Interactive Meal Planner For Fat And Calories

The American diet has changed dramatically over the years, contributing to the increasing overweight and obesity rates. About two in three Americans are overweight. One of the primary causes is diet. The "Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010" estimates that the average daily consumption in 2008 was 2,674 calories, up from 2,057 calories a day in 1970. Part of the problem lies in a lack of knowledge. Many people just don't know how many calories they are consuming. Using an interactive meal planner can provide nutritional information so you can make better choices.

Benefits

An interactive meal planner takes the guesswork out of planning meals. You can see ahead of time the fat and calorie counts of foods you are considering preparing. A common problem for Americans is portion control and accurate calorie estimates. The "Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010" estimates that portion sizes of hamburgers, for example, have increased by up to 223 percent since 1954. These skewed portion sizes can make planning meals difficult because you don't know what you should be eating. A meal planner does away with this problem.

Healthy Eating

Some meal planners will allow you to set your percentages for the major nutrients. A moderately active adult woman should consume between 2,000 and 2,200 calories a day, of which 20 to 35 percent should come from fat. However, less than 10 percent of your fat calories should come from saturated fats such as those found in meats and butter. Instead, your diet should focus on healthy foods such as vegetables, fruits and whole grains. These foods provide good nutrition without the calories and fat of other types of foods.

Online Sources

Several sources for interactive meal planners provide complete nutritional information. They include MealsMatter.org, AllRecipes.com and NourishInteractive.com. You will also find several websites provide weekly meal selections that you can receive via an email newsletter or view online. Epicurious.com, CookingLight.com and Saveur.com are a few of the many resources available for meal planning. You can use the latter sites to build a recipe planner for future meals.

Do-It-Yourself Planning

Alternatively, you can plan your meals using an online food tracker. Most sites will include additional nutritional information such as sodium intake for planning healthy meals. MyFitnessPal.com includes an interactive tool for entering your own recipes to calculate fat, calories and other nutritional information. You can save meals and repeat them in your food tracker. Other sites for tracking food intake include FitDay.com and MyPyramid.gov. Using an interactive website can help you maintain long-term weight control, according to a 2010 study by the Kaiser Permanente, Center for Health Research in Oregon. These sites create awareness, which is the first step to living a healthy lifestyle.