Learning to plan a meal was a real challenge for me. Hopefully I can put into words what I learned about planning my daily meals. Since I am interested in loosing some more weight, I chose to go on a 1600 calorie per day diet. If you're wanting to maintain your weight, you would need an 1800 calorie diet. To do that, Add another starch for breakfast, then you could have a whole bowl of cereal. Caution: One of the cereals I have found to have the lowest amount of carbohydrates was just plain bran flakes. If you need sweet, just sprinkle some splenda on it and add a banana and it's great. Splenda can be found in any grocery store close to the sugar. I also have a link on my site to www.splenda.com. I promise, I can't tell the difference between Splenda and Sugar!
First I had to understand what constituted one serving. Look for my exchange pages listing some of the starches, fruits, vegetables, etc.
Servings
1 Starch= 15 Carbohydrates
1 Meat= 1 oz
1 Fruit= 15 Carbohydrates
1 Milk (1 cup)= 15 Carbohydrates
1 Vegetable (1/2cup, cooked or 1cup raw)= 5 Carbohydrates
1 Fat= 15 Carbohydrates
Morning Snack
1 fruit
Total Carbohydrates for Snack: 15g
Lunch
2 Starches
3 Vegetables
2 Meats (don't forget 1 Meat= 1 ounce, cooked)
1 Fat
Total Carbohydrates for Lunch: 45g
Total Fats for Lunch: 15g (that includes the meat)
Evening Snack
1 Starch
1 Milk
1 Fat
An example of an evening snack could be 6 sections of graham crackers, 1 cup of milk, and 1 tablespoon of peanut butter on the crackers. Yummy!
Total Carbohydrates for Snack: 30g
Total Fat for Snack: 5g
To use anytime during the day: 4 extra Fats (unless you have a cholesterol problem)
To make it easier to understand, I have added a page that I think will be more easily understood. This is a chart that you can print to help you plan your meals. Go to Meal Plan Chart