Portioning

In the interest of preventing any of us from developing "dietary OCD". I feel that I would like to present a few base rules to make things pretty well fool proof when it comes to what you should eat, how much, and when.

After making the decision to fully commit ones self to truly healthy eating, one may become vexed with how much they should actually eat in order to loose weight and perform optimally.

The other problem people sometimes develop (which plagues me regularly) is the inability to actually stop eating, so without some outside factor telling them when to stop, they will just eat until they can't fit any more in. Now I have personally seen people still loose weight and come pretty darn close to their weight loss and fitness goals while eating massive amounts of food in each sitting (myself included) as long as they pay close attention to the quality of those foods they eat. But eventually one needs to realize how much they should be eating in order to perform optimally and not carry excess weight.

So here I'd like to present a few basic rules to keep things simple and guarantee you success.

1. Quality always comes first. - Always put the quality of your food as top priority. If you drove a $100,000 sports car you would only put the very best fuel in it. Treat your body the same to get optimal performance

2. Quantity comes next. If you use top fuel you will get top performance but eventually you need to realize how much you need to fill the tank without flooding the engine (sorry about all the bad car analogies). Here is an easy fool proof way to do this. Assuming you eat three meals a day, take your plate and divide it into thirds. Fill one third of that plate with protein and the other two thirds with veggies. Splash on a healthy fat source such as olive oil and you have a very well balanced meal. This is an extremely easy method that gives a very good ratio of all the macro nutrients.

3. Meal timing. - Meal timing is something more of a compliment to the other two. This mainly refers to intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is a tool that is used to fine tune the other two but should not take precedence. I love fasting, it makes me feel great but if I get truly hungry, I eat no matter how long I have been fasting. Think of intermittent fasting as a means of tweaking the other two rules. When used properly, it makes the first two rules work more efficiently. But if you don't pay attention to quality and quantity IF will only get you so far. Use it when it is convenient to do so, but don't flog yourself if you break a fast it's not the end of the world and you have to listen to your body. It will tell you if you need to eat.

So there you have it. My hierarchy of nutrition. Quality, comes before quantity, which comes before timing. follow these simple rules and you can't fail. You'll feel great, look great and perform great in life and sport.

My next post will be on Omega three Fish oil and why I feel that everybody should be using it. It is part two to my post on supplements. Be sure to check in regularly and provide feedback. I always appreciate your thoughts and suggestions.

Yours in health and fitness
Joey