Why You Shouldn't Eat Like Your Trainer; And That's a Good Thing

I think after last week’s post most of you know what I am going to say. However, read along and maybe I will surprise you with something. When Googling “how to eat healthy” or “diets that work good for me.” Tons of trendy diets will come up. From vegetarian diets to all meat diets. However, the truth is that there is no one diet fits all. When it comes to calories, your intake should match your outtake. When it comes to specific foods some people may have intolerances to certain foods while another person may thrive off said food. And matter a fact the catch phrase, “variety is the spice of life,” attains to food too. Many diets that eliminate entire food groups may be worse for you. All in all, the nutrition should be tailored to YOUR body.

Eating Like a Normal Person

We all have a friend that went off the deep end with their diet. They can no longer join for dinner because it does not fit their “macronutrient breakdown.” They can’t go to events anymore, they are constantly miserable, and now they bring some not so delicious “healthy” cookies to the work party. While they may reach their fitness goals, they are miserable! Most of us go to the gym feel better and enhance our lives. Why should you just trap yourself by taking part in a super restricted diet that makes life less enjoyable?

Instead, here are some tips I recommend.

1. Find a balance. Try to eat clean on the “normal nights” so when you have an abnormal night you can enjoy food. Eating a healthy and nutritious breakfast, lunch, and most dinners. That way when you do not have the option to eat healthy it is not as big of a deal. Some may call this the 80/20 or 90/10 rule.

2. Use seasoning and have variety. Eating plain chicken broccoli and rice everyday gets old real fast. (Trust me I thought this was the way at one point.) Instead season your foods. Seasoning adds tremendous flavor with very few if any calories. Just watch your salt intake. Add variety. Switch up your veggies every couple days. Our bodies want variety. This assures we are getting different vitamins throughout the week. Switch your carbohydrates. Potatoes, rice, and tortillas have similar macronutrients and can keep meals interesting.

3. Find recipes the whole family enjoys and make them often. Most people do not live alone and therefore don’t typically eat alone. If you can make healthy meals that everyone looks forward to in the house, then you all will benefit, and it will be easy to stick to.

4. Do not stress when you mess up! This is the most important tip. One meal does not ruin your diet. One week does not ruin a years’ worth of effort. There will be times that you cannot or should not stick to your diet. After all, we already agreed we were eating healthy to enhance our lives. Right?? What is important is when that dinner is over or when you get back from vacation you get back to cooking healthy foods. It may be hard at first, but it must be done.

Hungry ≠ Healthy

When people envision being healthy, they think suffering and starving themselves. Starving yourself only works for a short period of time. And it’s miserable. Starving yourself for a long period of time will not make you healthy. Should I repeat that again? When someone goes on a very hard diet with very little calories it can lead to loss of energy, hormone crashes, and burnout. Leaving you worse off than when you started and feeling hopeless. Being hungry sometimes is okay and probably even necessary. However, being hungry all the time even to the point of starving is not okay.

Calories In vs. Calories Out

The best answer I can give to a diet that will help reach your goals is that you should match you output to your input. Throughout the day you burn calories by breathing, your heart beating and even just using your brain to think. My favorite fact is that your brain burns atleast 130 carbs a day. Cool huh? This is called your basal metabolic rate, but you could think of it as your baseline calories if you just laid in bed all day. On top of that you burn calories doing basic things such as walking to the kitchen, tapping your foot, and talking. This is considered non-exercise activity thermogenesis or NEAT for short. Plus, if you choose to do any exercise that day such as lifting weights, going for a run or playing softball for the local rec team, you will burn even more. Think of this as extra. For the most part everyone’s basal metabolic rate will be similar with the main deciding factors being age, gender, and muscle mass. NEAT can easily change depending how active you are at home or work. When all of these are added together you get your total daily output. There are several online calculators that give you an estimate for where this will be. I consider these to be “good enough.” If your goal is to lose weight you need to be eating less than your output. If you want to gain weight you need to be eating more. (Adding or taking away about 500 calories per day should result in one pound per week.) After 2-4 weeks of tracking your weight if it is not responding appropriately you should readjust. Highly active people can have very large outputs. Hence why you can see professional athletes eating an absurd amount of food. Sometimes not even healthy food. On the flip side inactive people may have extremely low outputs. An easy way to increase your output is to increase your NEAT by setting a step goal, using the stairs instead of the elevator, or mowing the lawn. You could also increase your weekly exercise by adding one to three 30-minute cardio activities such as biking, speed walking, or using the elliptical.

Food!

This week for dinner one night I air fried some chicken breast along with sweet potato chunks and asparagus. This meal is made with all whole foods and super simple. I made sure to season everything to add flavor. The sweet potato has salt, cinnamon, and chili powder and was delicious! A tip to keep the calories low is that I see how little of olive oil I can use for a meal. Today I used one serving of virgin olive oil between the sweet potato and the asparagus, but next time I will use less. It is important to measure out your oils because it is very easy to add 400 calories to a meal with just oil.

Nutrients

• Calories: 665

• Protein: 57 grams

• Carbohydrates: 43 grams

• Fiber: 8 grams

• Fat: 29 grams