If you have attempted to lose weight at any point. I’m sure you have said, “I’m going to eat healthy”. Hell, I’ve had conversations with people who are struggling to lose weight. Where they are looking for a specific exercise or group exercise class to help them lose weight. When I ask them about their diet a reply I often hear is “I eat healthy”.
What does eating healthy mean to you?
But healthy eating is a bit vague and does not tell you what your diet actually looks like. I am sure we all have a different idea of what eating healthy looks like. For some, it could be eating more fruit and vegetables and avoiding chocolate, and sweets. Now I would not disagree that we could all do with eating “healthier” and improving our diets in general.
However, it is possible to “eat healthy” and not lose weight. I am sure you’re wondering why. The reason is that all foods contain calories, some more than others. Even some “healthy” foods are higher in calories than we are aware of. Take for example avocado, smoothies, nuts, seeds, and dried fruit. Sure they all come from whole foods , so they must be healthy right? But they can be high in calories. The reason is that most of these are high in dietary fats, fats contain 9kcal per gram. Liquids like smoothies won’t satisfy your hunger because they don’t have fibre.
What drives weight loss?
What dictates our bodyweight still comes back to calories. The number of calories consumed compared to the amount we burn. We still need to control the number of calories we take in from foods and liquids throughout the week. Regardless of how healthy we eat. It’s even possible to have a poor diet and lose weight. As an example, a man did an experiment who only ate a diet consisting of ice cream and protein shakes. He also had alcohol and a multi vitamin. He dropped weight, while improving his overall health. Whilst it’s not something I would recommend, it shows how powerful eating the correct amount of calories and maintaining a healthy body weight is.
The reason I say the week is because we could only look at a single day in isolation or Monday to Thursday. As soon as we have finished work on Friday we can go out at the weekend, consume more alcohol than planned. Then we could have some takeaways. Then before you know it you’ve eaten and drank more than you are aware.
Looking to your diet
I would also recommend looking closer at your diet. If you are ticking the boxes of certain nutrients. For example, I have had clients who thought they had healthy diets. But when we looked closer they realised they were lacking in certain nutrients. Protein is one of those nutrients they were not getting anywhere near enough of. Because when we are dieting for weight loss, we are more likely to be more hungry. So you need to be able to combat an increase in hunger. One of those ways is by increasing daily protein intake. Looking at foods like lean meat, dairy, fish, eggs, tofu, and tempeh.
If you would like to know what eating healthy looks like to me. Then it is getting most of your food from whole foods, from a wide variety. Then eat some junk foods and semi junk foods like chocolate, cake, and bread throughout the week. So we are not restricting our food choices and so we getting some during the week should make it less likely to overeat at the weekend.
So when looking at your diet. We should all aim to eat healthier. But we also need to factor in what those specific foods are as well as nutrients. How much we are eating not just throughout the day but throughout the week.
