My Nutritional Journey
Lets talk about diets. I remember the first time I tried losing weight. I was about 13 years old and had to lose twenty pounds to play in the heaviest pop warner football weight class. I took it upon myself to generally eat less, and start lifting weights in my basement. I didn’t know what to consume, or how to train, I just knew I had to eat less and move more. I did, and it worked. I’d call this a basic hypocaloric diet. I ate less calories than I burned each day, leading to a calorie deficit, allowing me to lose weight.
Weight piled back on in the coming years, and I didn’t give myself a reason to lose it for a while. Junior year in high school, I was my largest at 242 pounds (the picture of this article was the day I weighed in at 242). I was a two sport varsity athlete, but didn’t feel like one. I was fed up with and decided to “diet” again. This time, I ate less, but also consumed way less carbs. No more bread, oatmeal, or grains. Lots of fruit. Shocker, I lost weight. This was a low(er) carbohydrate diet, that still put me in a caloric deficit, and allowed me to lose about 40 pounds.
During college when I was coaching CrossFit, I did a paleo diet challenge with my gym. Meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch (potatoes and root vegetables), no sugar. This was a diet of exclusion, limiting my food options compared to the things I was regularly eating. The paleo diet is basically all whole foods, with minimal processing if any. These foods are more satiating and contain less calories than typical processed foods like cereals, pastas, dried fruits, fried vegetables, or fried meats. Therefore, I ate less during this challenge, and lost weight. I also felt better, and it probably had to be from the amount of whole foods I was eating.
In nursing school, I had regained some unwanted weight. The ketogenic diet was making a resurgence, and I was very interested in the science behind it. You don’t have to learn much about it to be reminded just how intuitive and efficient your physiology was designed to be. I followed the diet for 2 months, strictly, measuring blood glucose and ketones daily to make sure I was in a state of nutritional ketosis. The ketogenic diet and its variations all advocate for 65% or more of your daily calories to come from fat, with 25-30% coming from protein and 5-10% coming from carbohydrates. This is a diet of exclusion, removing most carbohydrates besides fruit and vegetables from your palette. Fat is super satiating, so my appetite was more stable. I ate less calories, and I lost weight.
All of these “diet” experiences were similar but different. I wanted to lose excess bodyweight. Through different methods, all of these diets excluded something from my typical diet. By excluding these things, I tended to eat less, and always lost weight. But every time I cycled off one of these diets, I would slowly regain the weight when I began eating the things I excluded again.
I love donuts. If you tell me not to eat one for 6 weeks, I won’t. But on 6 weeks and a day, I’m going to swallow a dozen whole. Because I missed them. They missed me. We need each other.
So what do I do now? I follow a few key principles to keep me moving in the right direction, but I don’t exclude anything. From my years of dieting, measuring and tracking my food, learning what staple foods work well for my body, I’ve learned what fundamentals I need to keep me feeling good without gaining unwanted weight.
Calories are king. Yes, there are other factors, but if you’re eating more calories than you’re burning, you won’t lose weight. I track my intake on myfitnesspal because it’s simple. If I eat around 2,500-3,000 calories a day, train 4-5 x / week, and get 10K steps a day, my weight will remain stable.
Protein is priority. Consuming my bodyweight in grams of protein per day has become a daily staple. 0.7-1.0 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight is enough to maintain / build lean muscle mass. You need more protein if you’re dieting, and a little less if you’re bulking.
Fiber is a cheat code. Fiber passes through your small intestine undigested, and meets your bacteria in your large intestine, where it is fermented and devoured by your microbiota, allowing it to create the bacteria that aid in proper digestion and absorption of nutrients. Recommended amount is 25 grams for women and 35 for men each day, but I aim for 35-50 / day. Adequate fiber consumption has repeatedly been shown to decrease risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. My main sources are berries, avocados, whole grains, chia seeds, and high fiber wraps.
If I’m attending a social event, I aim for high protein options. I’ll get a side salad. If there’s a dish I know is heavy, yet I can’t seem to stop thinking about it, I’ll get it. Live a little. One day of bad dietary choices isn’t going to ruin you. It will if you let it roll into the next day, and the next. But one meal, every now and then, surrounded by good people, is worth a little overindulgence.
Moderation is what ties it all together. I don’t exclude anything anymore. I just focus on quality, and quantity. I eat “good,” 85% of the time. The other 15%, I let my culinary desires run wild. This suits me currently, since I don’t have any physical endeavors that require me to be a certain bodyweight.
People are often hesitant to weigh and measure their food. They think its tedious and time consuming. Sure, its new, it seems annoying, but please, stop complaining. It’s not hard. You do much harder things every single day. And this one thing will give you a true sense of how much food you need to consume to reach your body composition goals. It becomes a simple habit before long. You gain a sense of your baseline intake, and you become more aware of the things you need more of and those you need less of.
There is no perfect diet. My diet changes with the season, with my goals, and with my environment. What works for me may not work for you. Which means you need to explore it for yourself. And that’s the best part, because along the way, you’ll get to know yourself deeper. You’ll begin to realize just how good your body can feel if you fuel it right. You’ll see glimpses of progress and double down on your efforts.
Lead with curiosity when it comes to your nutrition. Sure that new fad diet looks appealing and like a way to lose weight quick, but, is it one you could sustain? Is it one you’d enjoy? Or is it something you’d follow for a month before rebelling completely by overindulging on whatever goodness it excluded. Chances are, you really just need to gain an understanding of your current intake by weighing, measuring and tracking your food, and adjusting from there to meet your goals. Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be.
