You have to be smart with nutrition if you want to get the best results in your fitness journey. If you find yourself stuck in terms of progress, despite spending a lot of time on your workouts, maybe it is time to check your diet.
The reality is that people can’t beat a bad diet. You can’t expect athletes to meet their fullest potential by consuming more junk than clean food. At the same time, you can’t expect to see your body fats disappear if you eat more than what you burn during your workout.
For most people, cleaning their diet is harder than finding time to workout or to stay active. In most cases, people binge after their workout losing most if not all of the progress that they’ve accomplished. Here are practical strategies on how you can clean your diet.
1. Prepare your meals in advance
One of the reasons why people eat what they are not supposed to eat is because they have so much freedom to choose the food that they are going to pick up at any given time.
The best way to stop yourself from eating the wrong food is to plan and prepare your food in advance. By planning and preparing your food in advance, you will just have to pick up your breakfast, lunch, and dinner pre-packed in individual containers. For those who are strict about their calories and those who count their macros, then this is a practical way to keep track of everything.
But what if you don’t have the time to prepare 3-4 meals a day for the entire week? This is the reason why the meal kit market is picking up lately. This business is worth $1.5 billion and growing for good reasons.
This doesn’t mean that you will have to be starving and strict with what you eat. What it means is that every food you are going to consume for the next few days should be planned. This prevents you from snacking and from eating foods that don’t have nutritional value to the body.
2. Learn to cook
A lot of people tend to gravitate towards unhealthy foods because of how these foods taste. 9 out of 10 times, pizza will taste better than chowing down on salad. However, you can always tweak your meals. There are tasty and delicious meals. You can prepare delicious meals that are low-salt, low in fat, and high in protein if you know how to cook. In reality, you don’t need to have a culinary degree to learn how to cook delicious meals.
3. Allot one day as a cheat day
A lot of people design their week to have a cheat day. Even athletes include a cheat day especially when their week involves a strict training regimen and eating clean. A cheat day is designed to give you a break from your usual routine and may even serve as a prize.
Even if you are not a professional athlete, a cheat day can come in handy to keep yourself from going insane. In three different experiments, researchers tried to find out if subjects can stick to their goals better if they are allowed to have cheat days. The first experiment involved participants who are on a strictly limited calorie diet but they have a splurge day at the end of each week. Those who have a splurge day tend to have more self-control and they’d resist temptation even if they are following a strict diet plan.
The second experiment discovered that those who are on a strict diet but had cheat days were able to sustain their motivation and self-control than those who didn’t have a cheat day.
And the third experiment had participants answer a questionnaire where they wrote their personal goals. One group had a cheat day and the other without. Those with cheat day answered that it helped them with their motivation.
What this proves is that cheat days work. A zero-tolerance approach whether in our diet or activities can damage our motivation.
4. Record all the foods you eat for the day
Can you remember what your lunch was like two or three days ago? Most likely, you won’t remember. By having a journal of what you ate and drank, you will be able to figure out what is wrong and what is right about your eating habit. It will be easier to figure out which are your comfort foods.
Are you drinking the right amount of water throughout the day? Or maybe, you are drinking too much soda and caffeinated drinks?
5. Make it a habit to read the label
Lots of food products today are marketed as healthy food. But in reality, these foods are bad for your health. By reading the nutritional facts, you will be able to have an idea of whether the drink or food has too much sodium, sugar, or perhaps it is high in blank calories.
Final Thoughts
Cleaning your diet isn’t exactly easy. You need to be smart with your approach. At times, you might even need the help of a nutritionist to make sure that everything is right for you. However, these simple strategies can help significantly lower your excess calories and allow you to be more conscious of what you eat.