How to Easily Manage Your Food

Throughout most of our lives people have noticed that dealing with food is a hard thing to overcome. Whether it be losing or gaining weight, building muscle, or cutting down people always turn toward their food as the reason. And that is true--food is the biggest part of a well balanced diet and health regimen. The average dieter can lose up to twenty-five pounds with diet alone. The average workout enthusiast can work off forty pounds with the exercise alone. But why stop there, when you can double, or even triple, your gains/losses by combining diet and exercise. First is first, manage your food and everything will fall into place. You will feel better, look better, and become more motivated to workout and achieve your goals.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Find an old notebook, nothing special, lying around the house. Through one day without dieting, write down everything you eat…Everything. Before sleep, or after your last meal, look up how much each food item was in calories, carbohydrates, protein, and saturated fat. Most will be amazed in what they find.
2. Set goals for yourself. These are not necessarily goals, more like restrictions, but it mentally helps to view them as goals. Determine a range of calories, carbohydrates, saturated fat, and protein. Remember, going below 1600 calories can lead to starvation (depending on body mass), and passing 3000 will increase weight very quickly for most.
3. An example of this is a moderately active male weighing 230 pounds. Ideally, you want to stay around 2000 to 2200 calories, 150 to 175 carbohydrates, less than 6 grams of saturated fat, and 50 to 80 grams of protein. This will help lean the muscles and breakdown body fat.
4. Take the notebook you found and use it like a bible of food. With any- and everything you consume (food, drink) write the amount and nutrition facts. Writing down the information will enable you to keep yourself in check throughout the day instead of guessing if you’re over-eating or under-eating.
5. To take this one step further, and to make it easier, predetermine your meals the night before. Write down what you will have for breakfast and how much, perhaps even pre-prepare your lunch for work or school, and have a guideline for yourself at dinner. Knowing what your food intake will be before the day starts takes a lot of stress of the dieter. You know what to eat, how much, what is contains, the facts for it, and you don’t have to walk around writing everything you ate at the table guessing the nutrition facts. Plus, it saves a tremendous amount of time for the person on the go during the working days and nights.

Tips & Warnings

• This is a great technique for wrestlers staying under-weight and not having to cut.