1. Personal Eating Habits

This lesson is going to teach you how to analyze your personal eating habits, and how anyone can make small or big changes to their diet to improve their health. First, read some about nutrition:

The Food Guide Pyramid

Next, look at the following list of nutrition topics (cooking tips, reading labels, etc). Read at least three articles that you think might help you:

TeenHealth Nutrition Topics

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2. MyPyramid Worksheet

Now, complete the following survey to give yourself an idea of what your eating habits are like. Then answer the questions on the MyPyramid Worksheet. If you need a copy of this worksheet, click here to download and print it out (pdf file: 371 KB).

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3. Personal Changes

Now, let’s take a look at some things that you can change about your personal eating habits. Create a list of improvements that you could make to your eating habits. Try to think of several things.

After you have finished making you list, select one item on that list to focus on for this lesson. Circle that item on your list.

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4. Work With Partner

Now, trade your list with a partner. Look over your partner’s list and provide them some feedback on what they have put down. Try to give your partner at least three ideas for improvement.

When you are done reviewing you partner’s list, give it back to them. When you get your list back, look over the suggestions given by your partner. If you want to change the one item that you are going to focus on for this lesson, go ahead and do that.

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5. Setting Goals

You are almost ready to start creating your nutrition plans. First, you need to learn how to set good goals. Bad goals can cause you to become tired and discouraged, or even make you give up altogether. Before going on, review the lesson on setting goals:

Motivation and the Power of Not Giving Up

This lesson is about exercise, but the same concepts can be applied to making changes to your eating habits.

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6. Create Nutrition Plan

Now, you are ready to create a nutrition plan. For this, you will use the calendar tool. First, think of what you need to do to change that one item you picked on the list. Think of something that you can do at least three times a week, for the next four weeks. Remember that these activities need to be measurable and realistic. If you can’t do something for item you picked at least three times a week, you might want to change to another item.

When you are ready to create your calendar, go back to the front page of this class. Look for the calendar on the right side of the page. Click on the name of the month – this is the link to the calendar tool. Then click on the button that says New Event. For the name, put in the name of what you are going to do. For example, “Eat fruit instead of candy bar.” Make sure you put in some kind of description, for example “I will not eat a candy bar today after lunch. I will eat a banana instead.” Then pick a day and time for your first activity. You don’t have to worry about the duration or repeats. Just save the changes.

Continue adding calendar items until you have a full calendar – at least three activities a week for a full month. You can also do different things on different days if you like. For example, you could eat a banana on Monday, and then eat an apple on Wednesday. Try some variety to keep it interesting.

When your calendar is finished, you will need to print it. Click on the name of the month that you want to print to bring up the entire month, and then print the page.