Dieting for beauty sounds a bit odd for most people.  When you think of dieting, you think of weight loss but you really do not equate the end result to something like ageless beauty.  And when you think of beauty, you think of creams and treatments instead of fruits and vegetables.  But as you go through this series with me you will hear me refer to beauty over and over again.  Why?  Because you are wasting your time just dieting to lose weight, diet to look good at the end! 

Dry hair, brittle nails, wrinkled, leathery skin and a less than bright smile all take away from the weeks of effort you just put in to make your body hot.  So how can we control how we look at the end of all this dieting?  Menu planning. 

Adding variety to the diet allows the body to flourish.  Hitting it fresh from all angles makes you look fresh, young and beautiful.  Instead of walking around with a list of vitamins and minerals in foods, let’s work on easy ways to remember how to get it all in.

Most of us eat many of the same foods day in and day out.  Protein does not change too much throughout the week (here’s a conversation you hardly hear: “I wanted squid today but they didn’t have any on sale so I swung over to the meat department and picked up tripe instead) with us depending on chicken, chicken and chicken for every meal with an occasional ground turkey and shrimp tossed in the mix.  Starches are the same old starches and fruits and veggies are just an afterthought for the most part (Oh look, berries.  I’ve never seen that on a menu.)    If we do not actively have some way to stay on top of our variety, we are just not going to do it.  Instead, we rely on the usual suspects (however healthy they are, they are not the only fruits and veggies in the world) like berries, broccoli and salad (really lettuce) to populate our plates.  Unless, we color code it!

Color adds variety and not just in fruits and veggies.  Meats and starches can be characterized through color, too.  Texture is important as well but that’s how you liven up a menu so just hold your horses will ya?  Jeez! J Here is a different way to think about the colors of protein in your diet:

From light to dark:

Protein may be categorized from light in color (shellfish, white meat chicken, dairy, white fish for example) to various medium tone shades (salmon, lentils, ground chicken for example) to darker shades (skinless chicken thighs, steak, buffalo just to name a few).  An easy way to look at your day is to think 3, 2, 1.  Three sources of light, 2 sources of med tone and 1 source of dark per day.  Do you have to be exact with that?  No.  But it gives you a starting place instead of aimlessly milling around the store picking up numerous forms of chicken!

So what does this really look like?

Light: 

Chicken breast, scallops, shrimp, cottage cheese (1%), egg whites, turkey breast (non deli), extra lean ground turkey, white fish of all kinds, greek yogurt, albacore tuna, lobster

Medium:

Salmon, chunk light tuna, chicken livers, sardines, lentils (yes they are a starch but I am using them as a protein here), egg yolks, protein powder, tempeh

Dark:

Eye of round, buffalo,bison, venison, skinless chicken thighs and legs, flank stank, beef liver (you knew it was coming), lamb, duck

Here are the rules:

1)       Try not repeat items on the list more than twice in a day, but you certainly can within the week.

2)       The items are not listed solely by fat content so you will have to catch the post on how to track your macronutrients. They are listed by color.  Don’t forget that.

3)       Lastly, this is just a fun way to remember how to spice it up a bit.  There is not any major scientific basis for this—yet.  First we learn to crawl…wink, wink.

Using this format, you could have egg whites, chicken breast, white fish, protein powder, salmon and buffalo in one day.  Holy mother of variety, batman!  I think you have covered just about every avenue with that winning combo.  Much more to come on how to put this together, but at least you’re getting the idea.

Why does this matter?  Mainly because if you choose all the same protein sources all the time, you’ll miss out on choline in egg yolks which supports cardiovascular and brain functioning or selenium which is more abundant in dark meat than in light meat.  And since selenium is an antioxidant and staves off certain cancers, I like to think you’ll be adding a bit more dark meat to your diet.

I hope you realize how much you will be learning in this series and you get to stick around for more.  Next we will tackle carbohydrates and give you great ways to think about adding more color to your plate!

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