My Personal Food Pyramid

Yeah it's Friday! Yes, to me it's Friday because I get tomorrow off, but before you get jealous I then I have to work Friday, Saturday and Sunday as usual. But either way, Wednesdays are always good days.

Kalli, from Fit and 40 Something, recently wrote a blog titled, "My Pyramid of Success". I loved this post and thought it would be a great idea to write one of my own. Generally speaking, I live by the following mantras/guidelines/rules/philosophies (either word works!):

1) Eat to live, don't live to eat.
(Do this 90% of the time, the other 10% of the time, live to eat!)


2) There is no such thing as a bad food, only bad food patterns.


3) Always plan meals/snacks around vegetables and/or fruits.

I like to follow a modified Mediterranean diet, which means I like to use meat/poultry and other animal proteins as a garnish (such as the picture below, which is my egged spaghetti squash creation).

My own personal pyramid sort of resembles the pyramid below, which I took from iStockPhotos (I was too cheap to buy it, hence the giant iStockPhoto!)

So the picture above describes my pyramid in a photo, but listed below is a bit more detail. I've listed the "food groups" (I've sort of created my own groups) in descending order according to how many ounces I eat each day. I have the name of the macronutrient (carbohydrates, protein, fat) listed underneath the food group, followed by an estimate of how many ounces I eat each day. Hopefully this will help educate everyone as to what is found in each of the food groups. For example, many people assume carbohydrates are only found in bread and pasta, but as you'll see they are actually found in fruits, vegetables, dairy, and grains.

FRUITS AND VEGGIES (including beans and tempeh)
(carbohydrates and sometimes protein)
40-56 ounces; equivalent to 5-7 cups, per day

(tempeh sloppy joes!)

Dairy/Dairy Alternatives
(carbohydrates (lactose) and protein)
10 ounces yogurt, 8 fluid ounces almond milk; equivalent to a little over 2 cups, per day

fish, egg whites, eggs, beef, chicken, pork
(protein)
~4-5 ounces; equivalent to a little more than a deck of cards, per day

Whole Grains
(carbohydrates and protein)
4-5 ounces; equivalent to ~ 5 pieces of regular sized bread, per day

Oils/nuts/seeds
(fat in all, protein in nuts and seeds)
~ 1-2 ounces; equivalent to 6 tsp. oil, or 3 T nut butter or 1/2 cup nuts

Supplements
Everyday: Fish oil, multivitamin, vitamin D
Every other day: magnesium and B12
~2 weeks before my period: 600 mg calcium, and a magnesium every day



Sweets and beer
(carbohydrates)
~ 12 ounces beer 3-4 days per week
A small dessert just about every day (homemade low-fat ice cream and a piece of 85% dark chocolate)

As you may notice this does not exactly follow the USDA guidelines, but what can I say? This works for me! I feel great and I enjoy every single thing I eat. Isn't that the best "diet plan"?

QUESTION: What are some food rules/mantras/guidelines you live by? What would your pyramid look like?

Proposed Changes to Your Kid's School Lunches

I know I'm a little behind on posting this, but better late than never! Have you seen the newly proposed school lunch guidelines? From the looks of these guidelines most children will be eating healthier than their parents! Is that sad? I think not. This is a great opportunity for kids to start better eating habits. The proposed guidelines were created due to the updated Dietary Guidelines, and they were created based on the following recommendations;

• Lower saturated fat consumption
(<7% of total calories)

• Lower sodium consumption (<1500 mg per day)

• A new red/orange vegetable subgroup.

Here are some of the important changes that have been made to your kids' (or future kids!) school lunches:


FRUITS and VEGGIES: What was once a 1/2 cup - 1 cup fruits/vegetables combined, is now 3/4-1 cup vegetables, and 1/2 cup to 1 cup fruit per day. There is also a requirement for lunches to include dark green and orange vegetables every week, plus legumes (beans, peas, lentils) and a limit on starchy vegetables (such as corn, and potatoes).



MEAT and MEAT ALTERNATIVES: For meat and meat alternatives, there is now a 1.6-2.4 ounce requirement (per lunch), which isn't much different than before.



GRAINS: The new grain requirement isn't much different than before, at 1.8-2.6 ounces per day, but my favorite part is that whole grains are no longer only "strongly encouraged" but instead half of the grains that are offered must be whole grain. Awesome!



MILK: The milk requirement is still one cup, but chocolate milk has to be fat free and there can only be skim or 1% white milk offered.

My final thoughts and comments:

- Why such precise ounce measurements?! Who wants to weigh out 2.6 ounces of grain?!

- The whole grain requirement is slightly weak, in my opinion, but I guess I shouldn't complain. Compared to "strongly encouraged" this is a big improvement!

- Are they going to work on getting higher quality foods in the schools? I have this fear that the food will not taste good because schools have very little money to spend on food. This may backfire and make children hate healthy food. Not good.

- I still wish they would call the "Meat and Meat Alternatives" category "beans and meat" so as to stay consistent with the dietary guidelines and MyPyramid. Wouldn't that make things a little less confusing?!

- I'm slightly confused about how they are differentiating the legumes from the starchy vegetables. They have a limit on starchy vegetables, but I don't think they are counting peas, lentils and beans as starchy vegetables, because those are now required. I think I need to read more of the document to understand this.

- Want to share your thoughts or concerns about these new rules? The USDA is accepting comments from the public until April of this year.

** To read more details about the new school lunch guidelines, check out the USDA website and click on "Proposed Rule", which is beneath Reauthorization 2010. **

QUESTION: What do you think of these proposed changes? If these rules were in place, would you feel better about having your kids eat school lunches?

A Candid Look At My Diet

Many of you commented on my last post about how you eat more fruits and/or veggies than the recommendation. Some of you also asked me if that was ok to do, and my answer is YES! The only thing I will say is that if you eat more than 3 servings (cups) of fruit you need to consider the sugars, especially if you are diabetic. It's definitely true that the sugar in fruit is a much better form of sugar than that added to foods ("added sugars") but it will still affect your blood sugars and I wouldn't go much over 3-4 servings of fruit per day. The same is true with starchy vegetables. Since the starchy veggies (corn, beans, peas, potatoes, etc.) have more carbohydrates, you should watch your intake, but still remember they are much better sources of starches than let's say...white bread or white rice. Remember, there are no "bad foods" only "bad food patterns". Look at your diet as a whole, and don't judge it on one specific food or type of food. If you haven't read the new dietary guidelines yet, I really encourage you to check them out. It will take about an hour to get through the entire document, but it's really easy to understand and filled with some fabulous information that will help you for years to come!


This brings me to the topic of today's post. In the (almost) two years I've had this blog, I have posted a day of my eats only one time. I think it's great that some people like to take photos of everything they eat, but it's just not for me. However, I do find it to be fun, every....once...in a while, and even then I don't take a picture of everything that goes in my mouth. I like to use these "day of eats" posts as an opportunity to teach! I do actually practice what I preach, so these posts are meant to help explain how I decide what to eat every day, and how I make sure to get all of my nutrients in each day. I also thought this would be a great follow-up on my previous post about volumetrics and nutrient density.


So I'll start from the beginning of my day, when I wake up around 6:30am. I typically workout in the morning, before work, so I eat a little granola (~60 calories worth) and about 3 cups of half decaffeinated coffee. I used to eat my entire breakfast before working out, until I realized my workouts were just as effective when I consumed only about 60 calories (and some caffeine!) to get me going.

After my 60 minute workout, I eat my favorite meal of the day, breakfast!



I'm addicted to oatmeal in the morning, because it's the best way to get multiple servings of whole grains (16 grams of whole grains = one serving and one serving of oatmeal contains 2-3 servings of whole grains!). And of course I like to get some dairy and a fruit or vegetable, so I top my oats with pureed pumpkin (or cooked sweet potato!), 2% yogurt, and walnut butter for some essential fatty acids (and more protein). Breakfast typically my largest meal of the day (~350-400 calories).

I pack my lunch every single day, so I'm not tempted to eat at work. The food at work is amazing, but I don't want to spend the money, and I rarely sit down to eat while I'm working, so I graze all day on what I have packed in my lunch.

Check it out! Can you tell what I pack?

1 cup yogurt

~1/4 cup granola (homemade)

1/2 cup cherry tomatoes

2 clementines

~1 ounce veggie chips

~1/4 cup carrots

Almond butter

I tend to eat the yogurt and granola first. The yogurt gives me another full serving of dairy for the day, and the granola adds to my oil and protein intake (it contains almonds, walnuts, and peanuts) and of course my whole grains.

I eat my clementines (2 clementines = 1 cup fruit), and tomatoes (1/2 cup tomatoes = 1/2 cup vegetable) around 1pm, and my vegetable chips and carrots (carrots + chips = ~ 1 cup vegetable) around 4pm. I always dip my carrots in almond butter!



I work at a place that gives out food to customers just about every day, all day, therefore I tend to take a couple samples throughout the day, adding to my food intake. I only do this if a) I'm hungry and all of my lunch food is gone, or b) they are sampling a food I want to try! Just yesterday they were sampling maple and brown sugar fried bacon. You better believe I tried that!! Heavenly.

When I get home I usually have a glass of unsweetened vanilla Almond Breeze (1 cup = 1 cup dairy/dairy alternative).

At around 7pm Nick and I sit down for dinner. I usually have 3-4 ounces of a protein, and then tons of vegetables. I will add cheese or yogurt to my meal if I think I need more dairy.


I eat a lot of egg whites because they are easy. Sometimes I mix one egg with my egg whites, other times I don't. On this particular night, I didn't.


Underneath all that green is about 3/4 cup of egg whites (~ 3 ounces protein), some canned tomatoes (~1/2 cup vegetable), 1 handful of raw organic spinach (~1/2 cup vegetable) and 1/2 cup spaghetti squash (1/2 cup vegetable). I added parmesan cheese and Frank's Red Hot for flavor. Sometimes I add a dollop of plain 2% Greek yogurt.

This is a large volume dinner with not too many calories and loads of nutrients (putting into practice the concept of volumetrics and nutrient density!).

I have a beer with dinner 2-3 nights a week :)

My nighttime eats typically include:

- 1/2 cup frozen berries blended with 1/2 cup almond milk
(1/2 cup fruit, 1/2 cup dairy/dairy alternative)

- 2 plain rice cakes + 2 T nutritional yeast + 1/2 T walnut butter
(1 whole grain, 1.5 ounce protein, ~ 2 tsp. oil)


1 piece of Lindt's 85% dark chocolate




The following is my estimated intake (based on MyPyramid.gov) of servings for each food group:

Grains: 3-4 ounces whole grains

Vegetables: 3.5 cups

Fruits: 1.5 cups

Dairy/Dairy alternatives: 3 cups

Meat and Beans: 4 ounces

Oils: 6 tsp.

Calories: ~2000-2200

This is pretty close to what is recommended for my age, height, weight, and activity level. I may be a little low in grains and protein, but on average I think I get plenty! This was also a very rare day for me in the vegetable category. I usually get about four or five servings a day.

Question: Do you eat the same thing on most days or do you like to change what you eat daily? I typically eat the same breakfast and lunch, but switch up my dinner and snacks. I really don't mind eating the same thing every day (for a while at least). I tend to change my "obsessions" with the seasons!

That's SO MUCH Food!

In order to promote healthy eating and the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, one of my recent major events at work was the New Year, New You event. The event took place each weekend in January and I had a table set up with food models depicting what a well-balanced diet might look like. I used MyPyramid.gov to determine how many servings (approximately) of each food group the average American needs each day, then I displayed the servings on paper plates with these fun food models.

Grains: ~ 5-6 ounces

Vegetables: ~ 3 cups

Fruits: ~2 cups

Milk: ~ 3 cups
(1.5 ounces of cheese counts as one cup. There are 3 ounces of cheese in the picture below.)

Meat and Beans; ~ 5-6 ounces

Oils: ~6-8 tsp
(one packet of Hogsdon Mills travel flaxseed counts as 3 tsp oil)

You wouldn't believe how many people came up to me and said, "Seriously, I have to eat all of this food?!" Yep, this does look like a lot of food! But in truth, many Americans get more calories than this each day, without even realizing it! Can you guess how many calories are depicted in the photos above? It's about 2100 calories, which is a normal amount of food for most Americans. But looking around and seeing that about 70% of American adults are either overweight or obese, indicates to me that many Americans are eating more calories than this each day.

So why does this look like so much food?

• Many people don't consider two important concepts when they eat; volumetrics and nutrient density. Both of these concepts are important when you're trying to either lose weight, or just be healthier overall. The focus is on eating foods with less calories and more nutrients, per unit of volume, or per serving. If you focus on these two concepts you will get full faster (larger volume of food!) while eating less calories and consuming the right amount of nutrients.
  

• To put this into perspective consider that many people are used to getting 500 calories from a very small calorie dense burger or piece of pizza, when they could get 500 calories from a slice of whole grain bread with 1 T nut butter, a cup of yogurt, a piece of fruit, and a string cheese (much greater volume of food, same amount of calories).

• Most Americans don't get even close to the recommended amounts of fruits and veggies, so seeing a plate full of fruits and veggies does look like "a lot of food" because it takes up a lot of space (volume) on the plate, but also provides very few calories and tons of great nutrients.

• Many people see all of the grains in the first picture and think, "I am supposed to eat that much grain?!". Well, in truth most Americans do eat that much, and sometimes more! The problem is that they are eating the wrong kinds (mainly refined grains) and they are often eating it all in one sitting (thus they aren't even realizing how much grain they are eating!). Think about restaurant plates of pasta, which can be up to 6 ounces of grain (1/2 cup pasta=1 ounce grain). That's an entire day's worth in one sitting, which most people don't even consider a problem.

QUESTION: What do you think about the concept of volumetrics? Do you use it in your daily eating routine?

One example I have is when I make eggs for dinner. I like using one egg, then the rest egg whites. This allows me to have more volume of food, for fewer calories, and plenty of protein (and lutein, vitamin D, iron, and choline from the real egg). And of course I also add more volume by adding lots of cooked vegetables! More volume, fewer calories, tons of nutrients and taste.