Healthy Meal Plan-

Let's plan a perfect day in food and activity!! While I don't expect you to start eating like this every day right now, eventually, you will want to make healthier choices. And, this plan will help you understand how to put together a day of healthy meals, so when you are ready, you will know how.

A perfect day means your meal plan should be a very healthy one and meet the criteria below.

Part A-

1. Planning a menu

Build a meal plan for ONE day. Type up your plan: Include what you will eat and the time you will eat it. Your meal plan should include 3 meals and at least 1 snack.

Be specific. If you add milk, what kind? Same with bread, what kind? What serving sizes are you using? Use serving sizes that make sense. Do you know how much 3 grams of something is? Maybe cups would be a better choice for servings. DO NOT use grams for portion sizes if it doesn't make sense!

Pick healthy foods. Things like bacon, hot dogs, chips, French fries etc., shouldn't be on this list! When planning your meal, think "what would a dietitian put on a menu for a healthy day?"

Your one day meal plan must meet the following guidelines-
It must include a minimum of 5 healthy fruits and/or vegetables

It must include a lean protein and carb at each meal

It must make sense - and be overall healthy

2. Putting that menu into Nutricalc and Analyzing

You will need to go to Connect and just to the right of the assignments you will see "NCP Diet Analysis Tool" which is Nutricalc. Here you will need to register and create a profile.

Next, you will need to take your perfect day meal plan and click on the "Intakes" tab and enter your food plan. Do NOT use the meal plan shown in the example, create your own.

3. Enter your planned exercise for the day into Nutricalc by clicking on the ACTVITIES tab. You can view your Activity Summary Report the same way you viewed the bar graph. You will need to add a minimum of 30 minutes of exercise. Make it realistic.

PART B -

Reflection and Conclusion Each question has to have a thorough answer. One word and one sentence is not enough. Give detailed examples.

a. Write 1 paragraph about the factors (i.e. food likes/dislikes, budget, allergies, beliefs, etc.) you had to consider when planning your meals and activity. How much did you have to adjust your plan to get it to where it needed to be. Do you think that when you select healthy foods you can actually eat more for fewer calories?

b. What assumptions did you have at the beginning of the course that you found out not to be true? What "nutrition truths" did you find out was really a myth?

c. Since starting this class, have you had any weight loss, gains in strength or muscle, reduction in percent body fat, reduction in waist circumference, improvements in lab work, lower B/P, lower resting heart rate, smoking cessation, completing a race or other fitness goal/challenge such as exercising regularly.

d. Have you made any changes or are you planning to make changes regarding your diet? Are you using nutrient dense foods to replace highly processed, high saturated fat, high sodium or high sugar foods?

e. How have you, or might you, share this information with family, friends, classmates, or co-workers?

f. What was your favorite topic to learn about this semester? What did you least enjoy learning about?

g. How does this class relate to your chosen career or other courses you have taken?