How Much Food Should You Eat?

If you have read my last two posts, you should have a really good idea of how you are going to start your new health and fitness plan.

Check them out here:

https://sandiegopremiertraining.com/start-your-path-here/

https://sandiegopremiertraining.com/the-fundamental-weight-loss-habits/

So now I would like to dig a little bit deeper into some of these essential habits that you MUST incorporate.  We are going to talk a bit more about your nutrition.  There are clearly a million different aspects and philosophies on nutrition we can get into, but let’s stick with some things you need to focus on first.

Nutrition is obviously a key piece to this puzzle.  But I don’t want to say it is more important than exercise like most will say.  It is something that must go with exercise and they are both equally important because they both do things that the other can’t do.

Now many will try and oversimplify this whole process and just focus on calories in vs calories out.  Since you can clearly cut more calories out of your diet than you can burn with exercise, everyone assumes that it is the most important.

While that is true with basic numbers, this is an incredibly myopic way to view weight management and it will get you in trouble every time.  Energy balance (calories in vs out) is important and must be obtained for weight loss, but as I will explain, you really can’t predict this anyway.

In our last article I discussed that food logging is important and I do recommend you do it.  But not just to count calories.  Instead to just make you more aware of your foods you eat.  Even if you do keep a log, do you really know how many calories you are eating?  You won’t really every know.  First the FDA allows for up to 20% variance in food labels and what they actual have.  Plus many of the labels are an average amount and not what you actually consumed.

On top of this the process they use to determine calories in food is not always accurate.  They burn food to see how much energy is released to estimate calories in it.  We don’t burn food when we eat it.  We digest and absorb it.  We will also do this differently.  Some will absorb more of the food than others.  Plus how you prepare it will increase or decrease absorption.  The more processed the food the easier it is to absorb.  Hence why you should stick with less processed foods.  For example, research has shown that when you eat peanuts you excrete (fancy word for poop), around 38% of the fat.  But when you eat peanut butter you absorb almost all of it.

In a future article we will discuss some of the issues with figure out the calories out side of the equation.

With all that being said, I still recommend the food log.  You can start it and see tendencies you may have.  Even if the numbers are totally accurate you can see what you normally eat and if you are seeing any changes in weight or body composition.  But starting with the total quantity of food is a good place to start.

Once you have figure out the quantity of food you can start looking for specifics in the quality of food.  I have written in the past about how food is neither good or bad and we need to stop thinking about it that way.  Fat is essential for your diet as an example.  It should not be thought of as a bad thing.  You need it in order to survive and when you avoid it you will start experiencing health issues.  But if you eat too much and too much of the wrong source of fat you will have problems as well.  It is all about balance.

If you look at macronutrient breakdown (fats, carbs, protein) I have a feeling we are going to see the best diet is the one that gets them in balance.  But unfortunately many of the nutrition “experts” out there can’t agree on this and people will continue to debate.

Precision Nutrition has done a great job simplifying the amounts and types of foods you should eat though.  In the picture here you can see that using your hand is a simple way to measure your quantity of food.  Just make sure you are using good quality foods as well.

So if each meal contained a hand size serving of protein (chicken, beef, fish…), a cupped handful of starchy carbs (fruit, rice, pasta), a fist-sized serving of vegetables, and a thumb-sized serving of fat (oils, nuts, butter…).  Men would typically double these servings.  If you did that 3 times per day, every day, you will be off to an amazing start and would see significant changes occur.

Let’s finish it off there.  This is a complex subject and can get more and more frustrating the more you try and research it.  But if you can keep it simple and start with something you realistically can follow, then who cares about everything else.  This is all you need for right now.

And don’t change anything.  Stay consistent.  I have seen people get awesome results with this and then hear about some new crazy diet out there.  Then they completely blow it by abandoning what was working for the next new thing.  Don’t fall for that trap.

You action plan:

• Start tracking your food for the next 2-3 weeks to determine your norms.
• Use the hand portion sizes for each meal and stay consistent.

As simple as that.  Up next we will start bringing in the movement based habits you need to incorporate.

Thanks!

Mike Deibler MS, CSCS, SGX
San Diego Premier Training