What is the Healthy Plate Diet? This is a very popular diet, developed by the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health , which can be used both for effortless weight loss and for staying at the right weight forever.
The principle behind the healthy plate diet is very simple and is based on the composition of a balanced and complete meal to stay fit without counting calories. So it’s a perfect approach for anyone who doesn’t want a diet with a detailed menu or doesn’t want to count calories to lose weight.

In fact, with the healthy plate diet :

• calories are not counted
• you eat everything
• portions are not calculated and therefore food is not weighed.
  All you need is to eat on a plate that is always the same in size for lunch and dinner.

It is not said how big that plate must be, I recommend these dimensions to avoid mistakes.
A flat plate with a diameter of 25-26 cm for lunch and dinner.
For breakfast, a dessert or salad plate with a maximum diameter of 23 cm.

THE DIET OF THE HEALTHY DISH

The healthy plate diet follows these rules. It may seem complicated at first.
After a few days you will realize that it is an extremely simple diet.

It is necessary to place the already cooked food on the plate (or to be eaten raw depending on the type) taking into account these proportions.

• A quarter of the dish must be based on whole grains or pseudocereals in grains.

  Brown rice, whole barley, whole spelled, whole oats or whole oat flakes, whole wheat, buckwheat, quinoa, millet, amaranth. They can only be replaced with wholemeal pasta. For breakfast, you can use wholemeal quinoa flakes or whole grain oat flakes.

• While the other quarter of the dish must have some protein.

  Legumes, chicken, turkey, natural tofu, fish, molluscs and crustaceans, egg whites, skimmed dairy products such as ricotta, cottage cheese, skimmed quark, skyr skyr, low-fat white yogurt. For vegans you can choose: soy or coconut yogurt or rice enriched in calcium, wheat muscle and tempeh.
  Red meat can be eaten once a week, as can whole eggs, scrambled or in omelettes.

• The other half of the dish should be vegetable-based, therefore vegetables and fruit. Potatoes are excluded.

Vegetables must be greater than fruit, so it will not be half of the plate divided in half, but what to do for breakfast?
You can choose to make half of the plate with vegetables only for lunch and dinner, and half of the breakfast plate with fruit, avoiding the too sugary one.
Or for breakfast you can use carrots, fennel or cucumbers and combine them with fruit in a quick smoothie.

The dressing is considered separately.
If you want to lose weight, limit the oil to one teaspoon per meal, choosing olive oil. And eat only vegetables as a snack.
Otherwise, two teaspoons per meal will be fine.
For breakfast, you can replace it with a teaspoon of almond butter or coconut oil or a teaspoon of mixed seeds, such as pumpkin and sunflower. On page two you will find examples of menus.