The balance of a good healthy plate

There are so many factors in balancing your foods, it can be done by calories, by grams, by types of fat, by nutrient content or food category and many more other considerations. It would be hard and time consuming to learn them all at once so start by keeping it simple, calorie balance, fat content and nutritional variety.

• Use the calorie balance tool in the PT section to work out how many calories you need to consume.


• Keep fat in the diet down to 10-12% content and 25-30% of calories (these are different things)


• Eat a variety of foods as fresh as is available to you.


• That variety can be about 12% fat about 24% protein and 64% Carbohydrates.

Here is a diagram that displays the proportion of different foods that should be in the diet.

This diagram is not easily simplified into fat, protein and carbohydrate! Generally vegetables, fruit and wholegrain and cereal can be thought of as mostly carbohydrate. sugars are carbohydrate too. Dairy is largely protein but can contain a lot of fat and carbohydrates so learn to read the food labels or ask your online PT. Meats, beans and pulses are protein.