Category Archives: Nutrition

Food Journals

Posted on by

I don’t always use a food journal with my clients but there are times when a food journal can be a valuable tool. When a client first comes to me, a food journal can help me see opportunities for improving their nutrition or if a client hits a plateau we can see what is happening with their nutrition not just speculating or basing decisions on what the client is telling me they are eating. I typically use a food journal for a check-in to see what is going on not as a permanent tool.

There are free online food journals like myfitnesspal, my-calorie-counter or fitday that count your calories. Using an online journal is much easier now than having to look up the nutritional breakdown of everything that you eat. These online journals will set a daily calorie intake goal for you or you can set your own calorie targets and you can customize your macronutrient ratios and track other aspects of your daily nutrition such as sodium intake or daily fibre intake.

Whether you are trying to lose weight or gain weight, whether count your macros, are trying to go low carb or low fat, a food journal is a useful tool to help you out along the way.

Here are my top 5 reasons why you should be using a food journal.

  1. count your calories. although counting calories is an inexact science, those  struggling with weight  are quite often eating too many or too few calories each day. If we are trying to lose weight and are over eating it is useful to get an idea of how many calories that we are eating each day. We can use our food journal to make changes day to day.
  2. keep your macros in balance. When we eat we want to keep our macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein, fat) in proper proportion. No matter what diet you are on you are going to have a guideline on how much to eat in what proportion. If you are trying to reduce your fat or carbs it is useful to know what you are eating and how much each food that you eat contains. By looking at this each day you will know if you are eating too much fat or too many carbs and will be able to adjust quickly not waiting for a scale to tell you to make changes.
  3. consistency. makes us aware of what or how much we are eating or patterns our eating does not have to be out of control to have days where we over eat and days when we do not eat enough. By keeping a food journal we can keep an eye on what is going into our body from day to day.
  4. check to see what is working or not working. As we progress through our program we can go back an look at what we ate rather than guessing what caused a problem or worked well. If we gain weight or hit a plateau we can look back and see that maybe we ate too much of something or we can mor accurately attribute what is happening on the scale to what we ate.
  5. can be a deterrent to overeating. Just by having to write down what you eat can be a deterrent. You do not want to write down something that you know is not good for you so you do not eat it. Somehow writing it down makes it real and this makes us less likely to eat it.

So as you can see food journals can be useful in many ways and with online journals they do not have to be a burden to use. There are simple solutions tho the old food journal excuses, focus on the positive aspects of food journalling and use them to help you achieve your goals.

Category: Nutrition, Weight loss

Diets do not Work

Posted on by

What is the best diet for me?
What diet do you use with your clients?

These are common questions that I get from those who are looking to lose weight or struggling with their nutrition.

First of all I do not like the term diet. I prefer nutrition strategy or nutrition plan. Diet is such a misused word. Diets are restrictive, they often restrict you from eating something whether that is carbs, fat, snacks, meat, dairy, wheat or whatever crazy idea is out there. Diets lead us to believe that to lose weight we need to eat less and exercise more. This kind of thinking just leads us to a downward spiral. The correct combination is to either eat less/exercise less or eat more/exercise more.

I prefer to find the right balance, to find what works for you. No two nutrition strategies should be exactly the same because no two people are exactly the same. You need to pay attention to how you feel, monitor your hunger, energy level and cravings. If you are hungry or your energy is low or you are constantly craving (salt, sugar, chocolate etc.) then something is missing from your plan and your body is telling you that.

I like to start by making sure my clients are eating enough every day. Yes eating enough! Every day! In this age of diets people who are struggling with their weight are frequently on and off diets, often losing weight only to gain it all back and maybe more. This cycle leads to not consuming enough calories each day and a damaged metabolism. The best way to fix the damage is to gradually increase your daily caloric intake or reverse dieting. Each week you would increase your daily calorie intake by a small percentage, believe it or not you can lose weight by eating more.
We have learned from bodybuilders and figure competitors (who cut for shows) is that we damage our metabolism when we seriously restrict our calories on a number of occasions. It becomes harder to lose body fat and get back to previous form the next time resulting in a higher body fat percentage in the end. Now these are extreme examples but they provide great case studies for the rest of us who are just trying to be healthier. Where bodybuilders and figure competitors are trying to get down to very small body fat percentages (3-4% for men and 10-12% for women), we are trying to get to the lower end of healthy body fat percentages of 10-25% for men and 20-35% for women.
Whatever you are doing for your nutrition plan it must be sustainable or it is not going to be effective. You have to ask yourself “Can I do this over the long term”. If the answer is “no” then you need to make an adjustment or it is not going to work. It will just feed the cycle of losing and then gaining more weight back.

What you have to remember is that weight loss is a longer term project if you want to keep it off. Ask anybody who has been successful at losing weight and keeping it off. It requires a long term commitment and a change in mindset. Your nutritional plan needs to be sustainable.

If it is not sustainable it is not going to work.

Category: Nutrition