How to Begin Eating Healthy

How to Begin Eating Healthy - The 2 Places to Start

I don't know about you but I get sick and tired of all the contradictory healthy diet advice.

One minute a food is good for you, the next it's not.

One minute you shouldn't be eating fat, the next it's carbohydrate. One minute it's no gluten, then it's no dairy, then you should be eating raw food, paleo or fasting two days a week.

Arrrrgggghhhh. Too. Much. Noise.

Should healthy eating be this difficult?

In my view ... no it shouldn't.

So how do you drown out all of the noise? How do you start eating healthy?

I always find the best place to start is with the fundamentals of a good healthy diet.

How to Begin Eating Healthy - Eat the Right Foods

You might now be expecting a list of good foods and bad foods. Well, you won't find it here.

Why?

Simply ... I don't know what is right for you. I'm not you.

Sure, I can advise that every meal should have a portion of protein and a variety of vegetables. But apart from that ... only you know how your body feels and only you know what you like.

I don't know whether eating cabbage makes you bloated and gassy. I don't know whether eating potatoes at lunch time makes you sleepy.

I don't know whether the thought of eating fish makes you feel horrendously sick.

I'm not you.

Eating the right food means eating the right food for you. Not your mum, not your brother and not that nice lady on the train.

Everyone is different and what works for them won't necessarily work for you.

As a nutrition coach my job isn't to dictate what you put in your mouth.

It's to help you realise what works for you. To use my knowledge, experience and expertise to guide you through the process that will ultimately lead to a good healthy diet.

To help you find out what your body needs and thrives on.

How to Begin Eating Healthy - Eat the Right Amount of Food

The next step is how much you eat.

This is just as important as what you eat. If you're eating all the right stuff but way too much of it, you'll still put on weight.

So how do you work out how much to eat?

Calorie calculators and formulas are a good place to start. They use variables such as sex, weight, height, age and activity level to estimate your daily calorie expenditure.

But the keyword here is estimate.

They should only be a starting point. They don't take into account your body composition or how you respond to exercise.

Because, well, how can they?

They are a generic formula, and that's why they are a good starting point and nothing else.

The best way to find out how many calories you need is to monitor how your body reacts to what you are eating.

And yes that means tracking what you're eating.

Once you know how many calories you're eating each day, you will know how many calories make you put on, maintain or lose weight.

And once you know this you can manipulate the amount of food you eat to get you to your goals.

How to Begin Eating Healthy - Gradually is the Word

When you start to manipulate your calories, do it slowly.

Change them little by little and keep monitoring how your body feels and is reacting.

If you drop them too low too quickly, you'll probably feel like shit and there won't be much room to go afterwards.

Once you get to your target weight make sure you start increasing your calories.

All too often I see people who reach their goal weight and then abandon the help of their coach, or maybe their coach doesn't know where to go after weight loss.

If you don't work your way back up to maintenance calories your metabolism could start to slow down.

This can lead to a number of health problems in the long term and you'll probably feel tired and run down quite a lot.

How to Begin Eating Healthy - Maintaining it

Ok, once you've hit your magic number, increased back to maintenance calories, what then?

How do you make sure you keep the weight off?

Well simply, you have to find a way to monitor what you eat on a permanent basis. But, and this is the key, it has to be something that works for you.

Apps like MyFitnessPal are great, but they don't work for everybody.

You need to find what does.

Anyway you choose isn't going to be 100% accurate, the trick, is to be consistent.

That's How to Begin Eating Healthy

That's the two fundamental steps of how to start eating healthy.

Are they easy? No. But then nothing worth doing is.

They will, however, lead to your ultimate healthy diet. One that will get you to your goals and make you feel amazing.

If you want any further information, or more help to start eating healthy then contact me.

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