By: Tammy Hamilton
Nutrition is hard! Plain and simple. It can be overwhelming and you may think you don’t have the resources or will-power to make changes in your nutrition but it can actually be a lot easier to make changes than you think! Check out my top nutrition tips to see how these changes can improve your overall nutrition.
Let’s say that these are the changes you would like and/or need to change in your nutrition: drinking soda throughout the day, skipping breakfast, eating fast food for lunch, eating too many carbs throughout the day, snacking on sugar, drinking sugary coffee drink before work each day, not being scale obsessed, etc.
- Make It Manageable: Try not to make too changes at once. It can be too overwhelming and you may wind up giving up shortly after you start. Instead, start by tackling one or two changes each week and before you know it all these small changes will amount to huge changes in your nutrition. For example, start by categorizing the priority of each one and pick the top two that you’d like to change the first week. I would start by making sure the first week that you are eating a healthy breakfast every day and instead of drinking soda throughout the day drink zero calorie flavored water as well as plenty of water. Once you do this for a week or two it will become a normal part of your day. Then start changing a couple more things the following two weeks and keep that cycle going until you have tackled all the changes you wanted to see.
- Mental Toughness: If it was easy to eat healthy, we’d all be doing it with no hesitation. Nothing worth having comes too easy, right? It’s going to take a commitment to yourself that you are going to be strong and have enough will power to make these changes. Write your goals on your fridge so that each time you open the fridge, you are reminded of why you are doing this. This will also help you make healthier choices when you do open your fridge (although I recommend keeping all tempting foods out of your house completely).
- Eat Enough Food: Roughly 9 out of 10 of the people I consult with are not eating enough food. Society has told us to restrict our calories to get the results we want and although you will lose weight quickly, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. The problem with restricting our calories is that when you start eating the amount of food you were eating before you started restricted calories you end up gaining all the weight back plus some. This happens because when we restrict too many calories our body turns into “starvation mode” and ends up training itself to store more energy/food instead of burn it. We want to teach our bodies to be fat burners, not fat storers and the only way to do that is to make sure we are eating enough healthy foods each day. How much food will depend on a lot of different factors and will be different for each person.
- Preparation: It’s going to take thought and preparation to change your nutrition habits. Always plan what you are going to eat the day before. If you eat the same thing for breakfast each day and plan to eat leftovers for lunch, the hardest part of your preparation will be packing healthy snacks and planning your dinner. Stick to snacks like plain Greek yogurt with a handful of berries, protein shakes, nuts, small amounts of fruit, etc. For dinner, stick to meals that are high in protein and have moderate to low starchy carbohydrates like sirloin steak with sweet potatoes and veggies or lettuce tacos with a palm size amount of brown rice.
- It Takes Time: I love Derek’s saying: “If it took you 10 years to put the weight on, you can’t expect to lose it all in a week.” It couldn’t be more true! This is a marathon, not a sprint! The scale is just a number and can be very deceiving. What is most important is how you feel, how your clothes are fitting and how your performance is at the gym. It’s ok to weigh yourself to make sure you are headed in the right direction but don’t get too caught up in the number and become scale obsessed.
If you are interested in more detailed recipes, meal planning or more information on any of the information shared above, please reach out to me for more information: [email protected].