Graphic Monday: Weekly Nutrition Calendar

My last year of college I had to change a bunch of things around and suddenly found myself needing another elective. I chose Nutrition. The professor warned me that it was more geared towards people majoring in that field and that it would be pretty complex. I had taken chemistry and biology already though so I wasn't too concerned - not to mention the fact that I REALLY like to learn about how food works on a molecular level and what it's doing inside of our bodies {yes, I know that I'm crazy.}

Example of Personalized Plan

Anyways, while I was in that class one of our ongoing assignments was to track our eating at mypyramid.gov. It calculated all of the nutrients we were getting and gave us custom calorie intake requirements {I was pregnant at the time, so I had to say that I was 6' tall man in order to get the right amount! You'd think they'd have figured that out?} There were tons of graphics and charts and lots of info and I actually really enjoyed the process. Long story short, since Wes and I are getting on this healthy eating kick I was super excited to go back and find all of that stuff to make some make some eating charts with awesome graphics and use all of the complex knowledge I had gained. So I got online and typed in "mypyramid.gov" only to be redirect to "choosemyplate.gov" with a big 'ol picture of Michelle Obama on the front page.

I'm assuming that as part of Mrs. Obama's campaign against obesity they decided it would help to simplify things. So instead of pyramids and charts and complex personalized breakdowns they have a simple graphic of portions. And ya know what? I like it! But I still wanted a chart :). So I looked up the information for Men & Women for each food group and tried to keep it pretty simple. Each day there are three categories: Not so good, Good, and Super Awesome {ok, so I just came up with those names now, but you get the idea.} Then, using MyPlate as a guide, I filled in the categories with ranges of food intake. I wanted to keep it simple so the main goal is really to try and get an overall awareness of how much of what kinds of food we're eating each day and work towards improvement each week.

{Click image to download PDF}

Guidelines for Women ages 19-35 with low to moderate activity

Guidelines for Men ages 19-35 with low to moderate activity

Blank :)

I placed our charts inside sheet protectors and hung them beside the fridge for easy access. Each day we can check off how we're doing and see our progress as times go on. I must add that on Saturdays we give ourselves a "free day" so I doubt they'll be any tracking going on, but for the purposes of the graphic I left Saturday looking normal.

As you can see I didn't fill in Hayden's. The main goal with hers is to get her a decent amount of each food group each day. Hopefully these are helpful! {I'll upload PDF versions soon :)}