March is National Nutrition Month. That’s a new one on me, and you may feel that the advice you read on diets, clean eating, and even balanced macros can be overwhelming.
The good news is, if you’ve been following my advice, you’ll know I’m not a fan of making dramatic changes that are daunting and unsustainable. When I started my weight loss journey, I had just one daily diet goal: eat no more than 100 net carbs per day. That was it. That was eventually maintainable and has helped me lose over 80lbs of body fat.
However, the most important step to losing weight starts way before you actually change your diet. It starts by knowing how your current diet is sabotaging your health.
Even when we think we’re eating a healthy salad or focusing on “good fats” we often don’t know about all of the consumed hidden calories, trans fats, or sodium that could lead to a heart attack or stroke…or even just feeling blah.
With that in mind, your first step to weight loss is quite simple: track everything you eat.
You can do this for a week, two, or even an entire month. Use one of the many tools out there that help you log your food intake and provide you with in-depth nutrition info you didn’t even know about. I personally had a lot of success with MyFitnessPal. The free version is excellent and it helped me to see what my daily calorie intake was (almost 3,000), how many carbs I was eating (easily 300+ per day) and how little fiber was in my diet. It opened my eyes like a scene out of The Matrix!
Once you can see all of your hidden numbers, you can see where you can make small changes to your diet. Too many calories in your Starbucks coffee? Too much sodium in your deli meats? The immense amount of calories in the salad you always thought was healthy–I’m looking at you Cheesecake Factory!!!
When you uncover the hidden numbers in your diet, you can often make small changes to reduce them. Pick just a few changes each week, until your mind and body adapt to the concept of making healthier food and drink choices. Once you start noticing the weight drop and your clothes fit better, you’ll then be motivated to look at cooking healthier recipes, reducing unhealthy snacks, and perhaps even adhering to those macros you hear many folks talk about.
Uncover your new you by uncovering those hidden nutrition numbers.