DPP Balanced Menus to Fuel Health and Weight Loss

Why is it important to eat balanced meals?

Here are some reasons why healthy eating is important. 

Weight management

• Keep calories to within your goal amount for weight loss or maintenance
• Include nutrients for fullness (protein, fiber, healthy fats, water)

Blood sugar control

• Fewer and smaller spikes/dips in blood sugar level after eating
• Lower diabetes risk and improved insulin sensitivity

Hearth health

• Choices to lower blood cholesterol and blood pressure 
• Choices low in cholesterol, sugar, and trans and saturated fats

More benefits

• More energy and better mood
• Improved sleep
• Reduced stress
• Better productivity and focus
• Increased brain health long-term

Benefits of menu planningWhy take time to plan menus?

• Prioritize nutrition. You’re more likely to think about nutrition when you plan meals ahead of time. On the spur of the moment, factors like convenience and taste may come first.
• Reduce stress. It can be stressful to make last-minute decisions about what to eat and try to keep them healthy. It’s easier to make decisions early. 
• Save money. When planning meals ahead of time, you can look at weekly ads and take time to identify food options that are equally nutritious, but lower in cost.

Know what a healthy menu is!To plan a healthy menu, you need to know what a “healthy menu” is. A healthy menu is nutritionally adequate, it has the right number of calories for your weight management goals, and it provides the protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals that you need. A healthy menu also fits into your lifestyle. It meets your dietary preferences and needs. For example, it may be low-carb/keto, low-fat, plant-based/vegan, or Mediterranean-style if you prefer. It also fits into your social life and meets your cultural preferences. Find out your diet recommendationsMyplate.gov/myplate-plan has a calculator that can give recommendations for your calorie and food group goals per day depending on your gender, weight, and activity levels. It tells you goals for servings per day for the following groups.

• Protein
• Vegetables
• Fruit
• Dairy
• Grains

When you’re ready, you can focus on healthier choices within those groups.

• Protein: Lean protein
• Vegetables: Emphasis on non-starchy vegetables
• Fruit: Emphasize fresh and unsweetened frozen fruit, and reduce juice, canned fruit in syrup, and dried fruit
• Dairy: Choose reduced-fat dairy products or fortified soy products
• Grains: Make at least half of your grains whole

You can customize further as needed! Here are examples of what you might choose to include.

• Limiting added sugars
• Choosing unsaturated fats instead of saturated fats
• Making sure you choose a variety of options within groups

Three strategies for building balanced meals

1. Modify a meal you currently eat to make it more balanced. 

For example, if your original meal is a ham sandwich with pretzels and cookies, it’s high in grains. A more balanced meal might be a tuna sandwich on whole-wheat bread, with carrots, yogurt, and an apple. The modified meal has protein, grains, vegetables, reduced-fat dairy, and fruit.

2. Build a balanced meal from scratch. 

Include at least 3-4 food groups. So, a meal might be lentil vegetable soup with a slice of whole-wheat bread and low-fat cheese. This meal has protein, vegetables, a grain, and reduced-fat dairy.

3. Swap foods within groups to create a new healthy meal. For example, if your original meal is pasta chicken salad, try these swaps to turn it into a healthy tuna melt meal.

• Whole-wheat bread for whole-grain pasta
• Tuna for chicken
• Side salad for chopped vegetables 
• Vinaigrette dressing for olive oil and lemon juice

Put balanced meals together to form daily menusAfter you create balanced meals, you can put them together to form daily and weekly menus. For each day, add up the food groups from each meal, and adjust if needed to hit your goals.