5 Basic Nutrition Mistakes and how to avoid them

I want to share an experience with you. I started full time coaching in January this year. In that time I have learnt so much about the hardest part of body transformation – nutrition.

What makes this hard is how hard we resist the simple changes and awareness required to our eating habits. The following are 5 basic mistakes I have seen:

1. Eating too little. Your body requires fuel to perform the functions you ask of it. To perform the most basic of functions there is a calorie requirement called the basal metabolic rate, or BMR. If you consume less than BMR, your body goes into survival mode. It will burn less calories from exercise and store more fat to try and ensure you have sufficient fuel.

2. Eating too much. On top of the BMR, there is a calorific requirement based on your weight, gender, age, fat percentage and activity level. This calculates the maximum calories you can consume in a day to maintain your body as it is. If you consume more than this, your body will store the excess for future use. It is very difficult to determine this level by how full you feel, as emotional eating can create a deceptive “hunger” and food conditioning has distorted our perceptions. It is really easy to work our what the maximum is as there are many easy to use apps these days that will calculate it for you. You need to empower yourself with this information.

3. Eating the wrong things. Ok in my opinion, technically there are no “wrong” things, but understanding the calorific value of the food compared to the nutritional value is essential. For example, a cup of sugar contains 1000 calories and a cup of oats contains 606 calories. The oats will provide energy for longer than the sugar and will leave you feeling more satisfied. You will benefit more from the oats and use up less of your daily calorie requirement. Empowering yourself with this information will help you make better food choices.

4. Telling yourself stories. Most of us have deep seated food conditioning that we may not even be aware of. One of these is rewarding ourselves with sugar. An example – I ran 10km so I deserve a donut/ icecream / chocolate for my effort. Really? Is that what you are worth? Empty, non-nutritive calories? Does your body not rather deserve something more nutritional to replenish the energy and perhaps something that will help it recover, like a massage? Another common food conditioning problem is the notion that we have to clear the plate so as not to “waste” the food. If you are no longer hungry and you dont need the calories, why choose to waste the food inside your body rather than outside your body? Does that make sense? How does eating excess calories benefit you?

5. Mindless Eating. Do not eat while you are doing something else. Our lifestyle these days often involve eating while working, watching tv, even driving your car. This is how you can inhale an entire meal and have no real memory of having eaten it. You distracted your mind so it could not provide any information about the meal. This bad habit will cause you to feel unsatisfied while having consumed excessive calories. Eat every meal with full attentiveness. Sit down for it and give your attention to every bite of food you consume.

By adopting some small, easy changes in behaviour, some of which is outlined above, and by educating myself about my body’s nutritional requirements and behaviour, I have lost 8 kg in 12 weeks really easily.

You can do the same! It is really easy to do. Sign up for my Body Transformation Training Course on the link below to learn how to do this for yourself!



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