Food Prep Prep
Hey Dads and Moms,
Continuing our discussion on fitness, you can't talk about being more fit without talking about making better eating choices. Weight loss is 80% food and 20% exercise. What works for me is a well balanced meal plan that requires you to eat more often but smaller portions, which we'll talk about in detail in another blog. What I wanted to talk about is some tools that can help you get started in the right direction. Two things I'm working on is Portion Control and Accountability.
So let's say for starters you didn't want to cut out your favorite foods. That's fine, but lets cut them down. Let's be honest, we're not all gourmet chefs, hell if we were we'd probably we bigger. So more often than not we eat out. One thing you can do when eating out is to pack half your meal in a to-go box before you start eating, especially if it's naughty. Eat the half there and when you feel that you're hungry later you can enjoy the other half then.
Now let's say you are a gourmet chef and you do cook at home a lot. The Wicked Wahine is a great cook and she cooks for multiple days. She cooks stuff to be packed for my lunches and what I've done is gone out and got a set of Glass Pyrex that has the amounts on them. So when I pack my food I put the healthier items in bigger containers and the not so healthy items in the smaller containers.
So for the accountability portion of the show, starting a food journal is a great way to see what you're putting into your body. There are many apps for your phone that can help you track calorie intake. These were the top three apps that popped up when I looked up food trackers on my Iphone. I've used Lose It! and MyFitnessPal, both of which are free but have premium subscriptions. I initially loved using MyFitnessPal because it was like a fitness version of Facebook. After they were bought by Under Amour they started putting ads in and wanted you to upgrade to a premium subscription which I didn't like. So I decided to try Lose It! based on a recommendation from a co-worker. I used it briefly but never got into always logging what I ate. As tech savvy as I am, non of these solutions were working for me.
One day I just grabbed an old journal I wasn't using anymore and started writing in it. For me to be mentally accountable the actual action of writing worked better for me. Tracking calories was actually stressing me out because it made me feel guilty if I had to add something like a doughnut. "YOU BLEW ALL YOUR ALLOTTED CALORIES!! YOU'RE A FAILURE!!" Okay, it actually didn't say that but that's how I felt. Using a written journal I can still see what I put in my body but I don't beat myself up when I do slip up. The theory is to be able to "fall but not fail".
Controlling portions has helped with the over eating but doesn't deprive me of things I want to eat. The food tracking keeps me accountable because I second guess an unhealthy eating choice. It also helps with my fitness performance because I can look back at what I ate and see how it made me feel. Working out has made me more in tune with my body. I can tell the difference of how I feel when I over eat or eat junk. On my journey to get fit I expect to stumble, stumbling is a sign that you're trying. Nor do I feel like this is going to be an over night transformation. One of my really good fitness friends told me, "You didn't get overweight overnight, Don't expect to lose it overnight". I hope in your fitness journey these 2 tools can help you "Prep" for Food Prep. Food prep isn't only about packing a weeks worth of meals. It's about looking at all food in a different manner that can help you be successful. I'll end this blog with a quote from Henry Ford...
"Whether You Think You Can Or You Can't, You're Right"
All I can say is believe in yourself, that's where it all starts!!