Controlling your energy balance

I’m all for people starting small on their health goals, and gradually building to bigger things. Whether they are starting with smaller goals, or starting on smaller day in and day out habits, it all helps. Something is better than nothing right? However, are you someone that has made smaller changes in your exercise and eating patterns in order to lose weight, but still feel like you are going nowhere? This post may be for you.

Let’s start with some common small changes people make to help achieve weight loss goals:

–       Drinking low fat milk instead of full cream milk

–       Swapping sugar for stevia/sweetener in your coffee

–       Eating only wholegrain versions of different foods (i.e. Brown rice, or multigrain bread)

Whilst changing certain habits each day may help, too often people are caught up in the minor changes, and not focusing enough time on the major things that would be most beneficial. This is what I call ‘majoring in the minors’.

Solely changing to low fat milk or eating more wholegrain foods isn’t going to make a difference if you are not eating less calories overall. The energy balance equation is what matters:

If you consume more than your maintenance calories each day (regardless of milk type, or whether wholegrain or not), you will put on weight. If you consume less, you will lose weight. So how do you measure your food intake? Track your food intake with an app like My Fitness Pal (as spoken about on a previous post here).

Needless to say, I still recommend that 80-90% of your food intake comes from whole and minimally refined foods for health reasons, and wholegrain foods are an important component in your diet due to their fiber content. But overeating is overeating regardless of the food type, so remember to keep focused on major changes such as controlling your overall food intake and overall activity level rather than minor changes, and I assure you this will make a bigger difference.

For specific nutrition coaching plans, feel free to email me on james@js-pt.com.au for any enquiries.