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Guide to Meal Planning
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Demo The VitaBot Meal Planner Now!Healthy Fats
Most foods contain some kind of fat (saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, trans fat) and in varying amounts. Your body needs certain, “good,” fats to function properly. The trick is to find foods with healthy fats and enjoy those in an overall healthy diet.
When planning your meals, choose fats that are either monounsaturated fats or polyunsaturated fats. Avoid saturated fats most commonly found in animal protein. The easiest way to do this is to remove the skin from poultry and any visible fat from beef, pork, and poultry before cooking.
Here are the characteristics of fats in a healthy diet:
- Monounsaturated Fat remain liquid at room temperature but start to get cloudy or solidify in the refrigerator. Examples include canola, peanut, and olive oil.
- Polyunsaturated Fat is usually liquid at room temperature and in the refrigerator. Most vegetable oils fall in this category: soy, safflower, corn, sunflower, and cottonseed oils.
- Omega-3 Fatty Acids are perhaps the most beneficial fat in a heart healthy diet. The most common source of omega-3 fatty acids is cold-water fish or dietary supplements (i.e. “healthy diet pills”). Healthy diets that incorporate omega-3 fatty acids usually include fish like salmon, herring, or mackerel. Vegetable sources include walnuts, flaxseed, and flaxseed oil (flax oil).
Healthy Diet Plans
When creating a healthy diet plan it is very helpful to use an online meal planner (like VitaBot). A meal planner helps you create a meal plan that balances the correct amount of fats with other nutrients.
Heart Healthy Diets
As a rule, including fish in your diet is beneficial in a couple of ways. First, by choosing a cold-water fish you are getting healthy fats, like omega-3. Secondly, you are eating less of the meats (especially beef and pork) that have unhealthy fats like saturated fat.
Salmon, eaten in moderation, is considered a healthy diet food. While it helps not to look at weight loss as “dieting” but instead as a life style change, that fact is that people do “diet” and should be “healthy dieting.”
Omega-3 Supplements
One of the most common and cost effective, ways to get enough omega-3 fatty acids is through supplementation. Most omega-3 supplements are fish oil capsules. Be aware, not all fish oil capsules are created equally. The cheap ones at the discount or even “vitamin store” are usually of low quality. Look for one that is a pharmaceutical grade, meaning it has been refined to have the purest ingredients. Yes, these cost more, but you get what you pay for, or more accurately, you don’t get what you don’t pay for.
A word of caution, do not take fish oil capsules with a carbonated beverage like a soft drink. The carbonation may make you belch and when it does you get the worst fish breath in the world. Take fish oil capsules with a meal and/or right before bedtime to avoid unpleasant reactions.
Happy Nutrition!
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