Most people try to jump right in with a complicated nutrition plan with no regard for where they're starting from.
What if you've been eating 1,000 calories a day and your weight loss plan tells you to eat 1,200? Has it accounted for your current nutritional habits? No.
Does your lean meal recipe adjust portion sizes dependent on your size, gender, goals (weight loss or weight gain), activity levels that day, or whether you've just worked out or had a rest day? No.
So why the hell would you think that this plan will work for you?!
...because the advertising tells you it will and there are some pictures of people who've lost weight on the front cover?!
Even your intricately :p calculated weight loss plan that asked for your weight, goals and activity levels can't accurately guess your energy/calorie needs.
You can find an online calorie calculator that will give you this "information" (if you can call it that) but in actuality it can't possibly get it right because we're not as simple as the calories in/calories out equation.
Whether calories get used for energy or stored depends on hormonal profiles, which energy systems are most efficient in your body, and a host of other things (not to mention that not all calories are equal - 100 calories from some avocado is NOT the same as 100 calories of biscuits!)
So your starting point should be this:
Establish a calorie baseline
Quite simply, record what you're eating and drinking (every single morsel of food and drink that passes your lips) and establish how much you're actually eating.
You won't be eating the same amount every day, and your weekly totals probably won't be too similar either.
It's natural, normal, and healthy to have fluctuations in calorie intake, but if you're fluctuating too much (i.e. starving yourself during the week and binging at the weekends) then you have no baseline to work off. No starting point for your "diet".
So your starting point, and homework for this next week is to simply record your food/drink intake in a food diary. Find out how much you're actually eating now (it's probably nowhere near what you think you're consuming!) and establish whether you're currently gaining weight, losing weight, or maintaining weight.
That's it. Don't change anything yet, don't worry about macros (protein/carbs/fat), don't worry about meal timings or meal frequency, just record and collect information. You don't have to do anything with it yet.
Take up this challenge and I'll be in touch again in a week to tell you what to do next.
If you're serious about making healthy changes to your diet, ditching the fads and gimmick diets, and getting control of your eating habits and weight once and for all, DO THIS.
Don't skip the easiest and most fundamental stage because you're impatient! A week or two establishing your starting point so you get it right is not time wasted!
Get things ready and start first thing in the morning. Log it on your phone, write it down, use an app - whatever suits you, but get it done.
In a week I'll tell you what to do next...
If you want help with your nutrition/diet, please get in touch or check out the Nutrition section of my website www.DartfordBootcamps.com
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