Food Guide for Weight Loss

Grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruits can provide you with all the nutrients you need. The serving numbers listed here are just suggestions. Feel free to vary the foods you choose and the number of servings. Variety is the spice of life, and it also helps you cover all your nutritional bases.

The food guide chart below provides about 1,500 calories. But you should eat until you are full. Your focus now is on the type of food you eat, not the number of calories. If you are eating a low-fat diet built from these healthy foods, your calorie intake is likely to fall on its own.

Food Group	Serving recommendations
Grains: (A serving equals about 80 calories) Six of your eight servings should be from whole grain sources like wheat bread, brown rice, whole-wheat pasta, bran cereal, and oatmeal.	Eight servings a day. A serving is 1/2 cup cooked grain, like oatmeal or pasta, 1 ounce of dry cereal (usually 3/4 cup to 1 cup), one slice of bread, or half a pita bread or tortilla. Most bagels are actually four servings. Eight servings may sound like a lot, but you can easily meet that goal with 1 cup of oatmeal for breakfast, a sandwich with two slices of bread for lunch, and a bowl of pasta made with 1 1/2 cups of spaghetti with a slice of French bread.
Legumes: (A serving equals about 100 calories) Have at least 1 cup of beans every day.	Three servings from the legume group each day. A serving is 1/2 cup of cooked beans, 1/2 cup low-fat bean spread, 1 cup low-fat soymilk, or 1 ounce of vegetarian meat substitute.
Vegetables: (A serving equals 35 to 50 calories) At least one serving should be a raw vegetable like salad or carrot sticks and at least one should be a calcium-rich, dark leafy green vegetable like kale, broccoli or collards.	At least four servings of vegetables each day. This means 1/2 cup cooked or 1 cup raw. As long as the vegetable isn't topped with a fatty dressing or sauce, you can eat as many servings as you want from this group.
Fruit: (A serving equals about 80 calories) Limit fruit juices and eat whole pieces of fruit instead.	Three servings of fruit each day. A serving is 1/2 cup chopped or one small piece of fruit. Choose low-calorie, high-nutrition fruits like strawberries, kiwis, mangoes, blueberries, peaches, plums, oranges, grapefruit, and raspberries most often.
Sweets: (Optional) One sweet serving has no more than 1 gram of fat and equals about 100 calories.	No more than one serving per day. Your sweets should be fat free. Try fruit if you are craving sweets. Other low-fat ideas include a bowl of sweetened whole-grain cereal with low-fat soymilk, a soymilk/fruit smoothie, or sautéed bananas or apples (in water and a bit of maple syrup) with a little cinnamon.