Healthy Meal Planning

Trying to eat healthy every day can be challenging for several reasons:

• Time: We believe that we don't have the time to shop for healthy foods.
• Convenience: It's so much easier to just stop by KFC or McDonald's on the way home from work.
• Cost: On the surface it appears that eating healthy is expensive. Also, it appears that fast foods and processed packaged foods are less expensive. But, nothing could be further from the truth.
• Food Selection: Sometimes we don't know what are the healthy foods that we should be buying.
• Calorie-Counting: Counting calories is frustrating and doesn't really work in the long run.

Greg's Healthy Meal Plate
However, here is a meal plate design that will make it easy for you to plan and design healthy meals, without having to worry about counting calories.

 As you can see from the diagram, your Meal Plate should be dominated by green and bright-colored vegetables. Specifically, the food should be distributed on your plate as follows:

• At least one-half of plate is vegetables
• One-quarter of plate is lean protein
• One-quarter of plate is beans/legumes/organic grain/vegetable

Additional attributes of the Healthy Meal Plate include:

• More frequent meals (4 to 6 times/day)
• Smaller meals (400-500 calories)
• Macro-nutrient Balance (Carbs, Proteins, Fats)
• Plant oils: extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, macadamia nut oil
• Key micronutrients, i.e. vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals)
• High Fiber Content (30-35g/day)
• Nutritional Supplementation (Food-based)
• No flour, sugar, wheat, fructose, processed foods, fast foods
• No HFCS, PHO, nitrates, artificial sweeteners, food additives
• No alcohol, drugs; minimum caffeine
• Minimum/No dairy pasteurized cow's milk/cheese; gluten

Reference: This Meal Plate is based on my brother's "Super Meal Model Plate" that he developed for diabetes, obesity, and heart disease and his top-selling book, Death to Diabetes.