Option 3 – Daily Flexible Dieting
Select this option if:
Welcome to your daily flexible dieting nutrition program!
This is the third option you can choose from the nutritional options available. It takes a little more effort and practice, but achieves the most efficient progress and while staying the most flexible and adaptable with your food choices.
Here you will learn how to stay adaptive, creative and stress free when it comes to managing calories on a day to day basis. This balanced and proactive approach will help you become healthier and happier with yourself and your body, while looking better than ever before. We will use nutrition to achieve the weight you want while making daily menu plans that take anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes to prepare. That’s the trick. It’s set and forget when it comes to meal planning. No more stressing about what to eat next.
You’re not going to starve yourself, you won’t have to give up any of your favourite foods, and you can use these principles into your next phase where you can easily maintain your new physique because we aren’t going to do anything weird or extreme to do it.
This by the way, is the option I choose as I lead my daily life. If you want to follow my nutrition as an example, then click here to check out my daily food diary.
I’m not going to sell you any supplements, or tell you to make any radical extreme food choices. Instead I’m going to set you up with a simple method for creating fat burning, muscle building super meals, and then showing you how you can quickly and easily create a meal combination that meets your macro and calorie targets for the day. This way you can start each day with the open option of enjoying any foods you like, and by integrating the meals into a daily structured action plan in advance, you don’t have to worry about just “winging it” and running the risk of falling off the wagon. This method also allows you to change meals choices and quantities on the fly, so that as life throws obstacles in your way, you have the tools at your disposal to manage and react to the situation without missing a beat.
Each morning (or the night before) you can hand pick some meals you enjoy and use these action steps to quickly build a menu plan for the day. You can create effective, efficient and result producing meals and menus surprisingly quickly and easily once you follow this simple formula and spend a little time practicing.
Benefits of a wide variety of foods
Since there are more than 40 essential nutrients we must continuously eat to maintain good health, and since no food contains every single nutrient you need, this makes a great case for eating a wide variety of foods. Of course, there is the option of keeping your nutrition simple, limiting your food choices and taking a multivitamin to cover what might be missing, but I strongly believe it’s best to get as many of your nutrients as possible in the form of whole foods rather than supplements. There’s a lot of evidence that it’s food that our bodies need and not nutrients.
No doubt, you’ve seen endless advertisements and articles recommending individual vitamins and nutrient pills, and it seems nearly every food on the shelf out there has “added vitamin C”, “extra anti oxidants”, green tea extract” and “energy blends”. But these recommendations for eating certain vitamin, mineral, carotenoid or antioxidant are often based on research about the actual food item that the nutrient came from. It’s not always clear whether taking the nutrient in pill or extract form will provide the same benefits as getting the same nutrient as nature originally delivered it.
In his book, In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan explains in great detail this concept of getting our nutrients primarily from whole foods. He also explains why he believes food variety is important given the countless nutrients contained in the mass of different foods available to us today and the fact that we get most of our calories from just a handful of sources:
“Today corn contributes 554 calories a day to America’s per capita food supply and soy another 257. Add wheat (768 calories and rice (91) and you can see there isn’t a whole lot of room left in the American stomach for any other foods. Today these four crops account for two thirds of the calories we eat, when you consider that humankind has historically consumed some eighty thousand edible species, and that three thousand of these have been in widespread use, this represents a radical simplification of the human diet. Why should this concern us? Because humans are omnivores, requiring somewhere between fifty and a hundred different chemical compounds and elements in order to be healthy. It’s hard to believe we’re getting everything we need from a diet consisting largely of processed corn, soybeans, rice and wheat.”
Fruits and vegetables are king
Of all the food categories to choose from, clearly the best way to get a huge amount of nutrient variety is to choose freely from the fruit and vegetable groups. It might sound a little “cheesy” for me to say to cover every colour of the rainbow, but there really is something to eating a “colorful diet,” because each color in the food represents specific nutrients.
In addition to vitamins and minerals, we have discovered more than 4,000 different phytonutrients and over 150 of them have been studied in depth. Phytonutrients (otherwise called phytochemicals) are naturally occurring and health-promoting compounds that are found in nature. We have done extensive research on the functional properties of these compounds, that prove they play important roles in maintaining your health and protecting you from disease. Specific foods such as tomatoes (red), carrots (orange), broccoli (green), and blueberries (blue) all contain important phytochemicals that have significant impacts in health and disease prevention.
If after reading this you feel you need more stability and control with your daily choices, and don’t want the stress of daily meal planning, then feel free to switch over and have a look at option 2 (Weekly Meal Planning) or even option 1 (Ultimate Nutrition Rules). Otherwise if this is resonating with you and you want to give it a go, then lets dive right in!
To get rid of fat, you must be in a calorie deficit. To grow muscle, you must be in a calorie surplus. This means that the number of calories that you take in every day from food and drink must be less (deficit) or more (surplus) than the amount of calories you burn each day (Total daily calorie expenditure). You can create this deficit or surplus by changing your activity, your nutrition, or both.
An average male burns around 2800 calories a day.
An average female burns around 2100 calories a day.
There are lots of complex equations and formulae for calculating calories and macros for your diet, but don’t worry because I’ve done the hard work for you. I’ve created a simple, yet comprehensive calculator for you that calculates your basal metabolic rate (BMR), total daily calorie expenditure (TDEE), calorie targets and protein, carb, fat and fibre requirements all for you, all based on your gender, weight, height, activity, experience and preferences.
Click on an option below to calculate your calories.
For you to be able to make daily meal plans on the fly, it’s best you do this with your smart phone and a calorie calculator.
I recommend MyFitnessPal. It’s free, you can program and save your meals and it’s all calculated automatically.
MyFitnessPal
Before you move onto the next step, take a moment to think about how you’re going to ease into it.
It’s usually not wise to make drastic changes to your caloric intake all at once. Now you have all your calorie calculations and have determined your optimal calorie level to reach your goal, compare that amount to what you’ve been averaging over the past few months. I recommend you spend a week logging your current typical daily intake before you started this program, as this will give you an idea of your current calorie intake.
If your current caloric intake has been substantially higher or lower than your new target amount, then you may need to adjust gradually over a few days.
For example, if your optimal caloric intake is 2600 calories per day, but you’ve only been eating two meals and 1500 calories per day for the past year, your metabolism may be sluggish from the low meal frequency and calorie intake. An immediate jump to 2600 calories per day might actually cause a gain in body fat if your body has adapted to the lower calories. A sudden increase would create a temporary surplus.
The best approach would be to gradually increase your calories from 1500 to 2600 over a period of weeks to allow your metabolism to gradually increase. Simply eat the same foods and the same number of meals, but gradually increase your portions to let your body acclimate.
The reverse is also true; if you’re eating a lot more than your recommended amount, it may be wiser to gradually reduce your calories than to drop them suddenly. Cutting too many calories too quickly often causes diet relapses because the change is too dramatic for some people to handle.
If you need to ease into your calorie and macro targets, simply adjust your meals as needed for your days of transition into the plan.
Here we are going to think of a number of meals that you can pick and choose on a day to day basis. As you think of them, write them down.
Each of these meals we create will contain:
1 – A LEAN PROTEIN SOURCE
These include eggs, turkey, chicken, lean red meats, fish, low fat milk, cheese or yogurt and protein powder.
Why do I recommend low fat options? Remember we want to control calorie density, and fat is more than twice as calorie dense as protein or carbs, so be careful to not spend too many calories on fats.
The protein will protect your muscle and reduce appetite.
For those that struggle to eat enough calories (naturally skinny people on a bulk):
Need help picking a protein powder? Click here for a great article.
Vegetarian? Vegan? No worries. Swap out animal protein sources for vegetarian sources such as soy, tofu, tempeh and vegetarian protein sources.
If you aren’t professionally diagnosed with a lactose intolerance, don’t try and remove it from your diet. Foods containing lactose have lots of nutritional value and removing it won’t help you lose weight any faster.
2 – A NATURAL FIBROUS OR STARCHY CARB SOURCE
Fibrous Vegetables – Asparagus, artichokes, broccoli, green beans, spinach, celery, brussels sprouts, peas, leafy salad greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, mushrooms, onions, zucchini, squash, eggplant, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, the list goes on!
Starchy Carbs – Yams, potatoes, corn, kumara, pastas, rice, lentils, oats, wheat, whole grain breads.
Fruits – Blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, pears, peaches, grapes, pineapples, papayas, banannas, grapefruits, nectarines, oranges, apples and kiwi fruits.
Look for as many ways as you can to pack in as many fibrous vegetables as you can into your meals. These are natural high nutritional quality foods that your body loves, fills you up and leaves you feeling great!
Make sure your starchy carbs are mostly from natural sources and keep added sugars and processed carbs away from your daily lifestyle and saved for occasional social events. The amount you include in your own personal diet
Fruits are loaded with healthy yummy goodness. Aim to get at least 1 – 2 fruits each day. Some fruits are full of fibre and high in nutritional quality while also low in calories. Experiment with different fruits and colours throughout the seasons of the year.
Because these are high in fibre, these foods help you maintain optimal digestion and it helps flush your body of toxins and waste. They are loaded with nutritional vitamins and minerals along with phytochemicals that have many health benefits.
Gluten intolerant? No worries, just stick with fibrous carbs and fruits. If your health professional allows, try spelt or quinoa.
If you aren’t professionally diagnosed with a gluten intolerance, don’t try and remove gluten from your diet. Gluten based foods have lots of nutritional value and removing them won’t help you lose weight any faster.
3 – DON’T ADD FATS JUST YET
There are loads of different tricks and ideas when it comes to making meals. The ideal meal is one you create yourself that you find tasty and that you enjoy eating.
Check out the recipes section for awesome ideas.
Here are a few quick ideas to get your imagination flowing:
BREAKFAST
LUNCH AND DINNER
SNACKS
Notes:
Now you have a bunch of wonderful and exciting meals in mind, it’s time to put them into your smartphone app, ready to go.
Now you’ve made your meals and you know how you’re going to ease into it:
OK, so from these steps onwards are what you will be doing day by day:
As you can see, this won’t be an exact science. You won’t be able to get your calories spot on if you can’t control every ingredient that goes into every meal. But that’s fine, just do the best you can and you’ll get it surprisingly close after a little practice.
When deciding on your foods for the day, choose natural unprocessed foods 90% of the time. Let 10% of your food basket be your so called “treat foods”. This approach allows for a healthy balance where you aren’t depriving yourself of any of the foods you love, you’re just consciously deciding to enjoy most of your foods from natural sources. How can you tell if the food is truly natural? Just ask yourself:
Did this food from DIRECTLY from a tree, plant or the ground, or did it walk, fly or swim?
If yes, then it’s natural. You’ve seen an apple tree in nature, but not an apple juice tree.
If you still have space remaining for fat grams, add some healthy fats.
If you have already gone over your fat target, look for the foods you’ve added that are high in fat and either reduce their quantity or swap them for a lower fat option.
When adding fats, look to get quality sources of omega 3 fats throughout the week from fatty fish like salmon, sardines and tuna. Other sources include ground flaxseed, walnuts and dark leafy greens.
Fat is good for you and it’s important to get enough, but not too much (due to its calorie density). At 9 calories per gram, you can easily use up all your calorie budget for the day and risk over eating if you consume too many fats. Yes it can be filling, but research has proven that it’s protein and fibre that are the real secrets to feeling fuller throughout the day.
Once you’ve put all your meals in place as best you can, have a look at your total grams for protein, carbs, fats and fibre. You’re hopefully somewhere in the ballpark to your calorie and macros target. If not its time to make some adjustments. If you are over or under on your protein, carbs or fats target then have a look at either adjusting the size of some of the foods or swapping out for different foods. It can take a little time but remember you only have to do this once for each menu you make.
Remember you don’t have to be nit picky when it comes to accuracy. As long as your macros are within 5 – 10 grams of your target then that’s fine. Once they are sorted, your total calories for the day should arrive somewhere close to your calorie target that you calculated earlier. If its 50 or so calories out, thats fine. Remember this isn’t an exact science.
Also sometimes, you won’t know everything meal you’ll have for the day in advance. In this case, it’s a matter of planning and logging on the fly. This needs a little practice, patience and experience of knowing portion sizes, calories and macros that just comes with practice. Below is an actual previous day I’ve had, and how I managed my calories for the day.
Example day of “planning and logging on the fly”:
Remember that your nutrition is not the whole story. Training along side your nutrition is what is needed for the results you want.
– Your CALORIES will cause your body to either store energy (hopefully as muscle) or use up energy (hopefully from fat).
– Your MACROS will give you the building blocks, energy and healthy function during each day.
– Your WEIGHT TRAINING is what signals your body to store excess energy as muscle or use reserve energy from fat.
– Your CARDIO will keep your metabolism elevated, improve recovery and ensure good health.
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