Tips and tricks to help you manage calorific intake
Feeling stressed about the relationship between diet and exercise? Changing your habits is a process. I’m here to help you along the way and at the end of the phone when you’re in biscuit crisis.
Let me state for the record that I don’t advocate weight loss unless we are talking about getting to or maintaining a healthy weight. My work is not related in any way to weight loss culture, which is a focus on being overly thin.
And let’s talk about diet not ‘dieting’. Short term diets are doomed to failure. Someone heading out on the red carpet or about to compete in a competition or excel in a particular sport might have an extremely restrictive or particular diet for a short period of time, but most of us are not in that category. Most of us are trying to create the habits of a lifetime, that preserve our health, keep us feeling good, and keep us fit and strong in a way that supports the other aspects of our lives.
Diet can be complex, but there are also simple and common-sense guiding principles, many of which I have learned from studying diet and exercise for more than 16 years, including that if you consume more calories than you burn, you will gain weight.
Also, everyone also needs to consume enough protein to support the building of muscle and in order to prevent illness such as osteoporosis. Many of my clients are surprised by how much protein they should have in their daily diet - as a minimum, a 60kg adult needs 60g of protein per day, more if you are training and want to build muscle (1.5-2.5g per kg of gain of muscle).
So it's about counting calories? Not entirely, because if you spend your time trying to eat as few calories as possible, firstly you will be starving, angry, and very likely to break your diet. Secondly, if you’re relying on processed ‘low calorie’ foods, you may still be consuming ingredients that are just making you feel hungry. Furthermore, be careful of fasting which, long term, can actually slow down your metabolism.
I’m old school, so in my opinion it’s better to keep things as simple as possible. Keep single ingredient foods like meat, fish, eggs and vegetables in your fridge and create simple meals. Ideally, you find yourself feeling fuller for longer, with less cravings, and feeling more in control. This is the start of a habit that will last a lifetime.
Eating eggs and steak isn't just for bodybuilders. Eating 3 eggs in the morning will keep you full for longer than cereal. Your organic granola might be full of ‘good stuff’ but, if you end up starving before lunch, it hasn't really done the job. One of the reasons trainers bang on about the problem with carbohydrates is that they create a vicious cycle that will drive you crazy - carbs cause your insulin to spike very quickly and you will ‘crash’ not long after, making you feel tired.
Here are a few tips to help you manage calorific intake long-term:
Think about calorie intake over the course of a week instead of 1 day. This means that if you have a cheat day, a meal out, or just an off day, you can recover during the rest of the week by balancing out your calorie intake when you are able to.
Examine what is it that sets off your cravings – are you too hungry? Stressed? Bored? What can you do to change what is happening.
Supermarkets are not your friend, the complication of food is setting you up to fail. Your weekly trolley should be composed of protein, fruits and vegetables. Anything else is just not necessary.
Try to ignore behaviour change campaigns that make looking after your health feel complicated. The ‘5 a day’ campaign was designed to get people into consuming more fruit and veg in order to prevent disease, and although you should definitely be eating vegetables daily, the added pressure to factor in a huge variety of ingredients can be confusing. If you only like 3 or 4 vegetables, it’s fine to eat those regularly.
Similarly, if you inherited the wisdom that you should eat 3 square meals a day - this was for sailors out at sea. Unless you are doing significant manual labour every day, most of us can live with smaller portions of food throughout the day.
The goal is to try to stay fuller for longer. There is a reason trainers spend so much time talking about steak and eggs. As well as being an amazing source of protein, eating 3 eggs in the morning, even 6, will keep you full for much longer than a bowl of cereal.
If you're vegetarian, don’t forget about your supplements! Although foods like spinach, broccoli and tofu contain protein, it’s not as much as meat, so you need to look for replacements that are really going to fill you up, and take supplements in order to reach your protein target.
I don't usually encourage clients to go for fruit but it’s not a bad idea to replace those biscuits on the sofa with fruit. An entire kilo of strawberries contains around 320 calories, which is as much as two biscuits.
Finally, are you a chef? No. Are you Jamie Oliver? Also no. You don't need to come up with a different meal every night of the week. You are perfectly entitled to eat a chicken salad for breakfast, lunch and dinner if that's what you need to do. When I'm in a recovery phase (usually when I've just come back from holiday), I'll eat a huge bowl of tomato salad and chicken twice a day. It’s reliable and I don’t need to think about it too much.
Talking through weight loss and troubleshooting how you manage diet and exercise is something that is incorporated into my training.
If you’re interested in reaching out for an informal chat about your goals or booking a free Introductory Session, get in touch.
