Diet?

What do you think of when you hear the word diet? Growing up when I heard the word diet I thought of a crazy eating habit where you only eat meat, or you only only eat vegetables or something outrageous like that. Let me go back a few years to when I started college...

Before

I began my first semester of college fall of 2009 and I was going into Exercise Physiology. I had heard from many people about the dreaded "Freshman Fifteen", that is one thing I didn't want. At that point I had been doing pretty well on exercising and I knew that being on my own it would be easy to just eat ramen and macaroni and fast easy food, however, I decided to try a different route. I didn't want to go on a diet because I knew I wouldn't stick to it, so instead I just substituted foods. For example, instead of eating white bread, rice, pasta etc. I changed it to all whole grains. I started drinking skim milk, I wouldn't drink soda. I ate more fruits and vegetables. I made a goal not to eat ramen noodles (which seems small but that is what I ate almost everyday for lunch in high school). I decided I was going to be more aware of what I was putting in my body. It was amazing the results I saw. I ate a well balanced diet, I didn't just focus on one food group, I ate all of the food groups but kept to the right servings in each one. Instead of gaining the "Freshman Fifteen" I lost about 15 lbs that first semester. It was amazing to see the results by just substituting for healthier foods.

After

The other day I found myself caught up in a documentary called "Hungry for Change", it was so interesting and it brought back a lot of what I had been studying in college. A lot of people will get on these diets and lose a bunch of weight, but chances are very very high that they will gain the weight back plus some. Why is that? It is because when you decide to go cold turkey and shock your body by doing these outrageous diets you binge eat and eventually just can't handle it any more. That is when you gain the weight back. Something very interesting that I saw in the documentary was that your body needs nutrients and if it doesn't get the nutrients it will starve until it is fed those nutrients. Have you ever eaten a huge breakfast of waffles and you feel so full that you tell yourself you don't want to eat the rest of the day, but you find yourself in the kitchen an hour later? it is because your body is still starved of the nutrients it needs so it will tell your body it is hungry until it gets those nutrients. Obesity is such a big problem and this is one of the reasons. People are eating these non nutrient foods because they are quick and easy but they don't satisfy your bodies needs so you keep eating and eating. Certain msg's or artificial flavors excite your body leaving you wanting more and craving certain things, especially food high in carbs.

My last year in college I was training a client and I needed to put her on healthy meal plan, but before I was going to have her do that I decided I should try the meal plan so I knew what she would be dealing with. I calculated my RMR (resting metabolic rate) which is basically what keeps your body alive, keeping your heart beating, lungs breathing etc. I then calculated my Activities of Daily living, which is basically walking throughout the day, climbing stairs, normal daily activities. After calculating those numbers I was able to figure out for my body weight and height the amount of calories I should be consuming. I made a meal plan and stuck to it, I wrote everything I ate down with the amount of calories I was consuming. I would write down my workouts with the amount of calories I was burning, that way I could calculate how much weight I should lose by the end of the week. I would eat from every food group. I didn't leave a food group out or focus on one food group. I had a very well balanced diet, that wasn't necessarily a diet, it was just healthy eating and staying away from processed foods. At the end of the week I was down 6 lbs. It was hard at first writing everything down that I was consuming but by writing it down I knew exactly what was going into my body.

I guess what I want to get across in this post is you don't need to starve yourself, or go on a ridiculous diet. I actually don't recommend it, what I recommend is eating a well balanced diet with all food groups, just make sure it is the correct servings from the food groups. I challenge you to write everything down you consume for a day, just one day, I think it will surprise you how many extra calories you are eating without even realizing it.