Nutritions most asked questions
Nutrition is one of the most debated topic in health and fitness. Theres so many views on everything, things like what is the best diet to stay healthy and what should I eat to lose weight. Minimalist Nutrition’s approach is very simple - science and the basics! Let me dismiss many of the myths in this post. You may be surprised how much you’ve been lied to.
Question 1
“What’s the best diet to follow?”
Answer:
There is no “best diet”
To look at certain way everyone seems to think they have to be on a specific diet, this isn’t the case. Yes, you have to eat a certain foods to look great but that doesn’t necessarily mean following a set eating regime.
Everyone wants to belong to a “CAMP”. Its like a badge of honour. How do you think Facebook, Instagram, Snap Chat etc. has become so popular.
Usually you’ll hear.
“I only eat Paleo”
“I don’t eat after 7pm”
“I’m following Weight Watches”
“I fast every day”
“I follow low carb”
Blah, blah, blah……..
Instead, strive to be, wait for it………….. Nutritional Agnostic (I know proper fancy phrase isn’t it. I totally stole that from the Guys at Precision Nutrition).
Nutritional Agnostic: someone who doesn’t subscribe to any one dietary philosophy.
Basically………
Follow “Insert Your Name Here” diet rather than being a sheep and following the flock.
Why? Because dietary protocols have there positives and negatives, but what works for one person may not work best for another. Another thing, what diet someone followed in the past won’t necessarily be what works for them moving forward.
Your body can amazingly adapt to a vast array of diets, so the best diet is the one that:
Matches up with how your lifestyle is
Includes foods that you enjoy
Can be maintained for as long as you want (the rest of your life comes to mind)
Find an approach that works for you and you only. Whether that be similar to paleo, vegetarian, low-carb, high protein, vegan or a combination of all of them, just make it work for you. Experiment lots and see what fits to make the “best diet” for you.
So the next time someone says “wow, you’re looking great. What diet are you on?” Tell them you follow the “Insert Your Name Here” diet.
Question 2
“Is counting calories important for weight loss?”
Answer:
Counting calories is often complex, time consuming, and full of errors. I’ll let you in on a secret, theres a better way.
Time to be honest with you.
Weight management is a simple equation: Eat more than you burn, and you gain weight. Eat less and you lose weight. See simples.
Oh, if only it was this simple, if so everyone would be the size they want to be. Its way more complex than that as our very own physiology has a lot to do with it.
Plus, it’s highly imprecise; we estimate that there’s typically an error of up to 25 percent on the ‘calories in’ side, and on the ‘calories out’ side. On top of that if you're going by food labels they too can be out by up to 20% more or less. That means a 500kcal meal could actually be 600kcal or 400kcal. Imagine that happening every time you eat. To add to this due to tech. in fitness through fitness trackers and cardio machines all giving calorie burn we tend to think we’re expending more calories than we actually are. It's very hard for machines to tell what your very unique body is doing so they guess.
When you count calories you’re outsourcing your hunger signals to a spreadsheet. Your appetite awareness should be based on how you feel not the food-label gods.
To get somewhere you have to really dial in your own internal signals. Counting calories can help people understand where their daily intake comes from but it shouldn’t rule your life. If it does you’re setting yourself up for failure from the start.
You can get the body transformation you want without ever counting calories again.
I recommend a hand-measure system for portion sizes to all my clients. Here's how it works:
Your palm determines your protein portions.
Your fist determines your veggie portions.
Your cupped hand determines your carb portions.
Your thumb determines your fat portions.
Your hand is very personal to you and you only. Its a system that counts calories for you and ensures you get all the nutrients and energy you need. Your hands are portable and work without batteries, never failing you.
Question 3
"I want to eat better where do I start?"
Answer
“First off do you have any nutritional deficiencies?”
High five to you for wanting to change how you eat and live. It isn’t easy making changes these days but you’ll be so glad you did within a couple of weeks.
If you’re a beginner you don’t need to have a major overhaul to your diet, or even go on a “diet”. Most of us (even the ones that know what they’re doing) have nutritional deficiencies. No seriously, around 80% of the population have at least one or two.
Until you remove these nutritional deficiencies your body won’t be able to function properly. This makes any fitness related goals like weight loss, muscles gain etc. really hard to archive
It doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective, you just need simple strategies that give the most reward.
Getting enough vitamins and minerals by eating a variety of vegetables and fruit
Adding a little more protein rich foods like chicken, fish, eggs etc. to each meal
Drinking more water each day
Consuming healthy fats daily from nuts, seeds, fish, olive and coconut oils
Try not get too excited and change everything all at once, it’ll lead to cravings and then back to how you used to eat. Think one step at a time. Solve one problem you think would be the easiest to solve. An example could be drinking more water. You could put post-it notes up on places you frequent the most to remind you to drink more. Once you have that down move on to the next.
Just because these are simple changes doesn’t make them less powerful. Its the basics we do everyday that reap the most rewards.
Question 4
“Should I avoid carbs?”
Answer:
"Hell NO! Although let’s make sure you’re getting the right kind of carbs for your goals."
One of the first bits of advice people give regarding weight loss is “cut down on your carbs” I reckon you’ve heard to more times than you can count. Yes cutting carbs can help you lose weight but so can drinking your own urine or cutting off a limb (please don’t do either).
Other than hating life and being a horrible person to be around cutting carbs completely can give you serious nutritional deficiencies. Most of us would do better eating a moderate amount of good quality carbs daily. Things like
Whole grains - rice, breads, pasta
Fruit
Vegetables
Potatoes
Beans
Lentils
So before you go on a carb rampage, I said moderate amounts. This means using those convenient hands you have.
For women, about 1-2 cupped handful per meal.
For men, about 2-3 cupped handfuls per meal.
Everyone is different and if you super active e.g. exercise loads or have a manual labour job you could need more. Genetics, age, body size and the amount of muscle you have can also change how much you need, so experiment.
The main thing I want you to remember, carbs are not inherently fattening, especially the ones I mentioned above. Plus getting enough carbs can help you exercise harder and recover better, optimising progress thus making you more badass awesome human being.
Question 5
“Should I avoid grains?”
Answer:
"No; most people do best with a reasonable amount of whole grains."
Like many things with fitness and nutrition things come and go.
Cutting grains from your diet seems to be in fashion now. The are deemed the enemy and should be got rid off completely. Which is strange as 10 or more years ago they were supposedly one of the healthiest foods you could eat.
Bottom line whoever you speak to my view is: you don’t need to eat grains, but unless you have celiac disease or other intolerances, theres is no need to avoid them (even in those two scenarios, it’s only specific grains you need to worry about).
Majority of people fellow a more healthy diet if they’re allowed to eat grains in reasonable amounts along with other carbs.
Being able to follow a certain way of eating over long periods bring the best results, regardless of what diet it is.
Question 6
“What (and when) should I eat around my workouts?”
Answer:
"It depends….."
A point I’d like to add, most people need to “own” eating good quality whole foods on a daily basis, before thinking about exercise nutrition like suppplments or set protocols.
For non-athletes (thats you and me) eating a balanced meal 1-2 hours before and after exercise works best. This will provide good amounts of protein and carbs to fuel you and help with recovery. Thats it, nothing more.
For specific populations like bodybuilders, endurance athletes or those looking to maximise muscle gain adding a protein and carb drink during their workout can help. A good guide would e around 15g protein and 30g of carbs for every hour of exercise.
Physique competitors, as well as people trying to maximise fat loss, could add branched chain amino acids (or essential amino acids) during their workout. I usually recommend 5-10g of BCAA per hour of exercise.
Remember if you’re just after looking and feeling a little better, simply eating balanced meals daily will work the best.
Question 7
“Can better sleep and less stress really help me lose weight?”
Answer:
"Yes, but those effects vary from person to person, as do the best sleep and stress management strategies."
We tend to talk a lot about food when we think about changing how we look and feel but sleep and stress can really have a massive impact.
Getting more sleep, better quality sleep or both can give you all manner of health benefits.
better control of your appetite
less mood swings
more likely to make healthier food choices
you’ll have more energy to exercise
If you’re really interested in sleep and getting more read my blog post about it.
As for stress, it’s all about finding the sweet spot. We all need a certain amount of stress in our lives but finding the sweat spot can be hard. Stress not only affects our mind but also our body. Lots of things we experience day to day can be stress on the body. Work is busy, hard workout today, your child being ill, not enough sleep etc.
We each experience stress differently, and we all have unique tolerances which affect our recovery from it. If we don’t cope this can lead to a build to high stress levels, which isn’t great for changing over body shape. Adding calorie restriction could be tipping you over the edge and can affect weight loss. For some people if your body is super stressed it may hold to everything it can. Reduce some of that stress and you may find you start to change shape again.
Question 8
"Should I do a detox or juice cleanse?"
Answer:
"Please NO! Popular detox diets don’t remove toxins or lead to fat loss."
Detoxes are still sold as elixirs of life. Stating that they can combat modern lifestyle factors like poor nutrition, stress, weight loss, and environmental pollutants.
These supposedly detoxes and juice cleanses help rid the body of impurities. Guess what, they don't. They don't clean out toxins or help you loose weight. Well not eating for 2 weeks (like on a detox) will help you lose weight but again so will drinking your own urine or purposely eating out of date chicken.
Detoxes actually work against the body by bypassing the body's natural detoxification systems while creating feast-or-famine cycle of eating.
So with that in mind here are many of the problems with detoxes and cleanses
Make you feel like crap as you'll most certainly have no energy
Cause some real problems with your GI tract due to lack of total fibre.
Are protein deficient leading to muscle loss (we never want that as muscle burns calories)
Lead to yoyo dieting which can turn in to more weight gain in the long run
Rather than drastic life changing actions you'd be better off building life-long habits/skills that lead to long term healthy change.
Question 9
"How long will it take? Or how long do I have to do this to "insert goal here"
Answer:
"How long have you got?"
We live in a world where everything and anything we want can happen straight away.
Need to check what time the shops open, you have Google on your phone. Need a new piece of clothing for a night out, ordered before 9pm and it'll be there in the morning. Want to watch a movie/TV show, it's there after a couple of taps. We are the most inpatient we have ever been, nothing's quick enough.
Look, I get it, I love that I can go on Amazon and get next day delivery 📦 on pretty much "life" or watch every episode of Star Trek (yep I love it 😍 especially the originals) on Netflix. It's awesome for those things but it's not so great when changing the human body.
We can improve technology, make more machines or get more drivers but the human body doesn't work like that. It hasn't changed for 1000's of years.
It happens when it happens. We still set goals so we can work towards something, it keeps up focused, but it's not guaranteed.
There are several factors that affect how quickly we'll get to our goals:
Genetics (this sucks but that's life)
The amount of work we can do in any given time
Age (yes, it's harder as we age)
The amount of support you have around you.
How well we can stick to eating a certain way
Experience of training
Time commitments
That person off the TV or celebrity in the latest super hero movie isn't you. You have different commitments, lifestyle, and support (this one is massive).
Learn to embrace the journey rather than the destination.
Aim to eat and train for the long term. Pick foods and workouts you love to eat and do rather than starving yourself while working yourself to the bone 🍖 all just to lose the next 3lbs.
By all means set goals but try to remember it'll take as long as it takes. If you miss the date, get over it and set another, then another, then another. The main thing is to enjoy what you're doing and NEVER EVER give up until you get there. When you do you may realise that the destination wasn't all that in the end.