Adding food can help your meal planning and food relationship. Here’s how!
In the training world, we hear it all the time: “I’m gonna cut carbs and eat salads. Then I’ll lose weight!”
Simply put: this ain’t the way to go!
Scientifically speaking, we need to prioritize protein as a part of a balanced whole-food diet, aiming to get a complete nutrition profile throughout our day.
This means eating all the necessary foods to make sure our body can effectively and efficiently carry out its metabolic processes.
So, why did I say to “add food”?
Well, if we analyze the diets of most people looking to make long-term dietary changes, we will find more opportunities to add foods that will complete a balanced nutrition profile than not.
For example, with meticulous tracking, we often see protein, fiber, and water deficiencies that give us the opportunity to add these into the diet and achieve weight loss or muscle gain according to the goal and total calorie amount. Remember, to affect net weight gain or net weight loss, total calorie consumption must be assessed. Adding protein to a diet does not necessarily mean adding to total calorie consumption. This leads me to my next point:
Substitute!
Here’s where the real magic happens with meal planning. Again, if we look at a person’s daily dietary habits, we will see plenty of opportunities to add necessary macros for consumption.
Another thing we can do is substitute food sources to fit our goals!
For example, as a sweet tooth myself- I often eat a lot of pastries. While this may sound like a bad thing, it really isn’t when we analyze the macros of the pastries consumed. Instead of a publix cake, there are plenty of sweet-tasting, cost-effective protein bars that both satisfy the sweet tooth AND are low-fat/carb options. They are usually high in protein too- which is only a plus! This is just one of the many examples of things we can do to have both a sustainable yet non-restrictive diet.
Last word of advice: Food is fuel, eating is necessary. Don’t villainize it!
For some reason, it has become commonplace to villainize things we eat, punish ourselves for “falling off” and so much more.
Remember no matter what you eat, it is to fuel the body for metabolic processes. In the pursuit of getting in shape, we must not forget our body needs high-quality fuel to sustain itself to achieve the goals we set.
Hope this helps, stay on the mats!
