How To Use Nutrition Data In Planning An Effective Diet

By Marion Peters


If you are on a diet program, it is understandable that you will be required to watch what you eat keenly. While it may seem as if this is very complicated an undertaking, in actual practice it can be easy to keep to strict guidelines set on your diet regimen. This guide shows you how to work your diet plan by using the nutrition data given on food packages.

It is important to note that many people working on a diet are more concerned about the caloric content of any food item. Without downplaying the importance of keeping track of how many calories every dish comes with, there is more to a diet program. You need to ensure that you keep track of the nutrients, vitamins and minerals contained in the foods you take so as to remain within the recommended percentages in your diet program.

It is important to have a diet guide that comprises just recommended nutritional intakes per day. This makes it easy as all you will need to do is identify dishes and snacks with the required nutritional content and distribute these as you please throughout the day's meals. Use a table with at least five columns or a spreadsheet program to prepare your diet journal.

For each day, list the nutritional elements such as vitamins, carbohydrates and minerals you need to watch in the leftmost column of your journal. Remember to leave about four or five blank lines under each element of nutrition you are keeping watch over. Label the second column, "daily intake" and label the other columns to correspond with the meals you take daily though the rightmost column should be blank to add up the totals.

Now begin by allocating the nutrients allocated to each meal, ideally beginning with the main meal of the day when you intend to take in the largest proportion of the major nutrients. With the major meals out of the way, it will be a breeze to set out what to take in the other meals and snacks in order to make a perfect diet. Remember to keep adding the totals set for each nutrient as you go so as not to make poor estimates.

As you allocate the nutritional proportions to take in each meal, take care to note the format of the nutritional information on the packaging. While some food processors indicate the amount of nutrients included in a serving, others indicate this per a certain weight such as 100 grams. Remember too that a single food item will have more than one nutritional element in varying proportions.

You can maintain a healthy diet with proper planning. A diet plan should only specify the daily nutritional intake. Use the foods' nutrition data to plan your daily diet journal as shown above.




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