Tip # 4
Choose Health: Nutritional Balance Matters!
If you are managing your weight for either weight loss or maintenance, calories count as we covered in lesson #3. However, food provides so much more than just calories.
Each time you eat, you can choose foods that provide your body with the nutrients you need to be healthy. Or you can choose “empty calories”, foods that provide calories with little or no nutrients. Either way a calorie deficit (fewer calories than you burn in a given day) will lead to weight loss. But do you really want to lose weight at the expense of your health?
Achieving nutritional balance, even on a lower calorie diet, is the key to weight management success. Variety matters because no single food or food group can meet all your nutrient needs.
One recommendation for guiding your food choices is to follow the U.S. Dietary Guidelines. These guidelines are issued jointly by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture. They are updated every five years and are based on the latest research studies in human nutrition. The guidelines are good, however politics often influence the outcome. The latest report is not as closely matched with the recommendations many Nutritionists and other health professionals would like to have seen.
A better guide is the Healthy Core Diet based on the OmniHeart study conducted by Harvard University and other medical institutions. This study has its origins in the original DASH study. DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. The more recent OmniHeart study was designed to determine how diet might reduce risk for heart disease in more ways than just reducing blood pressure. Heart disease remains the number one killer of Americans each year.
Given that the OmniHeart diet is healthy and well balanced, it seems that it may prove to be the basis for reducing risk for many diseases and not just heart disease. In fact, recommendations for dietary choices to reduce risk for cancer and diabetes as well as heart disease are very similar.
What is the key difference between the OmniHeart diet and the U.S. Dietary Guidelines? The U.S. Dietary Guidelines fail to distinguish good carbs, fats, and protein sources from those that are not so good. However, the OmniHeart diet plan for number and size of servings at various caloric intakes is not yet available online (that I’m aware of).
So for now make the U.S. Dietary Guidelines your reference for determining the basics with respect to portion size and the number of servings you need from each of the food groups at your pre-determined daily calorie level (see tip #3). To do this you will use the interactive MyPyramid, the newest version of the government food pyramid based on the dietary guidelines. I will be providing more information for you in upcoming lessons about the specifics of choosing good carbs, fats, and protein sources.
ACTION STEP:
1. Go to MyPyramid.com (at this site you’ll find a user-friendly interactive guide to determine your daily food needs based on the U.S. Dietary Guidelines):
2. If you have not done so already, start a food journal or diary to keep track of what you eat. Include exactly what you have eaten, when (time), how much, and your mood when eating (hungry? frustrated? bored? etc.). If you are doing formal exercise, keep track of that as well.
You can do this on your own with just paper and pencil. However for more detailed information with respect to calories consumed, calories burned, and nutrition information I recommend MyFoodDiary.com. I have used this service for quite some time and I’m very happy with what it provides. To learn more you can read my review (Food Diary Review: MyFoodDiary.com).
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
2005 U.S. Dietary Guidelines
http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/document
OmniHeart.com (the basics and sample diet plans are provided as downloadable pdfs)
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