Nutrition #4 - Five tips to stay on track with your diet

There is a ridiculous amount of information out there pertaining to nutrition. We are inundated through various  sources with products, schemes, diets, methods, and ideas. Oftentimes all it takes is a good writer or marketer to sell you on a product that sounds too good to be true. This is common. We are a society born around seeking the 'quick fix' and the easiest route to our destination. The reason this never works is because maintaining a proper diet is all about a balance of psychological and physiological responses over the long-term. No one could ever adhere to a 1200 calorie a day protein-sparing modified fasting diet for longer than a period of several weeks before they would crash and burn.

The goal of changing your diet should be to improve your health in the long-term, right? 

You should want to change your eating habits because you have a goal to look better, feel better, perform better, and all the other positive consequences of healthy eating. This desire of being optimized should not go away once you achieve your end result!

The fantastic thing is that once you feel the way you ought to feel - when you are literally functioning as a well-oiled machine as opposed to a poorly patched up, maintenance needed vehicle - you will see that this is a lifestyle change and slowly shift your thinking and habits this way. 

When you start to have whole eggs (with the yolks!) and bacon for breakfast as opposed to low-fat, whole grain cheerios with skim milk, and you start kicking ass at your job and are super productive and in a good mood with high energy levels that don't dip, you will realize that food plays a bigger role in who you are than you think.

So let me outline some the best tips I've found to get started and stay on track with your new diet.

It is a lifestyle

Think of your new diet as a lifestyle. The choices you make when it comes to putting food in your mouth are dictated by who you want to be. You no longer give in to short temptations like the donut at work or the candy bar in the vending machine. You know that these choices, when compounded over the years, create a different 'you' than you really want. You know the feeling of being on-top of the world and want to recreate that feeling as often as possible, and also know that by giving in to your temptations will never allow you to truly reach that full potential. You remember that one day that you felt totally awesome, super productive, great mood, high energy, and deep motivation.... and you want to feel like that everyday. Do it by making your 'diet' a 'lifestyle'. Feel that unlimited boundless energy. Feel your body functioning as mother nature designed. By giving it what mother nature intended - a plant filled with nutrients that sprang from our Earth, as opposed to a factory manufactured protein bar laden with an ingredient list so long your head will spin

Eat consistent meals

Eating the same or similar meals at similar times is a huge tip that I think should be followed by everyone until they have really acquired a deep understanding for their body. Eat several routine meals around the same time each day. This provides multiple benefits.

• #1, it regulates your circadian rhythm, which helps keep your entire body in tune with our world clock. Regulating your circadian rhythm has been shown to optimize hormone levels, reducing stress hormones like cortisol while also increasing sex and muscle building hormones like testosterone. 
• #2, eating consistent meals makes it simple to adhere to your new lifestyle. If you know that you pack a lunch every day of 3 soft-boiled eggs and an avocado and eat that at 12 PM, then you shouldn't be worried about what the vending machine at work will have today or where your co-workers are going for lunch. This also makes it much easier to exercise the finite amount of will-power you have per day, by making one less decision. You are on autopilot when preparing your food for the day, knowing that you will do the same as always - eggs and an avocado. This is very important! 
• #3, you become very good at preparing these meals. You will find that as you prepare the same thing day in and day out, you will start to get creative with your choice of herbs or seasonings, and spice it up a bit (pun intended). Have fun with it! 
• #4, you save money and feel better once you fall in line with the structure you've set for yourself. You start to think to yourself about how awesome it is, now that you no longer experience a post lunch energy crash. You start to kick more ass in the gym. Your dance moves improve. Momentum builds on momentum. Forward progress continues at an accelerated pace when you stick to a consistent meal timing schedule.

Allow yourself time to rest

If at first, you feel restricted and have feelings where you 'miss' certain foods and cravings haunt you, create what I call a structured cheat day. On this day, two things should happen. One - you should get your hardest workout of the week in, which will improve insulin sensitivity, meaning your muscles are much more likely to uptake glucose and nutrients from extra food you are about to consume. Two - don't turn this into a binge. Allow yourself a few treats that you would enjoy but don't stock up with cookies and oreos from the store in the days leading up to your cheat day, because this is a psychological problem! I love to cheat on ice cream almost exclusively, because ice cream contains zero gluten and I have no issues with dairy. I stick to organic ice cream, preferably from grass-fed cream if I can get it, and I will make a massive banana split or some other sort of ice cream treat. When you cheat on gluten containing items, after a week of especially clean eating where you've been avoiding it, a lot of people feel like total crap afterwards and see a dip in motivation. I think that this is counter productive. A structured cheat day should be a motivating, fulfilling, and beneficial day. Not only will it help restore leptin levels (a hormone responsible for hunger and fat storage), it will provide that small psychological boost that many people need when they feel like they are 'dieting' - which gives a sense of restriction/ limitation that CAN lead to binging and falling off the wagon, which is exactly what we DO NOT want! I also recommend this cheat day fall on a Saturday as this will allow you wiggle room if you want to go out with friends/ family and enjoy a treat there, but also give you Sunday to get back on track and get motivated for the week without having food haunt your mind. 

Keep a food log

Huge piece of advice. I think everyone should keep an on-going food log for a period of time, minimum three months. This will help people hold themselves accountable for what they are eating, and also be a big eye-opener to their intake. In my opinion the biggest benefit to be had from a food log is that daily entries you should make on how you felt/ look/ performed/ mood/ etc. You can look at yesterday's log and see that eating a brownie made you look bloated today/ sleep poorly/ have bags under your eyes, etc. The important thing here is that you begin to realize really how food affects you. Different food provides different responses to everyone. You may start to realize you have had a food allergy your whole life and never knew until now! No wonder you got a stuffy nose after having milk! Very important piece of advice. I recommend something like myfitnesspal or sparkpeople.com. Although Cronometer.com is also another excellent source, because you can track micronutrient content as well, the first two have a wide variety of food choices. All you do is search for your food item, select the portion, and add to your log. A basic entry could be under breakfast "eggs, whole, raw" - 4 servings, "avocado, large, hass" - 1 serving. Set a goal to track 30 straight days of food for yourself along with notes on your daily feelings and energy levels, etc. It helps to also use your food journal as an exercise journal. 

Be happy with your choice to eat better

People too often make the mistake of having constant feelings of limitation and restriction when dieting. This should not be the case! First things first is I suggest you eliminate the use of 'diet' from your vocabulary. When presented with a cookie or donut or slice of pizza at work, I never, ever say "I can't". I simply say "No thanks, I don't eat that". I just don't consider that stuff real food. Yes I know it would taste amazing, but I also know how much more I value my long term health and performance over such a short term, minimally satisfactory treat. I know that by making the conscious effort to abstain from those choices, I am improving myself. It is the combination of that pride in my own willpower and my own health, along with the mindset that I know what real, whole food looks like and how it makes me perform, that avoiding the crap is easy. I have said it before - I promise that once you have one day where you feel just outright amazing from the accumulated efforts of your healthy habits, you will never want to go back to functioning sub-optimally. 

I hope this helps guys. Now go out, and reclaim your health and vitality. Understand that your health is your priority. You have one body. Optimize your life.