Building a Balanced Plate

So how do we actually put a plate together to make sure that our meal is balanced? Now as I said, I'm going to share some meal ideas with you in the resources. But just to give you an idea of what you should be looking out for when you're putting your plate together is obviously you want to have protein and carbohydrates in each meal to balance out blood sugar. Now protein, we talked about it already. What types of protein I recommend in terms of portion sizes, you know, a general guideline. And this is going to be different for different people, people and your activity levels, etc, and how many meals you're having, whether you're having snacks. But as a rule of thumb, sort of palm sized, you know, portion of protein, say, be it fish or meat, chicken, you know, things like that, or beef or venison, that could be a good size protein. A lot of the times people, you know, when they're trying, because we've been so hammered into us now that it's like protein, protein, protein, protein. And it is important. But I find a lot of times people eat a lot of protein and not enough carbohydrates to balance it out. And that in itself can cause blood sugars as well. So protein, you don't need a lot of it, especially if it's meat or fish. So a small size, about 100, 250 grams, or like a palm size. And then you would add carbohydrates to that. And when we're talking about carbohydrates, I'm not really talking about leafy greens or you know, a lot of these very watery vegetables. They don't really contain a lot of carbohydrates that are going to balance the amount of protein in it. So you'd want to think about something starchy like rice, for example, or potatoes or root vegetables like beetroot, cooked beetroot is great there as well. Or pumpkin. You want to add something that's going to balance the protein out. A lot of these leafy vegetables while they're, they're fine to have, you know, make sure that they're well cooked so they're easy to digest. They're not going to have enough carbohydrates to balance out the protein. We always want to have more carbs than protein to balance it out. So something starchy like a portion of rice or some potatoes or some, you know, any sort of root vegetable, things like that, and a side of fresh fruit as well as dessert is going to be enough to balance out that protein amount in your main meal. So then depending on what the type of protein you've chosen, you might want to be adding more fats to that meal. So for example, if you're eating white fish, then you can cook it, you can add some butter in it. You can obviously add some olive oil or coconut oil in any sort of salads that you're making, those kind of things. But you want to think of like, protein and carbohydrates together. I often see women who have breakfast and they say, or they have a meal that has eggs in them, and they say, oh, yeah, you know, I have one egg or even two eggs. That's enough protein, right? But that's not enough. And then they maybe have like, some, some bread or some fruit with it, etc. It's a nice combination, but it's not enough for eating in the mornings. So you want to have, you know, one or two eggs. That's great. But you need to add some more. So you could add things like some cottage cheese or some yogurt, some fruit to balance it out, and some, you know, some sourdough bread, for example. Those kind of things are all great combinations. Always things like protein and carbs. And it's the same when you're also looking at, you know, your snacks as well. So a lot of times I see people having fruit as snacks, which is great. But fruit on its own might impact, impact blood sugar. So you want to think of something like some protein that you can add with it. So combination is fruit and cheese, fruit and yogurt. An egg, you know, a boiled egg and some fruit is great. Maybe some, you know, some medjool dates with a piece of Parmesan cheese, for example. You can make it like a smoothie with some, you know, either collagen or casein powder and milk and some fruit. That's a nice one as well. The daily carrot salad is also a great snack that you can have. And you can add some Parmesan shavings to it to. As if you're having it as a snack to balance out the carbohydrates in the carrot salad. So just always think, where's my protein coming from? Where's my carbohydrates? Fruit is a great source. And obviously these kind of root vegetables and, and starchy, foods like rice, potatoes, pasta as well. You know, everyone does differently. It really depends on your digestion, how much sort of starch and what kind of starch people can digest. Some people do really well with sourdough bread and pasta. Some people, they, their digestion gets a little bit sluggish, so they do better with things like root vegetables and squashes and more fruit. So see what works for you, see what satiates you as well. Like what kind of meal makes you feel like. Yes, first of all, looking forward to eating it. And that make what makes you feel satiated at the end. That's really, what a really great sign. You know, we want to be eating things that feel sound delicious look delicious to us, you know, rather than things that we think we should be eating, just chugging them down. So think about that when you're putting your meals together. And the other thing that I always recommend my clients to do is to salt their food to taste. Salt actually is something that again, has been demonized a lot in our society. Oh, it's related to high blood pressure, etc. But real good quality sea salt actually has so many health benefits. It's very anti stress first and foremost. It actually lowers cortisol. It helps with digestion. So it helps improve your hydrochloric acid and your stomach acid before eating. It makes food taste delicious as well. So I always say to my clients, get a good quality sea salt. Not that sort of processed table salt, but just a good sea salt. You know, there's a nice white one, that you can find. Doesn't have to be Himalayan, actually. Himalayan salt is often very high in iron, which we might not want. So like a nice, good quality sea salt. Here in the UK we have Maldon sea salt, but I'm sure there's lots of other ones available. And salt your food to taste. So add salt at the end and your body will tell you whether something's too salty or if it tastes just right. You, you know, your body, use your body as your, as your gauge, to see how much salt you need. Generally, I feel a lot of women actually under eat salt. And so sometimes I ask them to kind of just measure it out into a bowl, into a cup and see how much you're using throughout the day. You want to be really generously salting your food with good quality sea salt. That's gonna obviously elevate your meal as well. And then obviously other you can add other things. The only other thing I would say is if you're struggling with digestive issues, then, or you know, a lot of bloating because that's, this can happen in our midlife years. A lot of bloating, digestion. Then one of the things that I would recommend doing is as a, you know, before I said, making sure things are well cooked, not eating too many raw, fibrous things, but also simplify your meals. Don't add too many different ingredients in one meal because that's going to burden your digestion and it's going to be harder for things to break down. So it's okay to have like a simple formula where you have some, you know, some protein and then a starch, a little bit of veg here, there, you know, one vegetable, maybe some courgettes or something that's well cooked, they're easy to digest, and then some fruit, that's fine. Or even just having, you know, your protein, starch and fruit as well, or even protein and fruit on its own. That's, you know, sometimes when my digestion is not working really well, that's a really good combination. Just having some protein and then some fruit, like a tropical fruit especially, is much easier to digest. Depends on where you live. Obviously you don't want to be eating a lot of tropical fruits in the winter in if you're in a cold climate. But simplify your meals, it's fine. Don't add like 300 different, thousand, different vegetables or ingredients because that can actually make things worse. And also it's going to make it harder for you to pinpoint what's causing this. You know, is it this vegetable or is it that? I don't know. There's 500 things in this, in this recipe. So keep it simple. You can obviously pre prepare foods in advance. I like to batch, cook things and then I just throw stuff together. So I'll have potatoes in the fridge or I'll have some cooked beetroot in the fridge and then, I'll fry up some fish and then just put it all together and I have some fresh, fruit or cooked fruit in the winter. It can, it's, it doesn't have to be complicated. I will share some meal ideas in the meal resources, in resources section and some simple meal formulas as well of like just things, but just think protein, starch, fruit, protein and carbs. And then depending on how much fat you've had, you have in your protein, you can add some more in there or obviously some for dressing so to make things taste nicer. So yeah, that's just a quick sort of how to build a plate and let's move on to the next part of this module.