6 Nutrition Strategies That Make Maintaining Your Weight a Breeze
You want to be strong, healthy, and maintain your weight without “dieting”, stressing about social situations, or obsessing about everything you eat.
We get it! The outline below was put together from the notes of our Podcast on the topic.
If you want to watch the full episode on YouTube, click the photo below. To listen on Apple Podcasts click HERE, and to listen on Spotify, click HERE. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes.
6 Strategies You Need To Maintain a Healthy Weight
1. Eat whole, real foods most of the time #thegoldenruleofnutrition
This helps to control your food QUALITY.
👉Eat Meat, Dairy, Fruit, Vegetables, Minimally processed carbs, and little added sugar “most of the time”.
Minimally processed carbs are things like rice and oats. The opposite would be highly processed carbs like crackers, chips, pastries, and snack mixes.
2. Build Your Meals Using The Hand Rule
This helps to control your food QUANTITY (calories).
The good news is that your hands are always with you when you eat! Use them as a “guide” when making your plate, or eating food that’s prepared for you. Learning this skill will help you eat proper portions of protein, carbohydrates, and fats.
Women, make your plate with 1 palm of protein, 1 fist of veggies, 1 handful of starchy carbohydrates, and 1 thumb of fat (including fats like oils, and dressings that are in foods on your plate).
Men, double those portions and make your plate with 2 palms of protein, 2 fists of veggies, 2 handfuls of carbohydrates, and 2 thumbs of fat.
Make it stand out
WOMEN: 1 Palm, Fist, Handful and Thumb
MEN: Double that. 2 Palms, Fists, Handfuls, Thumbs
3. Make your plate, eat intentionally, and don’t go back for more.
We first heard about this concept on the Chasing Excellence Podcast with Ben Bergeron years ago. Once we started implementing the concept, we quickly realized we were full after dinner, and going back for seconds was more of a habit than a real need for more food.
The concept is simple. Make your plate. Put what you want on it, and don’t go back for seconds. It only takes a few meals to realize going back for refills leaves you with that ‘overstuffed’ feeling.
The second piece of this puzzle is to eat intentionally, slowing down without distraction, and enjoying your meal. It takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to send signals to your brain that it’s full. Eating slower, with intention helps you not only enjoy the food more but lets your built-in “overeating prevention system” do its thing.
4. Don’t eat out unless you are eating out
This is Blakley’s favorite rule, and we both truly think implementing it will make a huge difference in not only your waistline but also your bank account!
“Don’t eat out unless you are eating out” simply means don’t pick up restaurant food (fast food included!) and eat it in your car, on your couch… you get the idea. Only eat restaurant food if you are going there intentionally to sit down and enjoy the experience.
A 2017 study took meals from restaurants in three cities between 2011 and 2014 and measured the calories they contained.
92% of the meals had higher calories than recommended for a single meal, coming in at an average of 1200 calories per meal.
The worst offenders: Chinese food, American food, Italian food.
Here is a link to the study if you want to check it out for yourself.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5746190/
5. Don’t leave home empty-handed
Simple, and effective. Taking snacks or small meal with you when you head out of the house for a few hours will help you stick with #4. We throw snacks in our bags whenever we leave the house, and even pack a small cooler back with extra water and cold snacks as needed. It only takes a few minutes to do, but it saves you not only time and calories but $$$!
6. Don’t “meal prep”, “food prep” instead
Food prepping means preparing main ingredients ahead of time a couple of times per week. For example: a protein source, a carbohydrate source, a veggie source, and then the family can make meals with those ingredients. We’ll throw chicken with some Frank’s Red Hot into a crock pot on Monday morning and let that cook for a few hours, smash it up and it’s ready to have for lunches and dinners for several days. We’ll also make a large pot of rice and cut up a bunch of vegetables like cucumbers and bell peppers. This way, at the end of the day when time is short, we don’t have to stress about what to cook. We can make a bowl, tacos, a soup, a plate… anything we desire with the ingredients we have prepared that takes only minutes!
Learning how to shop and prepare food is a skill, which is why we made our “Grocery and Meal Prep Guide”. Check it out for free below.