4 Nutrition Tips and the Quick Hacks that Make Healthy Eating Easy
Kate Irwin • July 7, 2020
How To Empower Yourself To Achieve Your Goals
While not everyone is looking to lose weight, many of our members are looking to change their body composition and decrease body fat. Yes, a simple meal plan laid out with when and what to eat can work, it isn’t sustainable. Our goal is to empower people to learn how to alter their body composition and achieve their goals while not enforcing a strict meal plan.
LEARN THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO REACH YOUR HEALTH GOALS
Below are four of my favourite nutrition strategies and tips that will help you reach your own personal goals! (Don’t have any goals right now? This is why they are important and how to make them).
PURCHASE A FOOD SCALE
Eyeballing your portions is inherently inaccurate, but did you know measuring your food in cups and tablespoons can also lead you astray. A food scale may seem extreme, but it’s a quick and reliable way to measure serving sizes. By weighing your food you increase the likelihood of sticking to a single portion, and it will start to give you a better idea of portion sizing.
Small Hack:
Place your dinner plate on the food scale, zero the scale, place the first food on your scale for weight, then zero it again and move to the next food. This means that you don’t need to dirty extra dishes, simply weigh your chicken, clear the scale and add on your rice, etc.
TRACK YOUR CALORIES
Yes, we understand tracking calories can sometimes be time-consuming. Eventually you can progress towards intuitive eating (on a regular basis or use on days when tracking isn’t realistic).
One of the most common statements I hear from clients is that they are eating healthy and clean and don’t understand why they can’t lose weight. While eating “healthy” and “clean” can lead to things like more energy and consuming more micronutrients it doesn’t necessarily go hand-in-hand with body fat loss. It can be VERY eye-opening to see how quickly the calories in your salad, or morning green smoothie add up. By setting a calorie goal and tracking your food intake it will help both increase your awareness and help you stay within your desired calorie range.
Small Hack:
If you are going to have a dessert or alcoholic beverage at night, track it in the morning so that you can plan your day to save those calories and macros for the evening.
FOCUS ON SMALL HABITS THAT ADD UP
While small things like drinking enough water, getting out for a walk each day, staying within 5 grams of each macro daily don’t seem like big feats, they add up quickly. Getting discouraged that you had one less ideal meal, or less ideal day and giving up on the rest of the week is like having a flat tire and slashing the other three because one is already flat. Each small habit is like planting a seed, the work at the beginning isn’t visible but as time passes you start to see the results of your small changes.
Small Hack:
Pick one habit. Complete it for 3 weeks in a row before moving on to another. None of this is a race, it’s about changing your daily habits to increase your ability to achieve your goals.
DON'T BEAT YOURSELF UP OVER SLIP UPS
Guilt is a sure fire way to side rail your efforts. Guilt leads to things like giving in or giving up more quickly than you should. When we start to remove the guilt from food it just becomes fact. When you consume a cookie that is less healthy or puts you over your calories you can simply accept “I ate that cookie, it was delicious” and move on. On the other hand you can fixate on the fact that you ate a cookie and either eat more because the day is already ruined or try to be more restrictive the following day to “make up” for the mistake. Get rid of this negative thought process and focus on the fact that one cookie won’t undo your hard work but a box of cookies a week will. By moving on and accepting the facts you are more likely to hit your body composition goals.
Small Hack:
Next time you eat something and start to feel discouraged write a quick list of three or four positive things you did that day that moved you towards your goals. In the span of a day while eating extra dessert or having an extra drink may seem counterproductive you have most likely also done things to help you towards your goals. When you look at the big picture a small slip isn’t as daunting.
Nutrition is a process not an end goal, having fun with what you eat and consuming foods you enjoy is essential to having a good relationship with food. Try new foods! Try new ways of preparing food! And yes, indulge in desserts every once in a while. Try implementing these four tips and let us know if you need more help implementing them or working towards your body composition changes.
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