Creating a healthy and balanced diet can brighten your day, week, month, and even your year. By creating a plate that fits what you like to eat, you can benefit your body and your mind.
Sticking to your wants, whether that be a huge sweet tooth or having a savory outlook, it is possible to improve your diet by putting those nutritious veggies, greens, carbs, proteins, and even sweets on your plate.
When looking at a plate for a nice hearty dinner, you want to have a protein, carb, healthy fat, and veggies. Balancing these four food groups is important in order to benefit your body, diet, and mind.
1. Protein
Protein is important because it fills you up and also gives your body fuel. It is important to fuel your body with protein in order to stay full for a long day of class or in order to contain the need to snack 24/7.
Having a good size of protein on your plate is essential and pick what you like. To stick with the Fall vibe, here are a few of my favorite proteins that I enjoy for dinner:
- Roasted Chicken
- Turkey
- Beef
- Salmon
2. Carbohydrates
While it’s important to pick the right amount of carbohydrates on your dinner plate, you also need to pick the necessary ones. Fruits and veggies are the key food groups to choosing nutritious carbs. Although you might not choose to put fruits on your dinner plate, you can definitely add it to a dessert plate.
Carbs allow your body to function well with certain amounts of sugar, fiber, and starch in them. I know that we all want to choose the unhealthy carbs like bread and butter but that’s okay as long as we make sure to keep it balanced with our proteins, veggies, and fats. Here are a few of my favorite Fall carbs for dinner:
- Squash
- Sweet Potato
- Quinoa
- Pumpkin
- Rice/Pasta
- Honeycrisp Apples
3. Fats
Sometimes fats get a bad reputation but they are necessary to have in your diet and on your dinner plate. Making sure you have the right size of fats on your plate is more important considering you can each too much of unhealthy fats.
The healthy fats that you put on your dinner plate are essential in giving your body energy. It is also important for muscle movement and inflammation. Picking the right fats but the ones that you want are important to your diet and mind.
Here are a few of my favorite fats for a fall dinner plate:
- Avocado
- Olive Oil
- Pumpkin Seeds
- Almonds/Cashews (or almond and cashew butters)
4. Veggies
The last, and the most important, part of your dinner plate would be a handful of veggies. Veggies are a perfect addition, considering they don’t have a lot of fat or protein in them.
With your chicken dinner, add a handful of veggies to add color and nutrition to your plate. Veggies give us a lot of antioxidants, minerals, and vitamins that will help you improve your diet and keep your body feeling fresh and clean.
In addition to veggies, make sure you have a big hearty size of leafy greens because they have many of the minerals and vitamins that veggies have but they are also very low in calories, which makes it easy to have in large quantities on your plate.
Here are a few of my favorite fall veggies and greens:
- Kale
- Arugula
- Beets
- Spinach
- Brussel Sprouts
- Radish
- Carrot
- Cabbage
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A colorful plate can be filled with healthy and nutritious proteins, fats, carbs, and veggies in order to keep you healthy and feeling full after dinner. Sticking to these four food groups have been proven to help your diet and boost your immune system, which we can all benefit from right now!
Reflect & Refresh 