Nourish With Intent: Building A Balanced Plate

Good morning. Good morning. Happy Saturday. It's good to be back. I'll give everyone a minute to pop in if you are also enjoying your coffee this morning. Cheers. I hope everyone is doing well today and if you're nothing, I hope that you're taking some time for you. Good morning, Steph. Good morning, Wren. I saw you in JC's live. Welcome. Cool. Today, if you saw my title, we are talking about building a balanced plate. So if you don't know me, my name is Kristen. I'm a registered dietitian. I live in Denver and I primarily work in the realm of intuitive eating.

Eating disorders, disordered eating, really. My goal with this series is to help educate on nourishing your body with intent without harming your relationship with food. Because we can do both. Right? And there are so many hard and fast rules and guidelines and advice out there that it can be really hard to integrate those things in a way that makes sense for you and a lot of times they're just so conflicting. So my goal is always to educate on the importance of nutrition. I'm a dietitian and be mindful that we're all at different points in our health and wellness journeys and that's okay, but really hoping to foster a positive relationship with food and your body.

So all of that being said, last week we talked quite a bit, if you weren't here, about the different types of hunger and how to utilize the hunger fullness scale. So thinking about physical hunger, emotional hunger, mouth taste hunger, that's when something just looks really good and maybe you're not physically hungry, but you want to try it. And then practical hunger, which is kind of this, it's not really hunger, it's more just like practicality of I'm going to be hungry and so how can I address that now if I'm going to be in a situation where I can't eat?

And then hunger fullness scale, talking about how when we stay in the middle, you know, one is I'm absolutely ravenous, ten is I am so full, I feel ill. When we're on those extremes, we really tend to bounce between those extremes, whereas when we're more in that middle, it's easier to manage our hunger, have more stable mood, have more stable energy. And I mentioned building a balance plate last week, so I diverted to hopefully going into a little more context of that today. And this is through a more intuitive eating lens because we each have our own goals, our own lives, our own accessibility, all of those things.

So the specifics of it are really going to be from you and what makes sense to you. So this will be a little bit more of like a kind of high level overview. So, good morning, Rhonda. Also, I forgot I like to do my little icebreaker. So since I'm sitting here drinking my coffee, share with me what your go to coffee order or beverage is. And if you don't drink coffee, if there's something else that you drink, I'm always looking for new ideas. Mine is just an iced latte with honey that I make at home here.

So. Okay, you guys share that. Let's jump in. What the heck is building balance plate? You may have heard that before. You may have heard, you know, we need to have balance and variety and moderation in our diets for overall health and wellness. Building a balanced plate is a way to practice mindfulness around eating without counting calories or macros or obsessing about numbers, which we know can for a lot of people, not everyone, but for a lot of people, that can be really damaging and really constrictive in a way.

We've got some tea people in here. I am not actually, there is one tea I really like. It's the good earth, sweet and spicy. And they do have a decaf one, but if you've never had it, it's so delicious. Love a good matcha wish I drank more herbal tea. I think it would probably help with my stress levels. So what the heck is building a balance plate? We have three main macronutrients, carbs, fats, and proteins. And our bodies need all of them to function. Carbs are primarily providing us energy. They break down most easily into glucose, which is the body's preferred source of energy.

Carbohydrate sources also tend to be a really good vessel for things like b vitamins, whole grains, where complex carbs tend to have fiber, protein. Of course, we need that for muscle maintenance and muscle growth, as well as your immune system. Mobility is such a huge thing, I think in general, that I talk about with people throughout the lifespan. Fats, we need fats to one absorb. There's fat soluble vitamins, so we need that for nutrient absorption. They're involved in making hormones, protecting the brain.

They can also be used as energy. So all of those macronutrients are rather important. And then your micronutrients and vitamins and minerals, we can get some of them from our complex carbs. But primarily when I'm thinking about that, when I refer to that, we'll be referring about this colorful fiber component. So when we are thinking about how to get all of the nutrients our bodies need. Oftentimes people aren't getting enough fiber. Most people are actually getting enough protein. I know that's a big one that's thrown out of, it's very trendy right now, and it is important.

And if I were to pick between fiber and protein, most people aren't getting enough fiber. So that is the piece that tends to be missing for a lot of people when building a plate. So ideally, and this is not a hard and fast rule, it's just kind of a visual cue. If you are most of the time giving your body a plate that's got some carbohydrate for energy, some protein for all those things, I already named that muscle growth, muscle maintenance, immunity. But also that is going to help with your satiety.

So it's going to help manage blood sugar and keep from having such a drastic spike, which can improve, have, allow for more consistent energy throughout the day and improve mood. Right when we're having spikes all day long, you feel like, oh, I'm so energetic, and then you crash. Protein can help to level that out a little bit. Fats, that's the third component we want on our plate that is also going to help with satiety, that fullness factor. m. well, let's take a look. What could we maybe add to our plate at lunch that could help?

Maybe it's a fat, maybe it's a protein. And then that fourth component of the balanced plate is fiber. So your fruits, your non starchy vegetables, all of that color, all of those micronutrients, vitamins, minerals, you're also getting hydration from your fruits and veggies, especially if you're like me, I'm in Denver. It's been the second hottest to June on record, and I'm a little more dehydrated. Eating those veggies can be, and fruits can be helpful there, too. So the four components, carb, fat, protein, fiber, and the ratio of those things are really going to depend on an individual.

So if you have specific gym goals, maybe you are eating a little more protein. If you have a specific medical condition, maybe you're not eating as much of one of those things. That piece is individualized. And again, this is not a hard and fast rule. It's just kind of a guideline. If you're thinking about that most of the time, then it's really going to help you get the nutrients that your body needs. So those are the four components. Ratios will really depend on the individual benefits of doing that.

It helps us to focus more. And I think I mentioned this a little earlier, the shift goes from what do I need to stop eating? To what am I missing and can add in. How can I add in nutrition rather than picking apart and taking things away? And naturally, you know, if your plate is right now, maybe it's half carb, half protein. Okay, what am I missing there? There's not a lot of color, not a lot of micronutrients. How can I add that in? When we add that in, those ratios might shift a little, and that's okay.

Also, nothing wrong with eating a plate of just rice and chicken. Sometimes that happens. So thinking about that shift from what do I need to stop eating? To what do I need to just add in? And when we add things in naturally, our eating patterns shift a little bit. So I will share in the community tab a diagram, and that is for kind of overall health and wellness with, it's just a visual of the plate. One thing I want to point out is that it doesn't have to look segmented. I think that is a very common misconception that, you know, rice, chicken, broccoli, like, that's not.

If you love that, great. I eat that sometimes and it doesn't have to look like that. It can be a mixed dish if you, you know, I think a lot of times cultural dishes are not just piecemeal together like they maybe are in, you know, if you go to like a health food restaurant in the United States. So that doesn't mean that if your plate doesn't look exactly segmented, that it's not healthy. If you're cooking with salsas and sofritos, those are vegetables, those are nutrient dense. So those things are going to be mixed in and they're still providing you all this wonderful nutrition of that component of kind of this balanced plate visual.

It doesn't have to look exactly like that. Trying to think if there's anything else. I wanted to point out about that, but I think I answered your question. Are veggies one of those three? Yeah. So there's those four components. I also think, I want to reiterate, it's okay and it's normal and it shouldn't be. Probably. If you're living life and enjoying time with friends, family, holidays, it's not always going to look balanced. And that is okay. It is what we do most of the time that impacts our overall health and wellness.

Right. Eating one salad doesn't make magical changes to your health, just like eating one. Whatever you want to put in there. A donut. I'll say that because I was talking to my mom about donuts yesterday. Is that the most nutrient dense thing? No. Is it good for mental, emotional health? Sure might be. It is for me. So it's what we do most of the time. And that really applies to anything, right. That applies to what we eat, that applies to our movement, that applies to how we're taking care of our mental health and our stress.

All of those components. It's what we are doing most of the time. Health is not born out of perfection. It is, you know, focused more on consistency. So that's what I have for you guys today. If there's any questions, let me know. I know this wasn't like a revolutionary topic, so to speak, but I will put that graphic in the community tab that you can use. I guess one other thing I didn't talk too much about was snacks. Thinking about building a balanced snack, really, I just aim to have either a source of fiber or a source of protein in my snacks.

Um, so that could be carrots and dip, that could be cheese and crackers. That could be a little beef jerky or beef stick and crackers. It could be yogurt and granola. I just aimed at pair two of those because that is also going to help with the blood sugar spike. Also worth noting, blood sugar is meant to do that. That is a normal biological process. I think there's some misconceptions around that as well. But when we keep the blood sugar stable, that's what really helps with our stable energy, our stable hunger, really.

You're not going to get hungry as often as if you were just eating, you know, a piece of toast at breakfast and crackers at lunche. So it looks like there's not too many questions, so I will go ahead and wrap it up here. Apples and peanut butter. Yes. I'm a big banana and peanut butter person. And that's. You're gonna. That's perfect, right? You're getting apples, fiber, all those micronutrients, and then peanut butter, you're gonna get fat and a little bit of protein in there, as well as some of those micronutrients.

So it's a really good snack. Also, apples and apples and cheese is a common one that I hear because I think it's a canadian thing to eat apple pie with cheese. So that's what I always think of. But, yeah, love apples and peanut butter. If you're ever wanting, like you have specific questions or if you want recommendations, someone last week asked me for recommendations for snacks while traveling. Go ahead and post. You can always respond to whatever I post in the community tab and just let me know because I would love to kind of use this time to answer specific questions that you guys have as well.

So if there's anything ever that comes up or you want recommendations or ideas, drop them there and I'll be happy to answer. This one was a little shorter this week, but like I said, thanks for joining. I'll see you all next week. I hope you enjoy the day. Enjoy your coffee or mine. I.