Healthy Eating Guidelines for Nutrition and Weight Loss

or ... How to Live a Little
when on a Weight Loss Programme!

Following healthy eating guidelines or a healthy diet plan doesn't have to mean boring or tasteless meals or that you have to start counting every calorie or weighing every ingredient..

All that adding up every morsel that passes your lips is great if you’re really struggling to keep track of what you are consuming.

But ordinarily it just makes you obsess about eating, feel like you are depriving yourself or feel guilty if you dare to enjoy a ‘naughty’ treat.

No, it's as much about the quality of the foods you eat and drink as the quantity.

What to eat

You might find a Food Pyramid is useful in representing healthy eating guidelines. The main components are:

Grains
Vegetables
Fruits
Milk
Meat & Beans

I like this one, because it also shows WATER, which is absolutely critical!

It produces a healthy balanced diet of macronutrients - that's simply means protein, carbs and fats - and helps you consume sufficient micronutrients - that's your vitamins and minerals, including antioxidants for optimal wellness.

Here's a tip: START THE DAY WITH A HEALTHY BREAKFAST!

So what is a healthy proportion of these food types?

How much to eat

OK, well, visualize your plate in four sections (quarters).

In around one quarter of your plate you should have some form of lean protein. That’s the foundation of your meal, the lean protein food. If we’re talking about dinner, maybe that would be salmon or chicken breast or tofu.

To balance it, you need to include natural carbs such as brown rice filling up one further quarter of the plate. (Bear in mind, less healthy meals will probably have HALF the plate full of less complex carbohydrates like pasta, rice or chips!)

Then you could add a rich, colourful mix of vegetables across the other two quarters - so HALF your plateful will provide more fibrous carbs, which could be a green vegetable like asparagus or broccoli or maybe a green salad with salad vegetables, including tomatoes.

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) suggest the following proportions for good health, which isn't far off what I'm suggesting. However, what is useful is it includes specific proportions of dairy foods and lumps the 'baddies' - fat and sugary foods - into one chunk of pie (ha, ha!).

BHF also provide a really useful table for working out portion sizes - see pages 11-14 of their free downloadable healthy eating guidelines . (It's not just about preventing heart disease.)

The Eat Well Plate from the British Nutrition Foundation is another clever way of portion controlling your meals.

It's quite inexpensive and you can order it from Amazon below. Dr Heber explains in an easy language the ways in which fruit and vegetables that cover the range of colours give you the full set of nutrients and antioxidants for a healthy body and longer life.

Here are some guidelines for a Teenage Diet Plan.

Booklets on various healthy eating guidelines can be sourced from:

The British Heart Foundation and click on publications. Rather than downloading the pdf files, which will cost a lot in toner to print off, order the material and make a donation.

Department of Health . Go to Healthy Living, then click on '5 a day'.

I would recommend looking at the different materials as there is so much to choose from. With regards overweight kids or teenagers again there is a large choice of material, but for the younger children there is the Artie Beat Club, which is fun!

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