Nutrition diet Plans

When you have a sample diet plan laid out for you, it can help you learn proper portions sizes and keep your calorie intake in check.

Patients often ask me to provide them with sample diet plans – these can be especially useful if you’re just starting out and don’t really know what you should be eating, or how much. So this week, I’ve decided to share my sample diet plans with you, too.

We’re going to go through this process step-by-step, so today’s post will give you an overview of the steps you’ll take in creating your own sample diet plan. First, you’ll want to become familiar with portion sizes of the various foods within each food group that will make up your diet plan – that’s today’s lesson. Then, over the next few days, I will post sample 3-day diet plans containing 1200 calories, 1500 calories, 1800 calories or 2200 calories per day so you can choose the plan that best suits your needs.

Each plan consists of three meals and at least one snack. That’s why I include one mid-afternoon snack for everyone, with additional snacks at the higher calorie levels.

Step 1. Learn what foods to eat at each meal and snack

To keep things simple, I like to break down each meal or snack into simple units – protein, fruit, vegetables, leafy greens, starch/grain, protein snacks, and ‘taste enhancers’. Each diet plan has its own basic structure based on these simple units. That way, it’s easy to remember what you should eat at each meal. Here are the basic structures for the different calorie levels:

Breakfast: 1 Protein + 1 Fruit (+ vegetables if desired)

Lunch: 1 Protein + 1 Vegetable + Leafy Greens + 1 Taste Enhancer

Snack: 1 Protein Snack + 1 Fruit or Vegetable

Dinner: 1 Protein + 1 Starch/Grain + 2 Vegetables + Leafy Greens + 1 Taste Enhancer

Snack: 1 Fruit

Breakfast: 1 Protein + 1 Fruit (+ vegetables if desired)

Lunch: 1 Protein + 1 Vegetable + Leafy Greens + 1 Starch + 1 Taste Enhancer + 1 Fruit

Snack: 1 Protein Snack + 1 Vegetable

Dinner: 2 Protein + 1 Starch/Grain + 2 Vegetable + Leafy Greens + 1 Taste Enhancer