Eating your way to a healthy and happy life

Along with exercise and sleep, nutrition is widely regarded as one of the most important factors that contribute to a healthy lifestyle. As my knowledge of basic nutrition has grown in recent years, I’ve found it surprising at the lack of understanding among other people.

Many claim to know what to do but for some reason aren’t doing it. Why is that? For me, it starts early on in life. There isn’t a great deal of education in school (at least not when I was younger) and people are now easily misled by hundreds of diets all claiming to hold the secret key to eating better and losing weight. It’s created a great deal of misunderstanding about what we put into our bodies, whereas in reality, the nutrition formula is one of the most simple to grasp. Once you get it you’re set for life, and you never know, it might even help to make some positive changes in your life.

My purpose today is to share five key points that will hopefully transform your mindset on dieting and nutrition.

Preparation

Humans strive for simplicity and often complain about a lack of time in the day to be eating healthy. It’s quicker and easier to go for the unhealthy option.

If you struggle with this and tend to make bad food choices then try planning your meals the day before. It’s natural to choose something easy when you’re tired or if you’ve had a long day, but if you’ve decided ahead and accounted for what you will be eating then it takes away the chance of making a poor decision. If you can, give meal prepping a go — spend a couple of hours in the kitchen on a Sunday creating lunches for the week. It could make the world of difference.

Which diet next?

Every single diet out there always circles back to the same principle — a calorie deficit. Ketogenic, Atkins, Paleo, 5–2 you name it, it’s a calorie deficit. In other words, burning more calories than you consume.

For instance, a female who weighs 140 lbs and is 5ft5 in height will naturally burn around 1900 calories a day, even without exercising. Therefore, in order to be in a deficit, all she needs to do is eat less than 1900 calories. Simple, right?

Where people typically fail is because many of these low-carb or low-fat diets are calorie restricting. If this is beginning to sound a little too complex fear not, the best place to start is to work out your individual calorific requirements using a TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) calculator. As soon as you figure out these numbers and decide your goals, it will be much easier to hit your calorie and macro (protein, carbohydrate, fats) targets.

Staying on Track

The prospect of counting your calories can be daunting at first, it can seem too time-consuming and fiddly to enter everything you eat. But, in reality, it’s an enhanced food diary that will tell you so much about your eating habits. Once you get used to it, it really doesn’t take that long either. If you’re serious about making changes to your health then tracking calories for a week or two can be a great start. It will allow you to seriously measure the ‘calories in vs calories out’.

What can be daunting and difficult is trying to make a change without knowing what you’re doing. And plus, if your previous methods haven’t been working then there’s no harm in giving it a go.

Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy your food!

Restricting certain food types, for example, carbohydrates can be dangerous. It might be successful for a short period, but it can lead to binging, which can lead to guilt, then more restricting and there starts a vicious cycle. This is why people are so inconsistent with their nutrition, and why people struggle to maintain ‘diets’. If you like chocolate you should allow yourself to eat chocolate. If you like sausage rolls, eat sausage rolls! What’s key is to work out if it fits in with your calories and macros (carbs, protein, fats) and work around it. You might not be able to eat loads and loads of it, but by allowing yourself some it will eliminate the craving to binge.

Consistency is key

Say goodbye to trying the new popular diet, they simply aren’t sustainable. What is sustainable is making small changes to your daily nutrition habits, which will eventually allow you to reach your goals.

It’s so simple to find out how many calories you burn each day. You can then easily work out what foods you need to eat in order to reach your weight goals, whether that’s maintaining, losing weight, or adding muscle mass. Include both healthy, nutritious foods and foods you love in order to hit these goals and it won’t feel like you’re dieting anymore, it will just become your way of life.