How to Freestyle and create your own meal plans following the
CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet guidelines.
Introduction to Freestyling -
TWD has an official guide available on their website which is available here - Link
Important -
Some screenshots and info below are from over three years ago when I started my journey weighing in at 185.5 kg. I started on the highest plan with the highest food intake, so it is critical to your success that you follow your recommended food unit values and not go by my totals in the images below. I have provided my original plans below to give you a guide to my thought processes on how I planned my freestyling.
Freestyling - Getting Started -
My first step was to look at the TWD template (available when you sign-up) to see what my daily food units were, and to look at how the food units were spread across the day.
I then made a list of my favourite foods and used the Food Search to determine how each food tracked, and calculated the amount of how much of each food equaled one food unit.
Examples -
I was allowed five bread units a day.
Examples of one bread unit are -
One slide of multigrain bread equals one Bread Unit.
70 grams of cooked Basmati Rice equals one Bread Unit.
150 gram potato equals one Bread Unit
The screenshots below are from an Excel spreadsheet I created to help me plan my initial meal plans before I finalised my daily meal plans and then entered my meals in the TWD Food Tracker.
DISCLAIMER - These food unit values are over three years old and may have changed.
Make sure you use the tracker when entering your foods as these values may have changed.
Bread units - Five per day
- Tip - Basmati Rice and pastas are low GI. Low GI is one of the primary focuses of the TWD plan.
Dairy - Three per day
I just eat cheese for my dairy now days.
It might be a bit boring for some people, but that is the beauty of freestyling, you can just change the meal plan to what YOU want.
As long as you meet but don't exceed your daily units, you're following the plan and making it sustainable FOR YOU.
Meat / Protein - Three per day
Note that these are original screenshots from three years ago and some food values have changed.
I have included this to show you the methods I used to create my meal plans, so please don't use these values, enter them into the Food Search / Food Tracker to get the current values.
Healthy Fats and Oils - 5 per day
Veges - 2.5 per day - MINIMUM
Fruits - 2 per day
Healthy processed foods.
I broke up my favourite processed foods to help with my meal plan creation.
I could then plan out my days taking into account the Bread units and Healthy Oil units as well as the Meat / protein units, to ensure I met but didn't exceed my daily unit totals.
Protein / Meat comparisons
To allow me to understand my choices better, I added many different meat / protein options and used the tracker to create this table with comparisons of the calories, fat, protein, TWD units etc for a 100 gram serve.
I put them in order of Calorie values and it is amazing to see the differences, especially when comparing the highest and lowest. Of course the highest is a highly processed Kofta, and when compared to Basa fish, there are over triple the calories for the same 100 gram raw serve and over ten times the saturated fat content.
This is one of reasons I prefer fresh home made meals over processed foods, and why TWD scores a lot of processed foods as indulgences rather than protein (deli ham etc). Although the Koftas track as meat / protein only, you can see in the comparison table below the health benefits in preparing fresh foods against processed foods.
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Example of a typical day early into my journey - 22nd January 2019
This was about seven months into my journey, and back then I didn't eat my indulgences, as Peter's Raspberry Ripple was classed as a dairy, not indulgence.
TWD has since changed the classification of the Raspberry Ripple to indulgence due to the processed nature of the ice cream.
My daily units - 
Typical Breakfast during weight loss
Lunch and afternoon tea
(I love that I tracked that my watermelon was EXACTLY 601 grams... not 600 grams !
--- Important, this info is from a few years ago,
Back then, 550 grams of watermelon was two fruit units.
The database has been corrected and 330 grams tracks as two fruit units now.
This is why it is critical to always check the online tracker.
Dinner and dessert
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Meal Prep
Like most people, I lead a busy life and I am time poor, but most importantly I MAKE TIME for my meal prep. I know that if I make the time to prepare my meals, I am far more likely to keep on track.
I just pop in my ear-buds and crank up some music or my favourite podcast, and cook it all up.
I start early by cooking up my weekly batch of Pumpkin and Corn soup.
As virtually all vegetables except potato and sweet potato track as Free vegetable units, I make a big batch of healthy, delicious Pumpkin and Corn soup. This gives me seven HUGE serves of soup which I use currently as a morning tea. Many people have commented in the Facebook groups that they love this soup, and many people add extra veges or tweak the recipe to suit their tastes.
That is the beauty of Freestyling, you can tweak the meals to suit your taste buds to make it SUSTAINABLE to you!
You can check out this blog post for the Pumpkin and Corn soup recipe - Link 
Breakfast prep - bulk cooking of eggs for breakfast
Note that this is while I am on maintenance, so the portion sizes and food unit allowance is higher than when I was on my initial weight loss journey. In fact, initially, I had mushrooms on toast as I didn't have enough protein units.
As my eldest son eats the same breakfast as I do, I do a bulk cook up of two dozen eggs in my sous vide machine. This allows me to cook up eggs and then keep them in the fridge until I want them for breakfast. The sous vide process gives me an egg that is similar in consistency to a soft poached egg, which I then 'smoosh' up and create a toasty with a single egg, or two eggs on two pieces of toast and cheese. The cooked eggs are placed back in the fridge to be consumed for breakfast each morning. As they are already cooked, this saves time each day before I go to work.
Luch prep - bulk cooking for lunches
My weekends are also spent cooking up a heap of my favourite meats that I can freeze for lunches and / or dinners. I use my meats and proteins as a 'template' for my lunches and dinners.
Once I cook up my rissoles / burgers / seafood etc, I then portion up and use as the 'template' for either lunches or dinners.
For dinners, I choose not to add any bread units (I save some bread units for my pre-bedtime snack of Vita-Weats, sun-dried tomatoes and cheese). I just cook and portion up the protein serves and freeze to be served up for dinner when I get home after work. This reduces my stress level as I know that I can cook dinner in about five minutes just by adding a heap of veges, and half a can of Heinz Big Red Tomato Soup to the pre-cooked, pre-portioned meat / protein serve.
Lunches use the same prep method, except that I add pasta or basmati rice to the 'template'.
I have pre-planned and allocated the appropriate amount of bread units. In my case, that is 70 grams of cooked basmati rice, or 35 grams of uncooked pasta. Both basmati rice and pasta are low GI food and meet the TWD guidelines.
Lunch prep example -
Seafood Marina -
Cook 750g of fresh marinara mix in a wok with minced garlic
Split up into three equal portions
Add some frozen veges
Add half a small tin of Heinz Big Red Tomato Soup (the condensed version) and some mixed herbs for flavour.
If freezing for lunches, I add my lunch serve of bread units, which for me is 35g of uncooked spaghetti, which equals around 90g of cooked spaghetti.
Pop in the freezer for future lunches.
On the day when I am taking to work, I cut up a heap of mushrooms and baby corn and add, ready for lunch.
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Lunches and Dinners - bulk cooking of 'protein' for lunches and dinners.
Protein / meat examples
Meat Burgers - These can be cooked in bulk and frozen to be used in both lunches and dinners.
I wrap the cooked single burgers in cling wrap and freeze individually and just take out the day before or just microwave as needed. The burgers can be used either in one of my burger lunches, or cut up with veges, and Big Red Tomato Soup for dinner.
I also create lunches by adding either pasta or basmati rice to the burger, veges and Big Red soup.
ALDI marinated chicken thighs (the lemon herb ones are awesome)
I cook these in the air-fryer at 200c for five minutes, flip, then cook for another five minutes.
These make great healthy home made burgers.
Olga's chicken patties and Coles Chicken and Cheese Burgers.
The Coles chicken and cheese burgers are awesome in my burgers.
I also use the Olga's chicken patties as a template for lunches and dinners with veges, Heinz Big Red soup and rice or pasta for lunches.
Ingham's Turkey meatballs
These are awesome. Just cook in the air-fryer / oven and serve as a healthy spaghetti meatballs or with basmati rice.
Ingham's extra lean turkey burgers
Once again, I cook these in the air-fryer or oven and use for burgers or mix with Heinz Big Red, veges for dinner and add pasta or rice for lunches.
Home style chicken burgers and Aussie country style burgers - (Woolies)
I cook these in the air-fryer, portion up with three mini burgers and use in lunches and dinners with Heinz Big Red and veges for dinners, and add pasta or rice for lunches.
