Meal Planning

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Meal Planning

This Calculator was developed to use food groups to meet your nutritional needs. However, you can use this tool to count grams of protein, fat, and carbohydrates. Each food group has a link to the many food choices available and their serving size. I will keep up-dating this list, so check back often. Please e-mail foods you want added.

Complete your Nutritional Needs. You need to know your calories, protein, fat, and carbohydrates in order to use the Food Planning Calculator. Design your food plan based on the Food Groups and number of servings. Add or modify the number of servings in the food groups in the left column until the percentages and calories meet your needs. Click "Calculate" to analyze the results and " Reset" to start over. The colors are those used by the New Food Pyramid.

Food Groups	Number of Servings
Bread/Starch/Grain
Vegetable
Fruit
Milk, Skim/Non-fat
Meat/Protein, low to med. fat
Fat
Free Foods
Combination Foods

Nutrients	Grams	Calories	Percent
Carbohydrate
Protein
Fat
Total:			100

Tips. Need Protein. Choose from the Meat/Meat Alternative or Milk Group. The Bread and Vegetable Groups have a small amount of protein. Need Carbohydrate. Choose from the Fruit, Bread and Vegetable Group. The Milk Group also has carbohydrates. No carbohydrates in Meats and Fats. Need Fat. Choose from the Fat and Meat Groups. The bread group has a trace amount of fat.

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If financing is a problem or you are a free spirit, you can easily plan your own meals using the Meal Planning Calculator above.

Free Resources

Point Converter.
For those of you on Weight Watchers, this calculator can transform any food into the point system as long as you have the calories, grams of fat and dietary fiber. See the nutrition label or go to the Nutritional Database Section for additional references.

Number of calories:	/ 50
+ Number of total fat grams:	/ 12
- Number of dietary fiber grams:	/ 5

Please fill in the values above. The information can be obtained from a nutrition label or nutrition analysis program. In order to use this tool, you will need the number per serving of calories, fat grams, and dietary fiber grams.

Free Weight Control Programs

Free 12 week weight loss class Free nutrition and exercise program sponsored by About.com. Includes, cardiac, strength training and flexibility workouts; information to help eat healthy and reduce calories; and weekly calendars to organize workouts and nutritional goals.

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