We spend a lot of time talking about what we’re eating. It’s time to talk about how much we’re eating.
Meticulously planning / weighing / tracking food is a great way to ensure you tick all the boxes and you’re eating the correct amount of calories, however sometimes that’s just not viable and eventually we would love you to be in a position where you can be more intuitive with what you’re eating.
Here, we want to give you guys a great method to ensure you're getting everything your body needs, every time you sit down to eat a meal, whilst controlling your portion sizes.
This version of the ‘Ideal Plate’ is a great rule of thumb to follow. The goal here is to eat a 'mixed meal', prioritising nutrient-dense, whole foods every time we eat. This mixture of nutrients that we're about to discuss is the real key to long-lasting energy that will keep your calories under control whilst keeping you feeling fuller for longer and avoids any cravings / hunger pangs. We're talking about a source of protein, a source of dietary fats, a source of carbohydrates and a source of fruit or vegetables.
First off, it's important to note that we all have different preferences; some of us can't eat much at breakfast, some of us can't stomach certain foods in the morning, some of us don't like snacking and like to eat 3 big meals per day, whereas other people are the opposite. Therefore take this information and adjust it to fit your personal preferences and circumstances.
The word ‘protein’ comes from the Greek meaning ‘of first importance’, therefore it’s probably a good idea for the first thing to go on our plate to be a good source of protein. Regarding portion size, we want to aim for roughly a palm-sized portion, roughly the same area + thickness of the palm of your hand, which should equate to roughly 20-30g of protein. This will help with recovery from our workouts, help give us slower releasing energy as well as helping us feel fuller for longer.
Next up, we should look to include a portion of dietary fats, these have numerous health benefits but as we know, they tend to be more calorie-dense than the other macronutrients, therefore the portion size we chose is going to be smaller. We want to aim for roughly a thumb sized portion of fats.
Remember to include the fats that you cook with in this portion, i.e. if you use a tbsp of oil to cook in, then this counts towards that portion size, so you will need to adjust any other fat sources to fit with this.
Next up are our fruits and vegetables. These are packed with vitamins, minerals and fibre and tend to be quite low in calories… so we can go back to a larger serving size for this to help fill our meals out and provide us with lots of vitamins, minerals and fibre. We want to roughly aim for a fist sized portion with each and every meal.
Finally, we need to look at including some carbohydrates.
It’s worth mentioning that your calorie and carb requirements can vary greatly from person to person, based on their work, lifestyle and schedule.
Therefore if you are someone who is very active, you could benefit from eating more carbohydrates and if you are someone who is less active, you may want to eat fewer carbohydrates.
If you are someone who is extremely sedentary, then you may even wish to get more of your carbohydrates from fibrous sources and double up on your fruit and vegetable portions.
Regarding portion sizes with carbohydrates, we want to aim for between 1-2 fist sized portions of carbs in each meal depending upon your activity levels.
To bring this all together, each meal you can go through the following checklist to make sure you’re ticking all the boxes: