Eating Like An Adult: A Plain-English Food Plan

You already know vegetables are good and soda is not. The useful question is what to put on the plate tonight. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans give a simple frame.

The plate

• Half the plate fruits and vegetables.
• Make at least half your grains whole grains.
• A protein at every meal — meat, fish, eggs, dairy, beans, lentils.
• Keep added sugars under 10 percent of your daily calories.
• Keep saturated fat under 10 percent of daily calories.
• Keep sodium under 2,300 mg a day — the average American eats closer to 3,400 mg.

Plan four meals, not twenty-one

Meal planning fails when people try to design a whole week of different dinners. Pick four meals you actually like, cook them in batches, and rotate. Boring food you eat beats interesting food you throw away.

Protein first, then the rest

Protein is the most filling of the three macronutrients and the one that protects muscle while you lose fat. Build the meal around it and the calories tend to take care of themselves. Fiber does the same job from the other direction — most adults get nowhere near the 25 to 34 grams a day the guidelines recommend.

Know your own numbers

Generic advice stops working once you want actual calorie and macro targets for your body weight, your job and your training. Run the free macro calculator on the site, or have Billy build the whole thing around your week.