How Are You Currently Fueling Your Body? Are You:
- Under Eating
- Over Eating
- Eating all of your energy from the wrong foods
- Eating too much processed foods
Knowing this Is going to help you understand what you need to change.
How Do I Figure Out, How I’m Currently Fueling My Body?
To figure out how you are currently fueling your body, you are going to need to track your food. You don’t need to do this forever, but I recommend doing this for 1-2 weeks. Tracking everything you eat, drink, snack on, take a bite out of, or dip into. I know this sounds like a lot of work. I am not going to lie, it is. However, the knowledge and benefits that you will gain from this work outweighs all of the effort it takes to track.
To make this easier you can use a tracking app. The two that I recommend are:
Both allow you to easily scan In the bar code on the back of your food labels and then all you have to do Is enter the amount of that food you ate, a food scale Is also very helpful for this. Both apps have thousands of foods preloaded that you are able to search for by name, Including fast food and restaurant Items.
You will not need to track forever, in another post I will teach you how to create your plate to meet your goals without tracking. Even better, as a member you have access to all of my recipes and meal plans which makes eating to nourish your body and fuel your goals easy because I have already programmed well balanced meals that are easy to adjust to reach your specific goals.
However, for these 1-2 weeks, everyday for 7-14 days you will need to track, If you want to know what you need to change to reach your goals. Understanding how you have been fueling your body verses what your body actually requires, is what will teach you how to sustain your goals. You will be able to compare what you have been doing, to what you should be doing. The better you do at tracking, the better you will understand what you need to change to reach your specific goal.
What Do I Do After I Have Tracked For 7-14 Days?
After tracking for two weeks take a look at what you have been consuming, and compare It to what my calculator recommends you need to properly fuel your body, are you:
- Eating too much food
- Not eating enough
- Are you getting enough protein
- Are you eating too many carbs
- Eating too much fat
- Does the amount of calories you eat each day change a lot day to day? More than 50-100 calorie swing Is a lot.
- Is there enough whole, natural foods In your diet or are you eating processed packaged foods
From here you will be able to make adjustments to meet your personal goals.
Implementing Properly Fueling Your Body:
Now that you know what you have been eating, It Is time to make adjustments to meet your specific goals. In most cases the small tweaks are going to help you reach your goals more easily:
- Eating the right amount of protein
- Consuming more natural foods
- Eating the right amount of energy (calories)
While making changes to your diet, aiming to make these tweaks I highly recommend tracking for the next week or two to see what properly fueling your body looks like based on my calculator. Specifically aiming to hit your protein, as I have found this Is the number one thing people are lacking In their diet, and yet Is the most Important to losing weight and gaining muscle.
Adjustments To Meet Your Specific Goals.
- Based on what you tracked for those 7-14 days if you were close to your calorie requirement, you can go ahead and jump right in without fear of gaining weight. (Close would be If you were under eating by less than 100 calories to any amount over your calorie requirement.)
- If you were under eating by more than 100 calories you will want to read my next post on, reverse dieting. We need to first get your calories back up to the appropriate levels, but we need to do this slowly. Jumping more than 100 calories at once could cause weight gain and I know that Is not what you want.
