How To Plan A Workable Diet Program Using Packaged Food Nutrition Data

By Marion Peters


Some people embarking on a diet program are often overwhelmed by the prospects of watching everything they eat. While you can access some recommended diets on heath advisory sites, the plans may not fit your tastes nor be adequate for your specific needs. This guide shows how you can plan an effective diet with no more than just the nutrition data on food packaging.

There is a misplaced though pretty common sentiment that all you need to take care of in a diet are the amount of calories. While it is true that most diets are structured to help weight watchers limit the calorific content of their food, this is just part of the program. Just as important is the need to look after the nutrients, minerals and vitamins in every dish served.

It is important to have a diet guide that comprises just recommended nutritional intakes per day. This makes it easy as all you will need to do is identify dishes and snacks with the required nutritional content and distribute these as you please throughout the day's meals. Use a table with at least five columns or a spreadsheet program to prepare your diet journal.

For each day, list the nutritional elements such as vitamins, carbohydrates and minerals you need to watch in the leftmost column of your journal. Remember to leave about four or five blank lines under each element of nutrition you are keeping watch over. Label the second column, "daily intake" and label the other columns to correspond with the meals you take daily though the rightmost column should be blank to add up the totals.

Now begin by allocating the nutrients allocated to each meal, ideally beginning with the main meal of the day when you intend to take in the largest proportion of the major nutrients. With the major meals out of the way, it will be a breeze to set out what to take in the other meals and snacks in order to make a perfect diet. Remember to keep adding the totals set for each nutrient as you go so as not to make poor estimates.

As you allocate the nutritional proportions to take in each meal, take care to note the format of the nutritional information on the packaging. While some food processors indicate the amount of nutrients included in a serving, others indicate this per a certain weight such as 100 grams. Remember too that a single food item will have more than one nutritional element in varying proportions.

You can maintain a healthy diet with proper planning. A diet plan should only specify the daily nutritional intake. Use the foods' nutrition data to plan your daily diet journal as shown above.




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