The Four Pillars for Healthy Living — Nutrition
Hi there, and welcome to Rich-Life. This post is the second part of a four-part series — The Four Pillars for Healthy Living. In this series, you’ll discover the four pillars that will lead you to a fitter, healthier life — together; we’ll cover off each pillar in detail, so let’s get started.
The four pillars for healthy living consist of:
If you haven’t read the first part of this series — The Four Pillars for Healthy Living — Habits — I’d recommend starting there first.
Nutrition
The second of the four pillars for healthy living is your nutrition. Put simply — your nutrition is the food that you eat to fuel your body. This fuel will be used to drive your everyday actions as well as your exercise.
Before we get into some of the positive changes you can make with your nutrition, it’s essential to understand some basics about the food you eat. Don’t worry; we’re going to keep this simple.
Your food is broken down into three macronutrients — for simplicity — we’ll call them food groups.
Carbs
Let’s start with carbs.
You’ll encounter carbs in three forms:
Sugar is everywhere! Most notably, you’ll find sugar in sweets, biscuits, cakes, syrup and fizzy drinks. Sugar is often used to replace fat in low-fat food items.
Foods like bread, rice, potatoes and pasta fall into the starch category and provide a steady release of energy throughout the day.
Finally, you have fibre which you’ll find in fruit and vegetables, wholegrain bread, wholewheat pasta, and pulses.
Carbs contain 4 calories per gram.
Fats
Fat is our second food group and also comes in different forms. Don’t worry about the names too much I’ve only listed them here so that you can recognise them on a food label.
Some fats are considered good, namely — monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. You can refer to them as merely, unsaturated fat.
You’ll find monounsaturated fats in foods such as avocados, olive oil, rapeseed oil. Almonds, cashews, hazelnuts.
You’ll find polyunsaturated fats in foods such as oily fish, sesame oil, soya oil, and spreads made from those oils — also, flaxseed, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, and walnuts.
Next, you have saturated fat — I’m not going to label it as bad but it’s fair to say that it should be monitored and quite likely reduced.
You’ll find saturated fat in foods such as processed meats like ham, sausages, and burgers. You’ll also find it in fatty meat, hard cheeses, whole milk, cream, butter, lard, ghee and coconut oil.
Finally, you have trans fats — the BAD fat. Trans fats are artificially created fats used in the manufacture of food to increase its shelf-life and flavour-stability.
You can identify the presence of trans fats on a food label if you see “ partially hydrogenated fat/oil” or “ hydrogenated fat/oil “ listed.
You will find trans fats in foods such as fried foods, takeaways, hard margarine, and snacks like biscuits, cakes or pastries.
Fat isn’t all bad though, a small amount of fat is an essential part of a healthy diet. Fat helps the body absorb vitamin A, vitamin D, and vitamin E. These vitamins are fat-soluble, which means they can only be absorbed with the help of fat.
Fats contain 9 calories per gram.
Protein
Our final food group is protein. For the most part, protein is essentially meat. You can find protein in chicken, beef, pork, fish and any other meat dish of your choice.
For the vegetarians among us, protein comes in the form of soya, beans, cheese, eggs, nuts and cereals.
Protein is an important building block of bones, muscles, cartilage, skin, and blood. On top of this, protein is used to produce hormones, enzymes, and is essential for healthy hair and nails.
In my opinion, protein is the most important of the three food groups and is most famous for its ability to repair tissue and build muscle. Protein even helps you feel full, which can help you control your appetite.
Protein contains 4 calories per gram.
Body composition
You can think of your body as being made up of fat and muscle — this is your body composition. Obviously your body is made up of more than this but we are keeping this super simple.
The more fat you have on your body, the more rounded your body is going to look.
By reducing the amount of fat on your body and increasing the amount of muscle on your body — you will start to look less rounded and more toned
To change your body composition so that you have more muscle and less fat, you need to understand energy balance.
Energy balance is the reason that any diet that ever existed was successful.
Energy balance
The most effective tool you have at your disposal for losing fat and building muscle is energy balance.
Energy balance is the reason that any diet that ever existed was successful. I hope that got your attention because this is fundamental to your success in changing your body composition.
You can think of energy balance in terms of calories in vs calories out.
Calories in: calories that come from the food and drink that you consume each day.
Calories out: calories your body burns each day while performing its normal functions such as digestion, generating heat, forming new bone and building and repairing tissue. On top of this, calories out include the calories burned during activities such as walking and exercise.
You must be in a calorie deficit to lose fat.
With calories in vs calories out, there are three possible states of energy balance.
Calorie Surplus: Calories in are more than calories out; therefore, you gain weight.
Maintenance: Calories in equal calories out; therefore, your weight stays the same.
Calorie Deficit: Calories in are less than calories out; therefore, you lose weight.
Now that you understand the three states of energy balance, the first thing you want to do is work out your maintenance calories. When you know your maintenance calories, you can add calories to move into a calorie surplus, or you can reduce calories to move into a calorie deficit.
You must be in a calorie deficit to lose fat.
Let’s take a look at how you can calculate your daily maintenance calories.
Maintenance calories
There are several methods for working out your maintenance calories, but the easiest and simplest way is to use a calorie calculator.
Just bear in mind, calorie calculators are not 100% accurate — they’re estimates. You use a calorie calculator as a starting point and adjust as appropriate.
For example, your calorie calculator suggests maintenance calories of 1800. If, after one week, you’re still gaining weight, simply reduce your calories by 100–200 each week, until your weight is staying the same.
Enter your details into my maintenance calories calculator to get an idea of your current maintenance calories for your current level of activity.
Now you know your maintenance calories for your current level of activity, what next?
You have three options to lose fat.
- Keep your calories at maintenance, and simply increase your physical activity.
- Keep your physical activity the same, and simply reduce your daily calories to the calorie deficit number.
- Increase your physical activity, and decrease your daily calories to the calorie deficit number.
This is the simplest formula to lose fat.
Meal timing strategies
It’s not difficult to find some really strong opinions when it comes to meal timing strategies.
The absolute best meal timing strategy is the meal timing strategy that fits your lifestyle or that you can make work — simple as that.
Some people will swear that you should always eat six meals a day — generally in muscle building circles.
On the other hand, your traditional stalwarts will stress that three meals a day are clearly the way forward.
Then you have the intermittent fasting enthusiasts, who’ll convince you that there is unquestionably a flavour of intermittent fasting to meet your fat loss goals.
It would be easy to think that was all, but no. Next, you have the — don’t eat carbs for breakfast — society. And not forgetting the — don’t eat carbs before bed — club.
Thankfully, I’m here to tell you that this is all rubbish! The absolute best meal timing strategy is the meal timing strategy that fits your lifestyle or that you can make work — simple as that.
As long as you hit your target calories, you can use any of the above as tools to do so. You could even use a combination if that is what works for you.
Awareness
The takeaway message from the second of the four pillars for healthy living is awareness. Through awareness, you will be able to manage your calories in relation to your exercise, which will allow you to take control of your nutrition and body composition.
There are several ways to increase your awareness.
Track calories
One of the best ways to take control and become aware of your current calorie consumption is to track what you eat. If you haven’t done this before, it is a game-changer.
We often have a nasty habit of underestimating how many calories are in the food we eat. The best way to handle this is to track them and see how far off your guess was.
These days, it couldn’t be easier to track your calories, especially with apps such as MyFitnessPal.
You don’t have to track your calories forever. Sometimes, just a few weeks is enough to educate yourself. It doesn’t take long to realise the effect your current eating habits have on your daily calorie count and current body composition.
When it comes to tracking calories, I have two tips for you:
Tip #1
Your first tip is to enter your food into your calorie tracking app for the whole day, ahead of time. This way, you can see that what you have planned, fits into your daily calorie count — so no nasty surprises.
Tip #2
Tip number two is more specific to treats, but similar to tip number 1. If you’re about to treat yourself, add it to your app before you eat it. When you see the effect it will have on your calories; you can at least choose whether to eat it still, or perhaps, have a little bit less of it. If you eat it first and realise how bad it was later — the damage is already done.
Eat sensibly in the run-up to indulgence
Being aware that you intend to indulge at the weekend, allows you to eat sensibly in the run-up to your scheduled weekly indulgence. By being extra sensible for a few days beforehand, you’ll feel less guilt when you come to indulge. Better yet, it will have less of an impact on your progress.
There’s no reason to avoid eating out, as long as you plan accordingly so that it doesn’t cancel out your hard work.
Learn how calories from food equate to calories burned during exercise
Being aware of the link between food and exercise is essential for you to maintain control of your nutrition and body composition.
Having an appreciation for how many calories you burn during your chosen exercise will help you in your quest to balance physical activity and your daily calories.
It’s handy to track calories burned with some form of fitness tracker. However, the accuracy of such devices is questionable across the board.
In the absence of a fitness tracker, you can enter activities into MyFitnessPal, and it will attempt to estimate calories burned for you. You can also use an online calculator if you don’t use MyFitnessPal.
Food
When it comes to food, you probably already know how a healthy diet looks. I’m not going to surprise you here.
Tip #1
Eat more protein. There is lots of debate about how much protein you need, but I can’t overstate its importance. Protein is not just for building muscle; it plays many vital roles in the body. It also has the effect of making you feel fuller than both carbs and fat, which can help with appetite control.
Tip #2
Keep an eye on your portion sizes and eat slowly. We often don’t give our brains a chance to tell us when we are full because we eat too quickly.
Tip #3
Drink lots of water; most people don’t drink anywhere near enough water. You should be looking to drink at least eight glasses a day. Drinking water also helps you feel less hungry — I recommend having a big glass of water about 30 minutes before each meal.
Tip #4
Try to increase the number of whole foods that you eat, such as eggs, nuts and avocado and minimise heavily processed food.
Tip #5
Be mindful of your sugar intake. However, this doesn’t mean cut out sugar altogether, and worrying about sugar from fruit, really isn’t worth it.
Tip #6
Your nutritional habits start in the supermarket — If you want to:
- Eat fewer crisps — don’t buy more than you need.
- Eat less chocolate — don’t buy more than you need.
- Enjoy more fruit — stock up!
Tip #7
Making small changes will make a big difference over the longer term. Start by substituting a snack that you know is unhealthy. If you have five packets of crisps each week, replace two of them with fruit or maybe a high protein snack.
Try skipping a chocolate bar once a week and commit to adding an extra portion of vegetables to your evening meal.
Final thoughts
You’ve just discovered the second of four pillars for healthy living — nutrition.
Before you embark on your journey of improved nutrition and more desirable body composition, remember that these changes don’t happen overnight.
Nutrition features in everything you do, so having a strategy of small habits to manage it is essential for healthy living.
Use the four laws from The four pillars for healthy living — habits to develop new nutritional habits and consider the inversion of those laws to help break your bad dietary habits and stick to your new-found daily calorie count.
Be sure to enter your email below to subscribe, so that you don’t miss part three of the four pillars for healthy living — Exercise.
Thanks for stopping by, see you for part three.
Originally published at https://www.rich-life.co.uk on July 28, 2020.
