Sustainable Eating
This guide is for anyone who wants to learn how to eat healthy with intention and purpose, while also having flexibility and balance in their food choices! The desired outcome of this guide is to help with the behaviours and habits around food and your meals. It should also aid in informed decision-making. Guidance on both the how and the why to eat in a particular way, while maintaining self-awareness while eating. Think of healthy foods as along more of a spectrum, not an all or nothing approach. There will be peaks and valleys, it's most important to stay disciplined.
Most of the time, the food should be home cooked. You could even plan to cook ahead of time for convenience. It is also good to learn strategies to eat mindfully and intuitively when you step outside what you can control, like at a party or at a special occasion. The biggest thing it comes down to is listening to your body. This can be a challenge, as there is more than one way to eat, which changes week-to-week, month-to-month, year-to-year, person-to-person. Learning how you can go with the flow to help enhance your nutrition is important.
Calories are simply an energy source; food can be broken down into 3 macro nutrients: protein; fat; and carbohydrates (carbs). Protein and carbs are 4 calories per gram, and fats are 9 calories per gram. Fats aren't necessarily bad; they are a denser food in regard to energy. All calories are not all created equal, either. For example, 2,000 calories of processed foods will not be as nutritious as 2,000 calories of whole natural foods. It's natural human behaviour to like how we feel when we eat. How the food fuels us, how it effects our gut, brains and hearts; how it repairs our muscles, effects our moods and improves our sleep are all important to take into consideration. Self-awareness is the real tool we need to focus on developing regarding how food affects us. Think, "Do I want this food for its taste, or to fuel my body for the next workout, or to celebrate with my friends, or because I’m bored?"
There was a study done regarding how processed foods lead to over-eating. There are many reasons why people overeat. In the following study they wanted to see the affects of processed vs unprocessed foods with satiety, one group can have as much processed foods as they want, the second group can have as much whole natural foods as they want. The processed food group ate 500 more calories than the whole natural group. They swapped roles and the same thing happened.
Hall, Kevin & Ayuketah, Alexis & Brychta, Robert & Cai, Hongyi & Cassimatis, Thomas & Chen, Kong & Chung, Stephanie & Costa, Elise & Courville, Amber & Darcey, Valerie & Fletcher, Laura & Forde, Ciaran & Gharib, Ahmed & Guo, Juen & Howard, Rebecca & Joseph, Paule & McGehee, Suzanne & Ouwerkerk, Robert & Raisinger, Klaudia & Zhou, Megan. (2019). Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake. Cell Metabolism. 30. 10.1016/j.cmet.2019.05.008.
This study shows that when we eat processed foods it becomes harder for our brains to recognize that we are full. Additionally, whole natural foods will improve our mood, our blood sugar levels, and help with recovery of our brain’s guts and hearts. It’s not wrong to eat processed foods occasionally, but you need to become aware of how they make you feel.
What you eat typically makes you want to eat more of what you ate. It’s very common that if you eat something sweet for breakfast, without realizing it chances are you will crave something sweet later in the day. Are you hungry? No. it’s a craving. One of the things that can affect our cravings is our gut bacteria. What we feed it affects how well our gut bacteria works. Since the food we fuel the bacteria with will learn to use what we eat, it will send signals to crave more of those foods. Sometimes it is better to satisfy a craving, so it doesn’t overwhelm us. Putting in a simple barrier can help us stop and pause and ask ourselves, do we really need this or is this a craving?
An example or a good barrier is to not have the foods we crave in the house. If you want a bag of chips, you tell yourself that you want that bag of chips so badly you need to go to the store to buy them. This gives space to think about what we crave so we can assess if we really need to satisfy that craving.
It’s also very important to not feel guilty if you “give-in” to your craving. Clearly that food was important at that time that you decided to eat it. An example of this is when I go shopping for food. I'll go to the fruit and vegetable sections of the store first, then I will go to the meat, dairy, and eggs. Then anything else I need on my list. I know if I buy a bag of chips, it will be eaten as soon as possible. So, I use that rule of if I want that bag, I will have to come back to the store if I want it.
A great habit is to start the day off strong with a great breakfast. Aim for high protein as well as fats. This kind of breakfast will help with cravings throughout the day and will set the tone for lunch and dinner as well. Your blood sugar levels should be constant throughout the rest of the day. Contrarily, if I started my day off with a donut and then in an hour ate eggs, in theory that would be worse for my blood sugar than the opposite.
Another thing to consider is undulation of calories, this where, some days you may consume a lot of calories, and other days you may consume lower amounts however the overall total in a week or month will come out to be the same. This can help with building muscle and losing fat. Rather than always eating 2,000 calories everyday, try eating 1,500, 2,000, 2,500, 1,000, and 3,000. It ends up averaging to the same amount, but you can reap some benefits from the increased range. If you are in a cut, bulk or maintenance it is important to still not always be in that state for a long time. A mini bulk or cut is more ideal to prevent the body from adapting to the stimulus, 3 weeks of a cut or a bulk, then do 1 week of the other one. In a maintenance state it would be ideal to do a 2-week cut, and a 2-week bulk.
Most people operate best eating 2-4 times a day. Depending on work and life schedules, the total amount of calories taken in the day is what matters regarding energy consumption. Studies show that between 1-3pm is the best time to lift weights, as most people would have 2 meals consumed by then. In our day-to-day schedule we may have to work out in the morning and evenings. Most people can’t do it optimally, so it makes sense to get your workout in around your schedule. In a perfect world, you'd give your body time to digest your last meal, which could be 30 to 75 minutes. The most important thing is to understand how you feel with different amounts of food intake and the kinds of food consumed. Most people will not do well with processed foods or a lot of food before a workout.
Another good practice is to avoid eating food with distractions. Being distracted when you eat will cause overeating, as the subconscious will take over. We want to make sure we are building awareness with our food. Plus, a family dinner where everyone is talking to one another is valuable for a multitude of reasons. Think about “snacks” when we watch a movie, we are just mindlessly getting ready to eat the next snack before we have even finished chewing the last one.
The variety in the foods we eat is super important as well. If you ate like a body builder and had chicken with rice and broccoli once or twice a week it would be a solid well-rounded meal. If you ate like that every day, you would miss a lot of micronutrients. Focus on a variety of fruits with vegetables and meats. There is a saying of, “eat the rainbow,” which is very effective since generally different colors of vegetables and fruits will have different micronutrients in them. Similarly with meats and animal products, try to get in different kinds of “high” quality meats as it’s the fatty acids found in the meats that make a big difference in quality. For example, grass fed beef is more expensive, but you will find more omega 3 in that beef than grain fed, which will cause less inflammation to your body as a result.
