10 Nutrition Strategies For Weight Loss & Weight Management

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Below are 10 nutrition strategies that will help you lose and manage your weight; the more of them you can incorporate and implement as part of your daily practices the more effective you will be at losing and controlling your weight.

1. Keep eating out – both at restaurants and fast food – to a minimum

Make your own food at home if possible. Restaurant food tends to be packed with butter, and fast food is highly processed. The extra butter adds a lot more calories to a seemingly low calorie meal. The higher processing increases the speed at which your body breakdowns said food, which in turn leads to you being hungry again “faster than you should be.” Make it hard for your body to breakdown the food, so try to eat the food as close to it’s natural state as possible. This is good for a multitude of reasons but at the very least it will make you feel full, and less likely to eat again, for longer. If eating out at restaurants and fast food chains isn’t avoidable, read the following reads for some tips:

• 10 Ways To Eat Smarter At Restaurants
• Can You Still Eat Pizza Or Burgers While On A Weight Loss Program?

2. Strategically snack – if it works for you

If you are someone that get’s “Hangry” between meals, then this tip is for you. When you are Hangry, you are more likely to overeat at your next meal – or at least snack a lot right before the meal and then eat said meal afterwards. By having healthy snacks, both between breakfast and lunch, and lunch and supper, you will go into the following meal with much more emotional control over the food you are about to eat. If you can eat 2-3 meals per day without snacking on chips, cookies, or some other “unhealthy” option in between meals, then carry on solider you’re doing a great job. And, snacking (or having more meals throughout the day) has nothing to do with  “speeding up your metabolism,” because that’s actually a myth and is false.

3. Stay Hydrated

Your brain can often confuse thirst cues for hunger, and for a myriad of other reasons it just good to stay hydrated. Quick education moment: your brain responds to stretch receptors in your stomach in order to give you the sensation that you’re full. When you eat a meal, this can take up to 20 minutes. Strategy: drink 2 cups of calorie-less fluids prior to each meal. This will add more volume to your stomach and your stretch receptors will be activated earlier, which the result of you becoming fuller quicker and eating less overall. Speaking of fluids…

4. Get rid of caloric beverages from your diet

Caloric beverages are things like pop, juice, coffee and tea (if you are adding sugar to it), and yes Alcohol. Take a look at the image below, or research some of these drinks that you are consuming, and keep in mind that to lose 1 lb. per week you need roughly a deficit of 500 calories per day. Opt for calorie-less beverages while trying to lose weight, it’ll make it a lot easier for you. And if you save the calories for the food you’ll end up feeling a lot more “fuller” along the way and end up having less of a psychological battle with hunger – you might even think, “Hey, this isn’t all that hard!”

If you can’t get rid of caloric beverages, try to reduce your regular intake; have one margarita, not 3. Also, instead of having juice, have a fruit and water – at least that way you’ll get the fiber aspect and it’s solid food which is much more satiating (provides a bigger feeling of fullness) than fluid.

5. Practice consistency, not extremism

 A good example of this is looking at how many people go about eating throughout the week. Can you relate to the picture below? Then you should probably try being more consistent and less “extreme.” Keep your weekends in check, don’t “do good” during the week only to ruin your hard work on the weekend. Practice moderation, not extremism.

Photo credit: @syattfitness

6. Increase your: Protein, Vegetable, and Fiber intake

These are all good strategies and i’ll explain why below.

First, Protein has the highest satiety value (highest level of “fullness factor” from food) of all the macronutrients. By increasing your protein intake you will end up consuming less calories and will be left feeling more full; this will prevent you from reaching for the chip bag shortly after a meal. This also helps prevent muscle wasting. When you create an energy deficit, your body will replenish that deficit by using: blood sugar stores, muscle sugar stores (glycogen), fat, and unfortunately muscle too. By increasing your protein intake, you’re promoting more protein to be present in your blood (in the form of amino acids) as a fuel source and thus your body will less likely break down muscle for energy.

Vegetables. Your mom was, and is usually, right: eat your vegetables. There are many reasons why you should increase vegetable intake, but in regards to weight loss here are a few significant points:

• They are very low in calories for their given serving sizes – with a few starchy exceptions. This is largely due to their high water content.
• Vegetables help add volume to your stomach, which I alluded to earlier – this helps trigger the brain response of feeling full.
• They are full of fiber – see below for why.

In relation to weight loss, one of the main reasons fiber is beneficial has to deal with maintaining proper blood sugar levels. When your blood sugars drop, you get hungry – and sometimes hangry as alluded to in point #2.  Fiber helps stabilize blood sugar levels by slowing down digestion, which helps reduce the amount of sugar that is available to be absorbed in the intestines, which then goes into the bloodstream.

7. Identify Trigger Foods and act accordingly

Trigger foods are foods that you have a very hard time not eating if they are around. With these foods, typically your will power isn’t enough to prevent you from eating them: “I’ll have just a little.” Sound familiar? There are a few strategies with these foods. 1. You can rid your house of these foods completely to prevent any temptation. 2. You can buy these foods in small portions (even it’s more expensive), so that when you do get a craving you don’t over do it and you’re craving is satisfied (think small bag of chips, instead of large bag). 3. Don’t have these foods highly visible, for example don’t put them at at eye level in the pantry or fridge – instead put your healthy foods at eye level.

8. Know the difference between appetite and hunger

Hunger is a physiological response, appetite is the “brain fart” that suggests you are hungry. Appetite is seeing or thinking about a favorable food. Picture yourself eating a warm, soft, delicious, chocolate slightly oozing from the fresh chips, chocolate chip cookie; see, what’s going on in your head right now – if you like chocolate chip cookies like I do – it’s your appetite raring. Your appetite is your brain telling you things like: “Oh, look at that, I could eat that.” Or, “I’m bored, I guess I could eat.” Appetite is a hunger brain fart. Recognize it, and ignore it. If you don’t know the difference, try fasting for 10+ hours – you’ll know the difference.

9. Have good food habits

I’m using this catch-all-term to describe a few things together:

• Don’t eat while distracted. Eating while doing other things, i.e. watching TV, will lead to over-eating. Focus on simply enjoying the food and the company that you share it with.
• Rid yourself of Habitual Eating. Has this situation happened to you? You just finished eating supper and you decide to watch a movie afterwards, and then all of a sudden you seem to be hungry again and want snacks – well I mean, who doesn’t like snacks? What’s happening is your appetite is “hungry” and this is a conditioned response (think Pavlov’s dog classical conditioning). Cut this out, or strategize other ways to work around it; snack on a super-low calorie options instead, like snap peas and carrots for example.
• Don’t reward yourself with food – you’re not a dog. Food is meant to be enjoyed, absolutely, but don’t reward yourself with it. If you must reward yourself, do it with something else, like a massage, a round of golf, hockey tickets, etc.

A good read: Food Relationships: Do You Have a Good “Relationship” With Food?

10. Be mindful of your caloric intake – somehow

At the end of the day, weight loss is all about creating an energy deficit for your body to balance out with it’s own energy stores. If you don’t know how many calories you’re taking in on a daily basis, and weekly, then you aren’t going to be able to control your weight very effectively – and you won’t have much success with weight loss. Track your calories with an app like MyFitnessPal, have a food journal, or have a Meal Plan made for you and follow it to limit the guess work. You don’t have track your calories every day, I typically recommend 3 days a week to keep you honest and conscious about what you’re eating.

The above tip is more specific to losing weight, but the same applies to when you want to gain weight – practicing the same thing over and over with no results, and expecting results is often termed as insanity. Don’t be insane. Quick note for those that simply want to maintain their weight: you don’t necessarily need to track your calories – if you don’t want to, rather I recommend my clients weigh in once per week to monitor their weight and act accordingly if the weight starts creeping back up. I also have them set up “trigger weights” where if they hit that number I put them back into a weight loss phase until they get back to their original weight. I also help them identify why the weight crept back up so that they know why and how to prevent it in the future – the goal is to give them the tools to manage their weight independently and effectively.

Start implementing the above 10 things into your daily life and you’ll be able to better manage your weight.

Till next time,

-Mike