I always like to discuss nutrition first with my clients. I like them to understand why I want them to follow my meal plans. I figure if they know the why then they will think more about what they are putting in their bodies.
Remember that what you eat is 80% of helping you accomplish your fat loss/weight gain goals. This means anything that goes in your mouth and has calories. Under eating is not going to help you, either. That is just as bad as over eating. The tricky part is trying to find the perfect meal plan (no diets here) for you body. Let's talk about the basics of food first. Why do we eat food? As a typical American (remember I am generalizing here) we eat food because we are hungry, it's available, it tastes good or for social reasons. A typical day would go something like this: wake up, not hungry or running late = skip breakfast or grab something on the run. Then we get busy and all of the sudden realize we are starving... look at the clock and realize it's already noon! Go out and grab whatever is quickest = McDonalds! Yeah... check the nutrition information on their website. You just ate 1200 calories for lunch! Then we get home and usually eat a pretty big protein/starch/veggie meal and maybe even a late night snack and go to sleep. Great way to burn off those extra calories.
Why does our body need food? Our bodies need food for energy (and recovery). Simple as that. We eat food, our bodies break it down and release energy for our liver to work, heart to function, walk from point a to point b, etc... Depending on which type of macronutrient (protein, carbohydrate, fat) we eat, it takes a certain amount of time to digest. Usually between 2-6 hours. So let's say it takes an average of 3-4 hours to digest a meal. That means that meal you just ate will be giving you energy for the next 3-4 hours. Divide that into the time period that you are awake and you get 5-6 of those periods. Have you ever heard you should eat 5 small meals a day, every 3-4 hours? Now you know where that comes from. The idea is to give your body what it needs to function during the next 3-4 hours.
So... back to that 1200 calorie meal... lets say the average woman needs 1500 calories for the day, divide that by 5 meals gives you 300 calories per meal and you just ate 1200. What happens to the extra 900 calories? Can you say hello fat stores? I hear it quite often, "I only eat 2 meals a day. Why am I getting fat?" Make sense? Not to mention we go from about 6 in the evening until noon the next day before feeding our bodies. Our bodies are going, "She isn't feeding us. We better prepare for the long haul. Let's slow down our metabolism so we don't need as many calories to survive." Our bodies are very adaptable. The only thing we cannot adapt to is dehydration. A lot of diets work like this. We starve ourselves, slow down our metabolism and then when we can't take it anymore we binge on something. Sure you lose weight. But what kind? You will lose a bit of fat but you will also lose a bunch of muscle. A pound of fat burns about 10 calories per hour while a pound of muscle (which takes up less space then fat and looks better on us) burns about 50-60 calories an hour. You lose muscle therefore decrease your ability to burn calories. So when you binge on that meal you actually end up storing more of those calories as fat then before which will eventually lead to more body fat on you. This explains why yo-yo dieters put on so much body fat over time.
Next time we will discuss how many calories per meal throughout the day and how to break up those meals into the proper macronutrient ratio.
