Let’s Take a Look At What’s Inside MyPyramid

by: Jane Neill, R.D., L.D.

MyPyramid is a personal, useful tool to help you achieve a healthy body weight by tracking the food you consume and your daily physical activities. This is a second part of a three part series to help you better understand the new MyPyramid. For a refresher, read Part I called “Here’s Looking at the MyPyramid”.

We strongly encourage individuals interested in achieving a healthy body weight as part of the Move It. Lose It. Live Healthy.^® wellness program to use the www.MyPyramid.gov website; it’s just a click away.

Upon entering the home page and under the subjects heading, check out MyPyramid Plan. On this page you can enter your age, gender and physical activity level to get an estimate of your caloric needs (how many calories do you burn each day). Once you submit this data, a caloric level is given to you with the appropriate division among the various food groups needed for a healthy diet plan. On the right side of this screen are other tools available to help with your planning including a Meal Tracking worksheet (diet diary) and MyPyramid Tracker. Within the MyPyramid Tracker is the ability to track your daily diet and exercise; each day the calculations are done for you once you enter the data. You can always print the diet dairy and activity log sheets from the www.healthbodyweight.com website to record your food consumption and activity during the day and then use this information to enter it in the MyPyramid Tracker.

Now if you return to the home page of www.MyPyramid.gov , you will find another subject called Inside the Pyramid. Check this section out. Here you will find information on each food group (this information can also be found in Chapter 9 of Move It. Lose It. Live Healthy. Achieve a Healthy Workplace One Employee at a Time! Inside the Pyramid discusses how to count portions within each food group. You will notice that serving size is no longer used to describe portions within each group.

In the Grain group and Meat and Beans group, portions are described in “ounce (oz.)” portions. The Fruit, Vegetable and Milk groups use cups to describe portions. Understanding portions correctly allows you to stay within your calorie level as you use the Meal Pattern and Meal Tracking worksheet. One of the key concepts of the Move It. Lose It. Live Healthy.^® wellness program in achieving a healthy body weight is controlling portion sizes.

Also within the Inside the Pyramid, you will see a new category - oils. This is meant to emphasize the importance of limiting the amount of oils and fats used each day and when you do use oils to chose healthy fats more often. This is clearly explained when you click on this section.

And did you notice discretionary calories? This term is meant to identify the calorie expense or difference when selecting whole milk instead of fat free milk or eating apple pie instead of an apple. Yes, when you choose more of the higher calorie choices, which are located at the top of the pyramid bands, you must step up your activity level in order to maintain a healthy body weight.

There is a lot of useful information located at the www.MyPyramid.gov website. Check it out and make it one your favorite sites to visit. It will help you to Move It. Lose It. Live Healthy.^®

Refering Article: Here's Looking at the MyPyramid