Nutrition When Working From Home

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Working from home can bring with it new challenges and opportunities. It’s important to build productive and effective routines early that form healthy habits.

This blog will focus on Nutritional Strategies when Working From Home.

An important thing to remind yourself of is that you are in control and to think of the things you CAN do.

Here are 4 things you can control with your nutrition:

Remember just because you may not be training the way you normally would, it isn’t a licence to forget about your nutrition.

It’s more important than ever to stay healthy with a diet focused on Protein and Plants. 

Not caring about your nutrition simply because you can’t train optimally is just like spending all your money because you don’t have an income.

Both a relevant right now.

Don’t write them off.

It’s even more important to take care of your nutrition and your savings.

With working from home or being home more often, there will be new challenges and temptations. 

Try to use this time to develop skills in identifying barriers, problem-solving and coming up with possible solutions to test out. That’s what we all need to do now - identify barriers, test solutions.

Being at home a lot more could lead to these barriers with these potential solutions:

Barrier: More temptation to eat being near the kitchen >

Solution: Creating a supportive environment starts with shopping. Buy foods which support you (protein & plants) and limit purchases of foods which you struggle with appropriate portions. With your indulgences, if you do have them at home, keep them out of sight. 

Barrier: Less routine leading to more snacking > 

Solution: Maintain your meal schedule. How many meals do you usually eat in a day? Continue your usual habits with meal frequency. Me personally, it’s 4 meals around 4 hours apart. That gives me a solid time structure with my meals and if I’m thinking about food in between meals, it’s just a time to test hunger and see that it does come and go.
Solution: Calorie-free liquids. Boredom hunger can often be quenched with a glass of water or a sugar-free soft drink/cordial.

Barrier: Overeating is easier, as there is always something else to eat. Eg. you find yourself going for seconds, adding a dessert to more meals than usual > Mindful eating - eat slowly, taste the food, try to focus on the flavours, try to notice how it makes you feel and when you start feeling full.

Solution: When you portion out your meals put all the leftovers away before you start eating. It’s tempting when the food is still warm in the kitchen to have another plate. 

The next blog in this series will focus on 7 Tips to Build Healthy Habits when Working From Home.

If your circumstances, goals and schedule have changed recently, it might be time to get some more individual guidance to help support your nutritional needs. An FNC Coach can provide you with strategies that suit you and your lifestyle to help you remain in control of your nutrition and stay on track with your health and fitness goals.

Click the button below for more information on our 1 on 1 Coaching service.

The next blog in this working from home series provides you with 7 Healthy Habits.

To read, follow this link

Top tips to enjoy social events and occasions

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In the real world of fat loss dieting and healthful eating endeavors people are faced with instances (often social) where accurate tracking isn't viable nor should it be insisted upon, and/or they have limited control over their intake of food.

These are the instances where eating routine, habits, and schedule are out of whack whether it be for a party, event, holiday, wedding, etc. Rather than thinking these important contributors to total health need to be avoided, approaching and executing them well is the solution.

So here are my top 9 tips to avoid 'going backward' with your fat loss, or weight maintenance goals whilst still getting the most out of the occasion.

1. PLAN AHEAD, EAT A LITTLE LESS CARBS AND FATS THE DAY OF - on the day of an event/occasion involving food or Calories, reducing your intake of carbs and/or fats in the prior meals is not a bad idea to free up some extra room for the occurrence of higher Calorie intakes.

2. NAIL PROTEIN & PLANTS FIRST & FOREMOST. - consider the food order of importance, nail the things of most importance and the greatest positive influence on the suppression of the drive to eat. Ensure sufficiency of protein and plants before you reach for carb, fat dense foods.

3. FILL UP ON FIBRE - closely tying into point 2 but with the addition of wholegrains alongside fruit and vegetable matter. When in doubt just fill up on higher fiber plant matter. Even if you eat a lot of food, if 'food' means plant matter, you'll unlikely end up eating a lot of Calories.

4. FILL UP ON WATER & DIET DRINKS - Fill the stomach, stretch it out, drive down the urge to consume excessive amounts of food thereafter. Drink something prior to ordering, eating and/or if food is everywhere grab water or a diet soda.

5. DON'T USE LIQUIDS FOR CALORIES- Liquids do help fill you up, but in comparison to solid foods their effect on fullness is limited. So if you're going to consume Calories aim to make it from solids. If it's about alcoholic beverages, go for the lower Calorie options like vodka soda, or vodka diet coke.

6. SLOW DOWN YOUR THINKING AROUND FOOD. - slow down your thought process, ask logical questions, give yourself time, and think before you mindlessly grab food and shove it in your gob. If the food or more of it won't make your time better, and you don't really want to, then why eat it, if you need something in your hand, to eat, grab a diet coke.

7. SLOW DOWN YOUR EATING - Chew your food, eat slowly, encourage slower eating via smaller or less efficient utensils, have a chat during the meal all in a bed to let your hunger satisfaction catch up before you reach for more.

8. ALCOHOL = MINIMUM ENJOYABLE DOSE MINDSET WITH NO NEED TO TRACK IT. - There is a point where more drinks, won't yield much of a return on the enjoyment of the occasion, this is the point where you become that 'drunk idiot'. Estimate that point and understand going beyond it probably isn't worth it. IMO tracking alcohol and trading off carbs and/or fats to fit in drinks is overkill for most people. Simply freeing some additional Calories by consuming slightly fewer carbs and fats in the meals prior and exercising a logical moderation, or 'minimum enjoyable dose' limit of standard drinks works just fine without creating distractions from social occasions.

9. LOOK TO SAVE CALORIES WITHOUT EATING LESS FOOD - Consider the presence of lower fiber, Calorie-dense fat and/or carb-dense food, ingredients, cooking oils, dressings, sauces, and condiments. Reduce, moderate or even eliminate where possible. A low-fat approach is probably the easiest way to make this happen. Then refer to point number 2 and 3.

At FNC we understand social occasions involving Calories are part of a totally healthy human. Ask us for more practical ways you work towards your goals with your social and total health in mind.

TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT NUTRITION COACHING CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW

4 Factors of a Good Diet

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A very common question, that is easily answered via a self-assessment using the following 4 criteria / questions. 

Whether the following criteria are adhered to via a tracking or non-tracking / mindful eating method doesn't matter. Tracking might make assessment easier, which may be a needed to eliminate variables if tight control is required and/or if mindful eating dieting methods are not yielding progress. 

1. Calories. 
Is roughly the correct amount of Calories being consumed on average over time? For the goal of fat loss, this will be a deficit relative to energy expenditure, also terms an energy deficit, Calorie deficit or negative energy balance. 

2. Sufficient protein
Is a sufficient amount of protein being consumed access a daily basis? For the tracking crowd anywhere between 1.4-2g/kg per day will suffice. 

3. Sufficient plant fibre
Current recommendations stand at 15-18g per 1000 Calories consumed [1]. Of that 80% should come from plant matter. Current recommendations for fruit and vegetable intake start at around 300g, & 400g respectively [2]. 

4. Mostly wholefood food selection. 
Most of your diet should come from minimally processed whole foods with the general rule of thumb being 80%+. 

So before you message every Insta diet guru (most of which don't know much about much) just self asses 'the diet' in question against the above. There you will find your answer.  

Bonus factors. 

1. Post diet transition to maintenance eating. 
Sustainability of a diet is surprisingly not a factor here as doing something slightly unsustainable is perfectly fine provided someone has the ability to healthfully, and effectively transition into the post diet maintenance free from rebounds, development of disordered relationship with food etc. For this to be obtained often basic diet know-how, autonomy and education is required. Which begs the argument of another important factor of a successfully diet being; education & autonomy. 

2. Ratios & amounts of carbohydrates & fats. 
Are sufficient carbohydrate amounts being consumed to meet needs? For most 'general-pop' folks who have low levels of activity, and low/ if any training volume and intensity carbohydrate needs are low so how you fill the rest of your Calories after protein has been covered doesn't really matter, so use preference. 
For high-level athletes or those with high training demands carbohydrate needs may be hugely elevated compared to the typical so a carbohydrate bias ratio is almost certainly the best idea with fat intakes only meeting minimum requirements of about 1g/kg of body weight, or 20% of total intake. Typically speaking there are more benefits to learning towards a carbohydrate bias in most situations. Your "body type" is not a factor to consider here.

3. Meal frequency, meal timing, and nutrient timing. 
Again for most people the number of meals you eat, when you eat them and when you time certain macronutrients (Protein, carbohydrates, and fats) relative to the day or training doesn't matter so dedicate your stress elsewhere. 
For high-level sports, or physique athletes and/or goals, or those who are very lean looking to get leaner timing of meals but more specifically protein feedings matters. Ideally, protein should be evenly spread across waking hours in even dosages. Carbs should be emphasised around training to promote best training performance for sports progression and/or optimal muscle growth / retentive stimulus. Timing of fats doesn't matter a whole lot, but I see value in going on the lower end of fats in the pre training feeding window. 

[1] Dietary guidelines for American 2015-2020

[2] Australian dietary guidelines