Common Nutrition Mistakes: The All or Nothing Approach to Eating
Common Nutrition Mistakes: The All or Nothing Approach to Eating
It's common for a client, prospect or even friend to ask me "what should I eat?". This is an understandable question when there are so many diets which seem to work, if you ask the right person, or join the right forum.
Indeed that diet probably does work. And so will another, which seems in contrast.
And with the ease to information we have, we are bombarded with messages about which diet is the best (right after we're made to feel bad for not already having a six pack).
Yes, there is a group of foods which will help you achieve your body composition goals. If I asked you what those were, I bet you'd answer mostly correct.
You see, the "what to eat" is reasonably clear, and often comes down to personal preference.
Some people love keto, some people love paleo, some people love vegetarian or vegan.
And they can all work.
If fact, the "how much" of what we eat might be a more important question.*
We can look at nutrition in two ways: what you eat, and how you eat it; how we eat can have a big bearing on our body composition success.
How Do You Eat? A Story About Food
I've trained many chef's in my time, and one thing I noticed very quickly is Chef's probably don't eat like you and me.
You see, Chef's often work long hours at night and into the early morning. Their routines are closer to shift workers; so already you could see how their "how" can be different.
But the profession is high pressure as well, where breaks are few and far between, and when a break is taken, it's short!
A short break, as I'm sure you can imagine, means eating food quickly.
It's been shown that when when you eat quickly, you tend to eat more calories. And of course more calories can lead to excess calories and
Take someone with an Italian heritage. On Sunday's they catch up with family for a bigger lunch and dinner, family around cooking, drinking enjoying each other's company.
This meal time may be long, involves lot of food, and consist of food in line with their heritage.
This is a completely different way to eat.
And so it goes for all of us.
There is a story and a history for how we eat which is equally important for your body composition goals.
A very common story I see is when people go all or nothing with their diet. Let me explain...
For people on a diet, it can be common to have cravings for common "sometimes" foods; food which are fine to eat in small quantities.
An even more common scenario is enjoying a meal which is outside your diet as you catch up with friends. Both are normal and fine.
But what can happen is people have a meal which would be classed as "unhealthy" and instead of just making their next meal in line with their diet, they blow the entire day or weekend out of the water by thinking "I've already ruined my diet for today, so I'm just going to keep eating bad".
It seems like a harmless thought, but it has a two fold negative outcome.
Firstly, what can be just one meal which is too high in calories (based on your requirements), can easily turn into two meals which are too high in calories, and potentially 4 or 5 days to bring the average caloric balance to neutral or negative. Imagine a weekend where this happens. Two days of not caring can undo a week's worth of perfect diet.
Secondly, it reinforces a desire for perfection instead of better. If the diet isn't exactly as prescribed (ALL) then there's no point doing it (NOTHING), so an opportunity for progress is sacrificed for self destruction.
Why This Is a Problem
The all or nothing approach can have a big effect on our net calorie intake, say over a week. If you consider a diet in which calories are slowly being reduced over a number of weeks and months, then the consumption of one large meal that is outside of the diet, could add 30 to 50% to the calories for that day. But when a number of meals are consumed with this all or nothing mindset, calories could easily double for the day, potentially negating an entire week of training and dieting in one day.
The effect on our mindset could be even worse. Instead of celebrating small wins over a number of weeks, we are constantly stuck in limbo; working hard and following the plan most of the time, but then slipping up and feeling like a failure. We add to this by using language like "I told you so" or "you always do this", almost self fulfilling our own prophecy of failure.
How to Overcome This Mindset
It Starts With Awareness
The best place to start with overcoming this mindset is to be aware of it.
Is this something you do? How often do you do it? How do you feel after you've done it? How do you feel before? Why do you do it? (this last question is hard to answer).
The idea is to admit to yourself you've done it, and then look for signs and patterns which might lead you to that way of thinking. (Just for reference, I've also had the all or nothing mindset in the past; it's more common than you might think).
Unless you're aware of it, you'll never make a change.
Preparation
Meal preparation is one of the best ways to make sure you stick to your diet.
Meal prep, as it is commonly termed, does not mean you need to be counting calories or everything has to be to the precise gram. It simply means you're preparing your food beforehand, as a way to remove temptation.
This of course is not a guarantee that temptation won't strike, but having a meal you've already invested time in, will mean you're more likely to eat that meal instead on anything else that's on offer.
Meal prep also takes thinking, at a time when you might make bad decisions (when you're hungry), out of the equation. It's as simple as grabbing the meal from the fridge and reheating it. This in fact, may be even feel easier than going out and eating a meal at a restaurant.
And while a prepared meal doesn't mean you won't go to lunch with a client or team members, it's does provide a meal which you already know is based on your goals, to be ready waiting to go for your next meal. This can help to stop the double up (or triple and beyond) of meals that slow your progress.
Look for Positives
Part of the all or nothing mindset is just that, mindset. We get into the perfection trap, where unless we're doing it perfectly, we're failing.
But at no time in your training, employment, university degree, learning to drive, swim, do calculus, or anything else we learn, did we go from zero to perfect. It has always been a process that involved, at least at the start, being pretty bad at the thing we're trying to learn.
Remember this for your nutrition, and look for the positives.
There are times when in fact, you're probably doing pretty well, but focus instead on the negatives, sending yourself into a spin which leads to more negativity, and actions which self fulfill your thoughts.
Better, Not Perfect
Diets can create somewhat of an issue. When there is a fixed set of constraints, it can be black and white in regards to what you can and can't eat. This has it's benefits, as grey areas may lead to the wrong interpretation.
There are negatives to a diet however. Yes they get results, but is the diet sustainable? Is it a matter of eat this and do as I say, or is it about learning how to improve your nutrition for any situation?
When we focus on better, we give ourselves a little wiggle room. We might have the meal that doesn't fit into our diet, but we can choose better options within that meal. Maybe it's steamed vegetables instead of hot chips? Maybe we choose not to eat the entire meal, and save the rest for tomorrow? If we can think about how to make the best of each meal and situation, we learn to always be looking for improvements, while not being negative when we don't eat the exact meal we need to according to a diet.
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