Beginning Nutrition: Just starting & looking for advice

There are a lot of free programs that are easy to use with easy to navigate menu’s that do the job for you like myfitnesspal.com, fitday.com and sparkpeople.com.

Support groups are a very important during the process of changing habits and weight loss. Sharing experiences with others working toward the same goal and helping each work through times of doubt can make a huge difference; you are not alone in your journey.

While I can give you a few things to consider, it would be hard to be more specific without being familiar with your eating style. If you’re struggling, you might consider personal nutrition coaching.

1. Soda, juice and alcohol go against weight loss due to the way your body handles the processed sugars and the signals sent to the brain. Both soda and alcohol interfere with metabolism, alcohol sugar interferes with nutrient absorption in the gut.

Replace it with: water, tea and a small amount of coffee (if needed). (a little lemon in the water is a nice change, many people swear by lukewarm lemon water first thing in the morning for weight loss)

2. Keep well hydrated. When our body is dehydrated the brain doesn’t always send cravings to drink; signals will get mixed so instead the signal will be hunger. Strive to drink your 64 ounces of water daily, while that isn’t a number set in stone, it is a nice guideline to utilize.

3. Increase the amount of fiber in your diet; fiber fills you up and it also attaches itself to some fat grams that will then just pass through your system, and is great for digestion with an added advantage of making you feel fuller faster.

4. Say no to processed foods whenever you can as they are not engineered with human health in mind. Processed foods are loaded with sugar, fat and salt; these additives are in various combinations for palatability and to increase sales for the company. Food company do research into human behavior for marketing and for creating food combos to entice increased usage of their product.

Replace it with: Home cooking, things that you peel, chop and slice from fresh ingredients; not only will your foods taste better they will be better for you.

5. Try to get a good balance of macro-nutrients; carbohydrates, proteins and fats, when you do that your metabolism burns the best. I keep my macro-nutrients at 40/30/30 (percent carbohydrates/proteins/fats respectively); which works well for me and for many people, those percentages can be adjusted. This is where a computer tracker is helpful, there are apps for that too. Feel free to contact me for more information regarding macro-nutrient help or for basic nutritional requirements.

6. Carbohydrate sources are important as well. This topic has a lot of twists and turns, it can be confusing, I will touch on a few of many aspect on this topic.

• I mentioned in tip one to eliminate processed sugar and alcohol carbs., I can’t stress the importance of this enough.

• Vegetable carbs (excluding white potatoes/corn) are free carbs in a sense that you can have as much as you want as they are low in calorie high in fiber. (raw or cooked but without dressing, sauces or dips)  Fresh vegetables tend to have a low-calorie content with a lot of fiber.   If you must have dressing, try oil & vinegar, pinch of salt, pepper & herbs, this is better than you remember, will be fresh too.   (Use oil/vinegar dressing in moderation)

• Fruit is also a carbohydrate, eating the whole fruit is very important; processed fruit in the form of juice removes the health benefits only to leave the fruit sugar.  The recommended amount per person is 1-1/2 to 2 cups of fruit a day.  One half cup of dried fruit equals one cup of fresh.  The USDA includes juice in their pyramid but for weight loss I would not recommend it due to the high sugar content.

• Breads, crackers and flour products will also hamper weight loss and digestion so they should be limited.  Look at the labels and purchase breads with whole grains and few preservatives.  Remember, bread is made up of flour, water, sugar, fat, little salt, and yeast; if you can’t pronounce it or understand it you shouldn’t eat it.  Once you find a good wholesome bread you will wonder why you bothered to eat that gut binding processed stuff before.

7.  Fried foods, I always advise to avoid them all together.  The added oil, salt and sugar will not help you to reach your goal at all and certainly will not benefit your health..