My plate, your plate, our plate...

Guten tag little Nutrinutters!! (German for good day ;)  )

Have you ever stopped to analyze what your plate looks like?

After we learned about mindful eating in last week's post, the next step would be knowing how to choose a healthier plate.

Let's play a game...
Out of these 2 options, which one would you go for?

                                

 I picked an attractive burger pic because I wanted to make this a toughie for you guys...such a trickster!




So option 2 might seem more appealing to your senses but the rest of your body is screaming for help!
"Are these nutrition people just out to get us all???" you might be wondering...

The truth is your body runs on a variety of nutrients. Each one you need in just the right dose! Option 2 might have been your choice, but option 1 has the better nutrients.

Going back to the food pyramid....

Remember that? The idea behind it was to organize foods in categories, depending on the nutrients they offer, placing them in a pyramid shape according to your body's needs of each. Next to each category, you could see how many cups of each you should be having per day. I don't know about you, but before I started nutrition school, the questions in my mind were "What on earth is a cup of bananas?? Am I supposed to fill a cup with these foods??"

After enlightening years of studying I learned that if you look at your closed fist (yep! you know you are looking at it right now) that equals 1 cup.

Luckily, this matter was taken care of, the pyramid was replaced with my plate and life makes sense again! For food at least...

What is my plate???

Great question!

This is just a different way to organize how much of each nutrient you should be having per meal. The beauty of this is because it's in the shape of a plate! This makes it a lot easier to visualize instead of thinking about shoving foods in cups, like I thought about doing, to see if you have it right.

This is how your plate should look like for every meal:

If you look carefully...

•  1/2 of your plate should consist of fruits and vegetables...now when I say vegetables, try adding variety...REMEMBER: the more colorful your plate, the more nutrients you are getting!
• Grains should consist a little over 1/4 of your plate...make at least half of your grains whole...this is because of its fiber content (importance of fiber is coming soon!). 
• Less than 1/4 of your plate should be of protein. This portion includes meat, seafood, poultry, beans, peas and eggs mainly.

And we can't forget dairy! The daily recommended is 3 cups (1 cup = 8 ounces in fluids). Milk, yogurt, soymilk and cheese counts as these.

To get more details on this, check out  http://www.choosemyplate.gov/food-groups/

Now that you learned about my plate, do you see how the proportions of the nutrients are completely off in the burger option??

You might be wondering "so this means I have to eat salads every day????" That is correct! Just kidding :)
The good news is you just have to get these proportions right...here's another example:

So tip number 2 for you is make "my plate" your plate  ;)

Let me know how you guys did with mindful eating...I'm a curious girl!

-The Nutrinut-