Plant-Based Diet to A Balanced Meal Plan

Plant-based diet doesn’t mean you  have to give up non-plant based foods like meats. It simply means adding more natural plants into your diet (and less processed plants 🏭).

While a full plant-based diet is not what I do, I have incorporated one plant-based meal per day that matters. I share below a meal plan that I think is a good way to maintain a consistently healthy ideal weight, year after year.

Eating healthy and balanced doesn’t just affect your physical body, it also positively impacts your brain, daily thinking mind, and mental health.

Getting proper vitamins and minerals that come from animal proteins help our brains function properly, that helps us keep our mind-body system balance.

I believe that not including fish, meats, carbs, fruits, and vegetables is missing what God gave us here on this earth. We hurt our bodies when we don’t eat enough from any of these categories, or we eat too much.

In most meals, strict vegetarians don’t receive enough vitamins and micronutrients (minerals), some that are richly found in animal protein.  Fish that are also considered animal meat, contains necessary B vitamins and good omega fat sources that healthy vegetarians usually come to realize they’re missing.

If only we could take vitamin supplements as a 1:1 nutrient exchange for food, but that’s not the case and especially with diluted vitamin pills.

Here’s just a quick journey into how I evolved into my way of eating today.

Journey to My Daily Meal Plan

I’ve eaten the same general diet for over two decades now, which includes the same food categories that are on the nutritional food charts. That may sound boring, but it has worked to keep me at the same ideal healthy weight.

Growing up, the four basic food groups turned into the FDA-approved 23 servings per day pyramid food group that’s still used. In America, we don’t necessarily take FDA rules as gospel as there are always changes, but that should tell us a ‘lil something. Whether it’s 4 categories or 23 servings, we need many food vitamin sources to function daily, in a healthy way.

When I was a child, my diet contained mostly fruits, vegetables, breads, cereals, rice, pasta, whole milk, yogurt, animal proteins, and too many processed snacks. Like many American diets back then when there were less healthy options, I ate more orange salty snacks than orange fruits.  Definitely as far away from a plant-based diet as one could see.

Healthy defined back then was not what it is today. A ham sandwich with cheese or egg salad sandwich was considered healthy just to give you some point of reference. That’s what I saw my healthy friends eat.

As a growing child, like most kids, I was usually hungry by mid-morning as my stomach growled. A plant-based diet would not have fit the bill, and missing key vitamins and minerals without supplements.

My heaviest meal was prepared at dinner when I ate a home-cooked meal and not a public school cafeteria prepared lunch that could be a cardboard-like rectangular pizza slice or mystery meat nuggets with French fries. Most of my friends brought their own lunch bags. I’m not sure why that wasn’t an option for me. But health wasn’t a concern back then and my friends didn’t have a plant-based diet either.

In my early 20’s, then transitioning to adult living, I didn’t cook and grew out of my baby fat, and settled into my maturing adult size 4.  As years passed, I gradually learned to cook and prepare more meals at home that included grains, seafood, and lean proteins.

Healthier options like Greek yogurt, non-fat and non-dairy milk that kept evolving, rice and pasta varieties, quinoa, salad greens, vegetables, and fruits, all became more available.

Food allergies became more prevalent with autistic and intellectually disabled children and then grew into the gluten line of foods available everywhere today for those who have gluten intolerance (Celiac disease).

Especially having extensively worked in hotels and restaurants, I know not everyone can eat whatever they want so I consider myself lucky.

Like most people, if I don’t eat breakfast I’m still ravishing in mid-morning hunger before lunch, so that’s when I eat my heaviest meal now.

How much, when and the exact type of food are the main changes. The slight change has been adding salad as the main dinner course, dairy-free milk and yogurt source, more beans, healthy grains, fish and sushi, and fewer desserts.

My point is that I think we’re meant to eat in all the food categories that include meat. We all eventually grew up with (the food pyramid) and now turned back to 5 categories called MyPlate (fruits, grains, vegetables, protein, and dairy), that’s essentially the four basic food groups I grew up with (that combines fruits/veggies as one and meat as the category for protein).

If you aspire to keep a healthy diet and weight, there’s much more information available now at your fingertips and still on food labels, where you can find success with a good balanced (Ayurveda) modern approach to eating and meal planning.  That’s what I do with my eating life and I’ve been happy with that!

Meal Plan Sustainability

Recently I heard author and Speaker Dave Asprey who has had an extreme and interesting weight loss journey, losing over 100 pounds choosing to fast in a cave. How interesting! 

For over the past 10 years, he has evolved his ways to intermittent fasting where he will fast 16 hours at a time, not so much for the weight loss now, but for more energy and disease prevention health benefits.

He had of course also tried many fad diets, and the more recent and popular Keto Diet, cutting out all carbs and sugar, only to recognize in his reflecting back, that he was missing a whole, balanced diet.

Missing nutrients can contribute to a reduced inflammation way of eating that includes a balanced diet. By my 30’s I retired all the nutrition books that I once revered on better eating habits. My favorites were The South Beach Diet and The Inflammation-Free Diet. Today I do my own meal prep that incorporates these more sustainable and healthy ways of eating daily, and that includes a hybrid plant-based diet and a wide array of foods.

Everyone’s immediate health goals can be slightly different. Overall we all want to maintain a consistently healthy weight, have more energy and vitality, and prevent disease and inflammation.

Aligned to those goals, I’ve noticed this is the eating way my body appreciates and my healthy mind works to prepare meals. Here’s a quick overview of my meals today…

Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

Eating 3 meals per day, balancing roughly one plant-based meal per day (dinner preferred as later in the day), a heavier lunch with chicken or fish, and a health-conscious breakfast, I believe is a way to maintain your ideal weight, year-round, and what I practice to stay a consistent size 4 for over the past decade.

Breakfast for me can be a smoothie, cereal, or oatmeal which sounds healthy but these are all still either high in sugar, acidity, or both. That’s why athletes and extreme health fanatics eat lean protein for breakfast, such as fish. They’ll include non-sugar carbs and sprouted bread.

Egg whites (and eggs) seem to be the safe breakfast protein. In my balanced natural Vata form, I like to mix it up. But if someone comes up with a plant-based diet for breakfast I’d definitely try to incorporate.

I consider breakfast the creative meal of the day where you make it interesting. For a typical Vata (that’s me!), every morning it’s a brand new day to choose a mix of healthy sweet (e.g. cereal or smoothies) and salty (e.g. eggs and potato) desires.

A sticky sweet bun would be too cloying for me because I’ve trained myself to not like super sweet items as they make my skin crawl. Thank goodness something works for a sweet tooth! You’ll find what works for you (and if you want some inspiring, healthy grocery shopping tweaks and ideas, I can help you with that).

And then for lunch, I consider the energy and productive meal that keeps you going…

For lunch, I have a filling carb like pasta along with chicken or another low-fat protein that hits the spot and I know I won’t be hungry for hours so I can make it through the afternoon. Rarely will you see me eat a light salad bowl for lunch as high calories burned in the daytime.

Without sustenance, especially if you have a dominant Vata body (or have a combination Vata body), you can have a tendency like I do for your blood sugar level to drop fast so you wanna stay ahead of those crashes.

For me, I learned in those past situations where I felt light-headed or a bit jittery. You know exactly what I’m talking about if you try to carry a Clif Bar or some healthy snack with you around when you go out in the day. So I eat or snack before any hunger sneaks up.

A funny thought just entered my mind.  I don’t know if you remember, but Snickers candy bar used to have an amusing ad campaign where they showed someone going bonkers because they had low blood sugar. The peanuts and the chocolate would tie you over (in high sugar!) so your emotions weren’t affected… I think there’s a hangry emoji somewhere out there, lol.

Anyway… at night for an early dinner, the big switch that I’ve made over the years is eating a plant-based meal with sauteed spinach salad, Brussel sprouts, broccoli, or some other veggie green with a drizzle of EVOO. For variety and taste, I will add some tofu or garbanzo beans, but it’s not necessary. That’s the meal I keep light.

The difference is that I’m not hungry by dinner so eating a light meal makes sense.  If you find you’re most hungry around dinner time, then you may want to experiment eating heavier meals earlier in the day, seeing how that lands, so that you can try a lighter, plant-based meal way in the evening. That was a gradual shift for me from years before, but definitely a healthy move.

When I used to go out to restaurants at night to eat a substantial dinner (or after eating a heavy Thanksgiving meal), I’d find that hard on the digestive system… maybe that’s what you’ve found in your experiences.

Without taking a digestive aid to help break down the food enzymes or drinking peppermint tea afterward to calm the stomach, that could keep me (or you) up all night or bring on nightmares and a rough night of sleep. Maybe you’ve experienced that before?… if so, you could take advantage of eating at home more often that can change your habits to the healthier ones you want to make like eating heavier meals earlier in the day.

As you get older, your body changes, and what you could do to your 20-year old body doesn’t work anymore.

Plant-Based Meal vs. Vegetarian Meals

We all know vegetables are good for us. Strict vegetarians and vegans won’t eat fish and seafood.

As the Vata body I live in (and the one you learned about above)… I know I would just graze and graze all day, still being hungry, if I ate beans and vegetables all day.

Protein fills the hunger in a good way and is healthier than sweet and salty snack substitutions that can be empty calories.

So that’s how I moved towards a plant-based meal in the evening, that I never gave a name to but just naturally did.  I never called it a plant-based diet that you hear about everywhere now…

That’s just how I ate, listening to my body.

So to recap, having one plant-based meal (over a fully plant-based diet) plus one low protein animal meal daily or regularly, I think you get the best of all worlds–having energy and vitality, and looking young, as your food and what you ingest shows up on the healthy glow of your face and skin.

Having a regular, healthier eating plan to stay consistent gives you the best chance for achieving and sustaining an ideal healthy weight and energy that we all desire.

And these tasty plant-based onion snacks can help you toward your goals! 🎯