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Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid: A sample menu
Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid: A sample menu
This sample menu shows you how the Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid can help you plan daily meals and snacks.
The Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid is a tool that helps guide you toward eating a balanced, nutritious diet while achieving a healthy weight.
Vegetables and fruits, the foundation of the pyramid, should be your focus. These foods are low in energy density. That means you can eat a lot of them because they don’t contain a lot of calories. As you go up the pyramid, the food groups become higher in energy density — they have more calories for their volume. To lose weight, you should limit how many servings of these foods you eat.
The number of servings for each food group is determined by your daily target calorie level. If your target is 1,200 calories, your meal plan should include four or more servings of vegetables, three servings of protein/dairy and three fat servings.
Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid
The Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid is a tool to help you lose weight or maintain your weight. The triangular shape shows you where to focus when selecting healthy foods. Eat more foods from the base of the pyramid and fewer from the top.
Sample menu under the Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid
This sample menu for a day follows the Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid. The sample shows you how to fit in servings from each category in the pyramid without going over 1,200 calories. You can adjust the menu to suit your own tastes and calorie needs.
| Sample menu (1,200 calories) |
|---|
| Breakfast |
| 3/4 cup hot whole-grain cereal |
| 1 small banana |
| Calorie-free beverage |
| Lunch |
| Tossed salad (2 cups romaine, 1/4 onion, 1/4 cup mushrooms, 1 medium tomato, 1 hard-boiled egg, 1/2 cup low-fat shredded cheddar cheese) |
| 1 whole-wheat dinner roll |
| 1 1/2 teaspoons butter |
| 1/2 cup cubed pineapple |
| Calorie-free beverage |
| Dinner |
| 3 ounces seared scallops in 1 teaspoon olive oil |
| Garlic mashed cauliflower potatoes |
| 1/2 cup beets |
| Calorie-free beverage |
| Snack (any time) |
| 2 plums |
| 8 wheat crackers |
Nutrient analysis and servings for the sample menu
| Nutritional analysis for sample menu | |
|---|---|
| Calories | 1,178 |
| Total fat | 34 g |
| Saturated fat | 12 g |
| Monounsaturated fat | 11 g |
| Cholesterol | 256 mg |
| Sodium | 1,761 mg |
| Total carbohydrate | 157 g |
| Dietary fiber | 24 g |
| Trans fat | Trace |
| Total sugar | 58 g |
| Added sugar | 0 g |
| Protein | 61 g |
| Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid servings with the sample menu | |
|---|---|
| Vegetables | 4 |
| Fruits | 3 |
| Carbohydrates | 3 1/2 |
| Protein and dairy | 3 |
| Fats | 3 |
| Sweets | 0 |
Healthy snacking to help fill you up
If you feel hungry while following the Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid, reach for more fruits and vegetables to snack on. Just make sure your fruit is either fresh or canned in water or juice — and that you pour off the liquid before eating.
April 21, 2020 See more In-depth
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