Its been many months since I’ve written a post about nutrition.  With the New Year in full swing I thought it was perfect timing for a nutrition post.  If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know my nutrition philosophy.  If you’re new to my blog, here’s a little background info.  I’m an RD with 10 years experience.  Having run my own private practice, I’ve seen just about every nutrition problem that exists.  If I’ve learned anything from my clients, and from myself, its that restrictive diets don’t work.  There’s no such thing as a good or bad food… there is such a thing as a bad portion.  Eating healthy is important but how much we eat is even more important.

As a mother raising a daughter, I’m well aware of the effects my eating has on her.  She will do exactly what I do.  If I eat all day, she wants to eat all day.  Its my job to be a healthy role model for her.  If you’re looking at adopting a healthier lifestyle for the new year, consider a more mindful approach.  Losing weight isn’t rocket science.  Its easy mathematics.  If you eat more than your body needs, you will gain weight.  If you want to lose weight, you need to mindfully do the opposite.  The key word is mindfully.  Its all about having a healthy state of mind.  What ever approach you take towards adopting a healthy lifestyle, be sure to keep a realistic view of it all.

Throughout the month of January, I’ll be blogging over at the Dairy Council of California.  They have a fantastic series call “New Year, New Approach… Kick off the New Year with a renewed passion for healthy eating by letting go of negative feelings about food.”

My first post is Mindful Eating, Satisfaction Guaranteed. Be sure to check it out along with all their other fabulous posts for New Year, New Approach series.

If you’d like to read more about nutrition, check out my nutrition bites page.  There’s all sorts of info there

Question for you…

What’s approach do you take towards living a healthy lifestyle?

My website is fixed! Please update your Google Readers http://weeklybite.com/feed/

We’re past the halfway mark and into week 7. How did we do with the goal last week? Giving ourselves unlimited permission to eat whatever we want can be scary… but it’s so important in order live without dieting.

To recap, these are the goals we’ve covered so far:

1. Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re satisfied
2. Make water your beverage of choice
3. Break mindless eating routines
4. Increase fiber intake by increasing fruit and veggie intake
5. Pay close attention to meal timing and portion control
6. Pay attention to your body – focus on eating consciously
7. The importance of meal planning
8. Making Peace With Food

This week we will be focusing on calorie counting… or lack there of. Part of embracing “not dieting” is to stop counting every piece of food that crosses our lips. I know calorie counting works for a lot of individuals. If you can count calories and not let if control your life or become obsessive about it, thats fine… but for most, its very easy to become a slave to this.

When I talk about stop counting, I mean calories, fat, carbs, grams, etc…

When we count, measure, weigh, or calculate food, we’re not listening to our body. We’re letting other factors control how much and when we eat… not our body. How can that be fun? Having to count, weigh, and measure everything can become exhausting and time consuming.

For a life-long food counter, not counting can be scary.

The goal for this week is to start small.

Start with one meal without counting anything. Just listen to your body. Let your body tell you when to start eating and when to stop.

After a few days, try to eat two meals without counting. Continue at your own pace until you’ve stopped counting all together.

The ultimate goal is to start eating in response to your body, not the calories counted in your head.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email me.

*Don’t forget your workout of the week! *

Click here for Jessica’s No More Resolutions Workout!

No More Resolutions will run for 12 weeks along with No Diets in the New Year

There are beginner, intermediate, and advanced workouts for everyone!

I’ve gotten many many emails asking for nutrition and diet advice.  With the holidays here and temptation staring us in the face, I thought it would be timely to talk about diets… 

When I first started seeing clients I thought January would be my busiest with all the New Year’s resolutions… I was wrong.  November and December were always my busiest.  I found it strange at first, but then I quickly realized people were trying to avoid the holiday weight gain and were looking for the next“diet” to follow.  My main message to them what “It’s not about the diet.”

The truth is we all want to be at a healthy weight… we want to know how to reach it and how to maintain it.  The confusing part is finding the best way to do this!  For those of you who’ve read my bio, you know that there was a phase in my life where dieting was the only option.  I was constantly thinking a diet would solve my problems.  A common thought I would often have would be, “Once I reach my goal weight, my life will begin”… “I can finally have fun”.  It got to a point where no diet was working for me, I became a slave to the scale, and worst of all, it affected every other aspect of my life.  No matter how hard I tried, or how much I exercise… nothing worked. 

At what point in our life do we think we need to “go on a diet?”

It all comes down to unhappiness.  It may be that we are unhappy with our appearance, unhappy with the way our pants fit, unhappy with the person we see in the mirror, unhappy because we realize we are truly overweight, or, just unhappy with life in general.  All the while we still think the next diet will solve our problems, make us happy, and finally enjoy life. 

Does a Diet Really Work?

The answer is yes… and no.  People want to see results!  When we make the decision to lose weight, we want the weight gone yesterday!  Diets promise quick results.  Some diets often going to extreme measures such as unsupervised detoxes, cleanses, and eliminating entire food groups.  Can we see results doing this?  Absolutely!  Why do we see results? Because we are cutting back on calories and the foods we love… resulting in a nice gift we call weight gain in return!

It all comes down to basic math.  If you want to lose weight, you have to eat fewer calories than what your body needs.   There’s no miracle diet or solution.  If you’ve had success on a past diet, it’s because you were eating less calories than what your body needed, not because we ate our protein 20 minutes before we ate our starch.   Programs such as Nutri-System and Jennie Craig will definitely produce weight loss because they are reducing your calories.  Everything comes pre-portioned or frozen.  They do all the work for you.  You don’t have to count calories or measure anything out.  All you have to do is heat and eat.  This does produce great short-term results, but what we really have to ask ourselves is “how realistic is it to follow this for life?”  That’s the question you want to ask yourself every time you are tempted with a diet.  “Can I commit to this for the rest of my life?”

A Calorie is a Calorie 

No matter what ratio of carbohydrates, protein, and fat our meal comes in, a calorie is a calorie.  If we eat more than our body needs, we will gain weight, whether our meal is vegetarian, vegan, low carb, or fast food.  I’ll say it again… IF WE CONSISTANTLY EAT MORE THAN WHAT OUR BODY NEEDS, WE WILL GAIN WEIGHT.

Now don’t get me wrong here.  I would be doing my role as a Dietitian an injustice if I said the health of a meal didn’t matter.  It certainly does.  A well-rounded healthy diet is important for heart health and disease prevention.  The point I’m trying to make is that we don’t have to follow a crazy diet.  It’s all about balance and moderation. 

Eating healthy is very important, but how much we eat is even more important.  We have to find that place of balance and moderation.  For example, lets say you’ve been craving a cheeseburger and French fries all week long.  Make a plan to eat it, and enjoy it.  Here’s how you do that… You know the average cheeseburger and French fry combo has at least 1000 calories if not more.  Let’s say you’re a 5’5” active female and require around 1800 calories per day.  Eating that entire cheeseburger meal will blow your calorie budget.  The goal here is to be mindful of what you eat during the day surrounding that cheeseburger.  This doesn’t mean to starve yourself all day so you can “splurge”.  The idea is to make sure you surround that meal with other healthy meals.  Make sure to be active that day.  Eat a healthy portioned controlled breakfast.  If you know your going out for cheeseburgers at dinner, don’t eat steak & eggs or a stack of pancakes for breakfast.  Opt for a healthy cereal or an egg white breakfast taco.  The same idea goes for lunch.   Choose something healthy and portion controlled.  Make sure your comfortably hungry prior to each meal.  When the time comes to enjoy the cheeseburger meal, take your time and try to only eat half.  Think to yourself “Does my body really need to ingest 1300 calories at one meal?”  The answer is most likely “NO!”    

What’s the point of all this?

The main point I’m trying to get across is that you can enjoy the foods you love every single day, it’s all about making a plan, balancing it all out, and enjoying in moderation.  If you eat a stack of pancakes for breakfast, a plate of pasta for lunch, and 4 slices of pizza for dinner, that’s unbalanced.   Make it a plan to keep your intake 80% healthy, and 20% junk!  If you went the whole day without eating any veggies, make it a point to get some in the next day.  What’s most frustrating to me is the “diet world” puts out so much conflicting information.  This confuses the heck out of people!  Including myself!  What I hope you get from reading this article is “go back to the basics”.  It all comes down to how much we eat.  Remember… EATING HEALTHY IS VERY IMPORTANT, BUT HOW MUCH WE EAT IS EVEN MORE IMPORTANT!

What are your thoughts?  Are you stuck in diet world?

It’s all about the portions!