When I speak to clients about their diet I always ask what percentages of protein, fat and carbohydrates they're eating. Most don't have a clue they just tell me they eat good. I will ask them to start tracking their food intake and while most do not want to do this, the ones that do find it very eye opening. People often think they are eating healthy but when you break it down to them it becomes clear that they are not eating good enough to achieve their goals. Sure maybe they are eating better than the average person but a lot of times that won't get you to where you want to be.
I do all the shopping in our house and although I'm vegan I do have to buy meat for my boyfriend and my dogs. My boyfriend likes turkey burgers and my dogs get raw ground beef and raw ground turkey. I always look for lean choices for both of those. The label on the ground turkey and turkey burgers I was buying said 93% lean and 7% fat. Which at a glance you would think that is very lean ground turkey or beef. If you look at that in more detail each 4oz serving has 8 grams of fat which is 72 calories and each 4oz serving is 170 calories so technically this particular product is almost 50% FAT!!!! So how can they say 93% lean??? That 93/7 ratio is by weight, so that is how companies get away with fooling you. Now I only buy ground turkey breast for my boyfriend and dogs because this is labeled 99% lean and 1% fat.
Many times the first observation I find when analyzing a clients diet is that they are eating way too much fat. Even if it is good fat, if half of your diet is coming from fat that is not a good thing. You should have a much more balanced ratio of fat/carbs/protein. I typically do not recommend consuming more than 20-30 of your diet from fat. This is really hard to do especially if you like things like avocados, nuts, meat, and fish like salmon. Although all those things may seem healthy they do contain a lot of fat. I would not eat all those types of food in one day, I would spread them out throughout the week. For instance if you like avocados then add them to your diet once or twice a week. If you like salmon then have it once a week. The best way to see how balanced your diet is would be to use a food tracking app like myfitnesspal. Use this for about a week to get an idea of what your percentages are at and how you can make adjustments to improve them.
Some products like non-stick sprays for cooking are labeled fat free when they are literally 100% fat! They can get away with this type of labeling because of the serving size. They say if you spray it for 1/3 of a second (which is basically impossible for anyone to do) it has less than 1 gram of fat per serving. Well if you use cooking sprays like most people you spray the pan for approximately 1-2 seconds. This may not seem like a lot but all this type of deceptive advertising adds up. It is so important to read labels and serving sizes on the labels.
Becoming more aware of what one serving actually looks like is important. Most people eat 2-3 servings and think they are only eating one serving. When we go out to eat I always ask my boyfriend if he wants to split something and if he doesn't I will almost always take home 1/2 of my meal for later. Eating 300 calories 5-6 times a day is far better than eating 900-1,000 calories twice a day.
My motto has always been don't wait till you're hungry to eat and don't eat until you're full.
Comments
Post a Comment