Nutrition

Distilling my views on how to eat better in one pagel is tricky! But here goes…

Food is not just energy. Food is something to enjoy, and it plays a cultural and social-bonding role too. My experience has informed my generic advice on what your nutrition should look like and has a bias. Let me explain…

Maybe because I work with the entertainment and fashion industries, perhaps because I’m based in a trendy western city, or maybe its also that the majority of my clients are women in their 20’s… but I have developed a conscious bias towards working on the relationship my clients have with food as a priority, regardless of what my client’s goals are or what admit to me about their eating habits or not.

I’ve seen how eating disorders can mess people up, and I’ve gone the other way. I want you to love food as I do and feel guilt-free when at a restaurant (even if that means your weight loss or body toning results are 20% slower than they could be). I justify this and reduce the potential of sub-optimal results by having my general philosophy of training incredibly hard and eating healthily to support the demands of training (as opposed to training soft and dieting hard, which is how I would evaluate the vast majority of Bikini Body Apps and workouts plans out there.)

So before I give some general recommendations, I have some questions to ask you.

• What are your health, fitness & body composition goals?
• Do you feel the way you eat conducive to you feeling energised, happy and athletic?
• Do you eat a balanced diet full of nutrient-dense real foods?
• Do you feed yourself too much/too little at times? Why?
• Do you think you have a great relationship with food, and why/why not?
• Should you eat better, and why?
• How ready are you to make small changes in your diet?
• Where do you get your nutrition knowledge?
• What two behaviours/habits related to food could you change today to help you move closer to your goals?

I ask these as I think you can be your own nutritionist if you ask the right questions. Most of us already know what food is good for our bodies and what isn’t!.

If you are overwhelmed with all the opinions shared about what you sound eat… here are eight very solid principles for you to help you eat healthily and help your body perform at its peak.

1) Eat two to three balanced, nutrient-dense meals a day and avoid snacks.

2) 90% of what you eat should be real food, and 10% do anything you want.

3) Have protein in most of your meals.

4) Get into cooking – the better you get, the more you’ll train your taste buds and love real healthy food

5) If you’re fat, then eat less and/or move more.  The total amount of calories you eat compared to how many calories you expend in the biggest factor dictating your body composition.

6) Avoid soft drinks, sweets, alcohol and other crap as much as possible.

7) Drink more water.

8) Have a wide variety of plants in your diet (current thinking is that 30 different plants a day are optimal for Gut health & thus our immunity

The word FAT

Now, there is a chance I may have offended some of you reading this by using the word fat a min ago. The word has many negative connotations (please read this), But I used it on purpose to make two points;

1. When someone is trying to help you, they will make mistakes or say things that you don’t fully agree with. Employing some critical reasoning, being forgiving, focusing on the message rather than your own offence levels will serve you better in life.

2. Can offence really be given, or can it only be received? Please refer back to lesson one and ask yourself the hard questions. Selective outrage is common nowadays…. doesn’t make it logically right, though!.

Low carb diets

Reducing carbs will help most of us lose weight simply because carbs are high in calories.. and most of us eat too many calories. However, ketogenic and very low-carb diets should be avoided as they make you feel like shit.

Whole grains have complex carbohydrates that supply a steady flow of energy rather than the spike and crash of simple sugars. They’re necessary to transport amino acids such as tryptophan into the brain. Your brain will not like being on very low carbs, and I want you to be mentally sharp, make good life decisions and feel energised every day. Therefore a very low-carb approach to your nutrition should be avoided.

Counting calories & tracking

If you want to do this, then I recommend only doing it 2-3 weeks a year. Don’t get obsessed. Tracking should be used as an occasional resource; just like the scale, they tend to do more psychological harm than good for most of us. You know yourself, so if it serves you to track constantly, then great. Being aware is good, but being obsessive is never good. Find the balance.

See you tomorrow for my views on which supplements I recommend.