each of the food groups to make sure you are getting all of the nutrients that you need.
If you’re not sure of the nutritional content of any packaged food, be sure to read the nutrition facts food labels to understand the nutritional content for the number of calories per serving.
