You should continually experiment to discover what works best for you – not just your workout routine, but your meals as well.
Implementing a nutrition plan that’s right for you should be a process of trial and error – an ongoing experiment with portion sizes, food combinations, and eating at different times of day.
When you’re starting out, it helps to spend the first week or two getting a rough sense of how many calories, how much protein, fat, and carbs you should be eating for your goals, weight, age, gender, and activity level. It’s also worth looking up the nutritional content of your favorite foods – both as a learning experience and so you become a more health-conscious eater over time.
But long-term, you don’t want to get stuck counting and measuring everything forever. It doesn’t need to be that tedious.
The main thing is: A) combine the right types of carbs with a lean protein and a healthy fat, and B) eat only until pleasantly full and satisfied – not stuffed. That means listening closely to your body.
Many diet plans tell you exactly what to eat, how much, and when. The problem is, that doesn’t teach you to tune in to your own cravings, desires, or hunger. And it’s less likely to stick, because you’re following someone else’s guess about what’s right for you instead of eating the right amount of foods you actually enjoy.
Everyone has different strengths, weaknesses, and eating patterns. You’ll find lasting success when you learn to respond to your own signals rather than someone else’s rules.
It’s critical to learn how to notice both hunger and fullness, and to figure out what actually satisfies you – physically and psychologically. Your own body, not anyone’s estimated guess, is the best guide for how much you need to eat.
So build the habit of tuning in to your internal hunger cues, rather than eating an amount because you think it’s what you “should” eat to be good. It’s fine to eat until you feel physically and psychologically satisfied – the key is learning to stop at comfortably full, not stuffed.
Along with learning how hunger, fullness, and overfullness feel, you’ll also learn from your mistakes. If you eat past comfortable fullness sometimes, don’t beat yourself up over it – that happens to everyone. Just notice how it feels, and let that memory guide you the next time you’re tempted to overeat.
With practice, you’ll shift your eating patterns: starting to eat when your body tells you it’s hungry, and stopping once you feel comfortably full and satisfied.
This matters even more today, since restaurant and coffee shop portions have only gotten larger. A single muffin and a coffee drink can easily run 700-800 calories, and an oversized restaurant entrée can add up fast.
A simple portions guideline to start with:
When you’re dishing up a plate at home, this breakdown is a solid starting point:
That’s just a starting point, though – not a rule carved in stone. If you’re still genuinely hungry afterward, you can always go back for more. The goal is to use this as your baseline, then listen closely to your body to know when to stop.
You don’t have to finish everything on your plate just because it’s there. Someone who’s truly in control and listening to their body knows it’s fine to leave a few bites behind once they’ve had enough.
It’s genuinely empowering once you’ve built this skill – and the results tend to follow pretty quickly.
