Nearly everyone begins their fitness journey thinking that the workouts will be the hard part; within 6 months, most realize that it’s the food that’s the tricky – and often slow-moving – aspect of healthier living.
For many of my clients, the food journey looks something like this:
- begin tracking food
- resist tracking food/track inconsistently for 2-8 weeks
- finally track food consistently for a brief interval and realize things aren’t so bad
- make 1-2 healthier swaps/additions (usually more protein, especially in the mornings, and many times larger portions at lunch or another snack during the workday)
…and continue making healthier swaps/additions until a balance is achieved that feels good. Sleep is better, energy is higher, muscle tone/definition is increased, and things are moving toward their goals.
Food is DIFFICULT.
Food is everywhere. Food is a part of every single day (even the days when you don’t work out!). Food comes accompanied by marketing and imposed value judgements (e.g. THIS is THE healthy choice), our own and those we’ve absorbed from “experts” and friends.
Let’s simplify food a little.
I ask ALL of my clients who are trying make changes in their body composition to track their food somehow for at least a brief interval. We can’t know where to make changes unless we know where we’re starting!
I recommend the same thing to you if you’re trying to get a handle on your eating habits: download MyFitnessPal (I’m not affiliated – it’s just free and has a big database of foods, and I’ve posted lots of tips to make tracking superfast) and take a note of everything you eat for 2 weeks. Then, use their built-in analytic tools to see if you need more protein, more fat, more or less food overall, more or less sugar, etc. and take action one tiny step at a time.
Meanwhile, what to eat?
The answer kind of is “whatever you want.”
It is completely true that you can’t out-exercise a “bad diet”, but a “bad diet” really means something like:
- lots of fast food (trans fats and other anti-nutrients that create inflammation and damage your health, making it hard for your body to change composition)
- lots of alcohol (slows your results and causes water retention that can last for weeks, which is deadly for you scale-addicts)
- lots of sugar (also causes water retention and plays with your body’s insulin response, which is ultimately what needs to be managed in order to maintain a healthy weight and body composition with ease)
- more food in general than your body needs for your current weight and activity level
- not enough food to give your body what it needs for your current weight and activity level
Healthy eating does not mean that you ALWAYS choose the unsweetened tea, or the giant salad with dressing on the side, or the plain grilled chicken. It does not mean that you NEVER have the cookie or the ice cream or the chips and queso. It really means that you find a weekly BALANCE that will work for you and your goals…and, like all balances, it will continually shift and change along with your lifestyle, habits, and goals.
Quick Aside About Meal Services
I tend to discourage my clients from subscribing to meal services (national food delivery services specifically designed to help you drop pounds) for several reasons, but primarily because sooner or later we all have to learn to feed ourselves, so it might as well be sooner and while you have a professional on your team to help you! (They’re also expensive, carb-heavy, loaded with additives that you don’t necessarily need, bland, and usually part of a yo-yo cycle.) I’m not telling you to become an expert chef though – we talk about takeout in a few paragraphs.
“Planning” Meals
Before you worry about planning individual meals, make sure that you plan to eat in general. If you are somewhat active, you should probably be eating something 4-5 times a day (generally speaking, 3 meals and 2 snacks), but tracking your food and working with a professional will give you a clear, personalized picture of your needs.
Plan ahead enough that you have something to eat for dinner, even if it’s takeout, a frozen meal, or a sandwich and some carrot sticks. You can stash snack bars (they don’t have to be the most perfect, sugarless, gilded snack bars) and instant oatmeal at work if it will help you eat something in the morning or when hunger strikes at 2pm. Keep a pile of string cheese and some (preferably whole grain, for the sake of your blood sugar) crackers or apples and peanut butter at home if those are foods you enjoy.
Eat, even if it’s not “perfect”. Find basics that will help you enjoy your week with the energy that you need. Listen to your body and acknowledge how you feel after you eat certain foods – there are no right answers (so if you feel murderous after eating the giant salad, just take note! you haven’t failed at healthy eating).
>> grab a free planning template with a built-in grocery list
(Actually) Planning Meals
If you’re ready to think ahead a little more and maybe even make a shopping list for the grocery store (or grocery delivery service), go for it! Just keep it simple. You don’t need to prep a whole week’s worth of meals in perfectly organized containers. You don’t need to go paleo-vegan-Whole30-LCHF-IF in order to get results, and I personally never ask clients to make food changes that they wouldn’t keep forever, because life is a long-haul situation. Not sure what to plan?
- (cooked) lentils or beans, tofu, tempeh, ground beef, or ground turkey can each go into a skillet with some onion, tomato or barbecue sauce, and whatever spices you have on hand and come out tasty and ready to go into tacos or over rice, cauliflower rice, veggie noodles, or other noodles
- chicken breasts can go into the oven topped with marinara and mozzarella cheese and come out delicious and pizza-like
- baked sweet potatoes (or regular potatoes) can become vehicles for many toppings – veggies and cheese, chopped cooked chicken, and whatever else you might have in your fridge
- cereal, yogurt, and berries can quickly and easily become a breakfast parfait
- sandwiches are still a thing
Don’t try to make your first few meal plans elaborate or perfectly balanced – embrace the process and start where you are. If you’re still working on making time to go to the grocery store regularly or order from a grocerydelivery service (as many of my clients are), keep your “recipes” simple and keep basics on hand in your home (whatever your basics are). If you’re totally disconnected from food and nothing ever sounds good, browse through takeout menus or go grocery shopping while hungry and see what catches your eye.
No “Good” Foods, No “Bad” Foods
Unless your groceries have enrolled in an ethics class, stop assigning them value judgments.
Sure, there is plenty of …stuff available at the grocery store that isn’t going to help you reach your goals, but choosing those foods doesn’t make you a “bad” person or give you “bad” eating – it just means that the path to your goals might take a little longer.
You might notice that you have more energy when you consume foods that are more nourishing – higher in vitamins, fresher, in line with your nutritional goals – but that doesn’t mean that those other foods can’t be a part of your life from time to time. Balance isn’t a code word for “learning to love a lifetime of chicken and asparagus” – it’s the real goal!
Guilt has no place in your meals and snacks unless you stole the food. (And those raccoons at the start of this post might be cool with that, too.)
Foods We Talk About at Tiny Fitness
There are some foods that come up a lot at the studio (and “supplements“) – not because they’re magic or extra-healthy, but because they’re convenient and will maybe help you get moving in a new direction. HOWEVER, without knowing where you personally are starting, know that these are just basic food ideas and they may or may not help you personally.
Greek Yogurt and Cottage Cheese
They’re first on the list because we talk about them ALL DAY. They are easy, pre-packaged, no-cook solutions to adding protein to your day. You barely have to chew. They can hang out in the fridge for weeks, and they hide well in other dishes.
Frozen Dinners
It’s the 21st century, and there are plenty of frozen meals that are “good enough” – high quality ingredients, no creepy fillers, sodium levels in a reasonable range, and flavor that tastes a lot better than not eating. They can hide in your work freezer or at home and be ready for you when you come back from a trip, work late, or just don’t have the will to cook.
Takeout and Restaurant Meals
Since the Tiny Fitness studio is in restaurant mecca Houston, it would be silly to pretend that anyone makes it through even a week without getting takeout or going out for a meal. Mealtime can be a great social activity, and I don’t want anyone to miss out on seeing their friends because they’re afraid of the bread basket! Balance and sustainability are the keys here – keeping an eye on portion sizes (an iPhone is a great measure for roughly one 1/2 cup serving of carbs or 4oz serving of protein) and making sure that the majority of your choices are nourishing are the tools that will allow you to enjoy restaurant food whenever you’d like without interfering with the rest of your goals.
There’s also lots of healthy convenience food in town – we talk a lot about Snap Kitchen (not affiliated, just think they’re a great tool) and similar meals to help fill in gaps in your week. Most grocery stores now offer a huge variety of “healthy” (read the labels and/or scan it into MFP to check up on them) meals that are ready to heat and eat. You don’t have to be a gourmet chef to enjoy a variety of foods in your life that will help you keep working toward the results you want.
Why I Talk About Food So Much as a Personal Trainer and not an RD
I’m not a registered dietitian (I’m legally required to keep saying that), but I spend a lot of time talking with clients about food because, as I say so often, your food intake is the volume control on the results that you’re sweating for in the gym. I can make you stronger, fitter, and somewhat leaner. I can make you lose inches. If you want to lose pounds and you want your results as quickly as possible, food has got to be a part of the picture.
So many of my clients are reluctant to eat enough for their age, weight, and activity level. If you’ve been undereating for years and you’re not seeing the scale drop, isn’t that a good sign that it’s not working for you? 🙂 #justsaying #donthateme
If all of this was as simple as killing yourself in the gym and never eating, wouldn’t we all just sit around staring at our sixpacks?
Your body needs nutrition to function well – vitamins, minerals, and all sorts of other micro- and macronutrients. I didn’t make up that rule, but I’m happy to help you follow it.
Also, not being hungry all the time makes you a lot nicer to be around <3 and a lot nicer to yourself, too!