‘Eating Skills’ Beat Dieting!
If you are a regular on social media you’ll be used to seeing “diet this…”, “the **** diet”, “dieting made easy” yada yada yada!
And – before you throw it back at me and search through all my articles, blogs and posts – I do occasionally use the ‘D’ word!
BUT…and you know I like a but…for most people (unless you have a very specific, time-scaled and ‘major change’ goal) a diet is not what is needed!
What are needed are ‘skillz’, and these be in the form of EATING SKILLS.
You see, the majority of us think of eating/nutrition as something we should automatically have knowledge of.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, and much of our eating/nutritional programming comes from childhood. You know the type of thing:
“you don’t leave this table until your plate is empty”
“what do you want for supper?”
“giving him a big portion, he’s a growing lad”
“don’t you dare leave that – don’t you know there are people starving in Ethiopia!”
The key is to learn ‘eating/nutrition skills’ in areas including:
- meal planning
- food shopping (hint: never go doing a ‘big food shop’ when hungry!)
- meal prepping
- knowing which food fill you up
- knowing what foods trigger ‘bingeing’
- knowing what to eat pre and post workout
Having a good understanding of portion sizes is also an important skill!
Rather than being on a ‘diet’, focusing on building these skills is a great way to improve your health, fitness and physique…for life!
Learning SKILLS is empowering, whereas most people view dieting as RESTRICTIVE and DEPRIVATION!
Now, that’s all good and well GymWolfPT, but give us some examples of what you mean!
Here you go (just a few ideas)…
- Come up with 2 or 3 ‘meal prep ideas, and cook up your first batch. Decide on your favourite and master making it ‘quickly and easily’
- Protein: learn how to get some form of protein in each main meal
- Find 2 or 3 breakfast options that you enjoy and which keep you full until your lunch
- Vegetables: determine a way to get at least one vegetable into each meal
- Plan a grocery shop that keeps you functional for the week, and can simply be replicated weekly
- Discover snacks that satisfy you whilst keeping you ‘on track’
Taking the time to master these skills will take you closer to your goals… and create a baseline that will stay with you for LIFE!
I just thought I’d put these ideas out for you to have think about.
Always on your side
Ian
GymWolfPT
