Check Your Eating Habits  

No matter what your goals, everybody will benefit from a healthy eating plan. It's all about giving your body the nutrients it needs to get its job done.  

First it is important to look at your current nutritional intake - What are you eating now? 

STEP 1:
Keeping a diet diary for a couple of days means you can take an accurate look at your diet and assess it. Write down all food and liquids consumed and BE HONEST! If you don't know what you are doing now, how can you improve?  

STEP 2:
Take a look at your diet from the last couple of days and highlight or circle everything that falls into the categories below: 

• High in sugar (lollies, cakes, biscuits, chocolate etc)  
• High in fat (fast food, chips, pies, etc)  
• Highly processed (does the food resemble the original food it came from??) 

These foods you have highlighted are an "occasional food", i.e. something you consume once or twice a week and in small quantities. If you have a lot of highlighted or circled things on your diet diary - this is a good place to start making changes.  

Next, put a BIG tick or smilie face next to any of the following foods: 

• Fruit  
• Vegetables  
• Salad  
• Fish  
• Chicken / Poultry (with all visible fat and skin removed)  
• Red Meat (with all visible fat removed)  
• Wholegrain bread / cereals / pasta / rice  
• Baked beans / Kidney Beans / Legumes / Lentils  
• Low Fat Milk / Yoghurt  
• Cheese  
• Avocado  
• Nuts / Seeds (raw and unsalted) 

These are the foods that you want to make up most of your diet. They contain the essential nutrients that help maintain and repair your body.  

Specific eating behaviours linked to poor nutrition in children include: 

• skipping meals, especially breakfast 
• snacking on foods of poor nutritional value and neglecting to eat nutritious meals 
• regularly choosing snacks which are high in fat, salt or sugar 
• regularly choosing sweet drinks rather than plain water to quench thirst
  (NH&MRC, 2003).  

The CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet (http://www.csiro.au/science/TWD.html) is a recommended diet which I am in agreement with after much research myself into this area. It has a healthy balance of nutrients for active people. The book contains information about all nutrients as well as menus with suggested daily food intakes.  

The Nutrient Breakdown for the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet is as follows: 

·         Carbohydrate 36% - (Vegetables, Fruits, Breads, Cereals, Pasta, Rice, etc) 

·         Protein 33% - (Fish, Poultry, Red Meat, Eggs, Dairy, etc) 

·         Good Fats 20% - (avocado, fish, flaxseed oil, nuts, seeds, canola oil, linseed oil, green leafy vegetables) 

·         Saturated Fats 6% - (meat, dairy, margarine, butter) 

·         Alcohol 3% - Keep an eye on the size of the glass! Standard sizes are as follows: 

o    Wine - 150ml 

o    Beer - 375ml 

o    Spirits - 60ml 

Check your nutritional intake against these guidelines and look for areas that could use some help.  

The easiest way to check whether your daily eating pattern is falling within the CSIRO guidelines is to use an online database such as www.calorieking.com.au This is a FREE online site where you can input all the foods you eat daily and it will give you a reading of your protein: carbohydrate: fat ratio. It should be falling around this ratio 40:30:30. This is an excellent indicator of where you are at with your food intake. 

Recommended Caloric Intake
(To lose weight, simply reduce this amount by 500 calories per week. To gain weight, simply increase this caloric intake by 500 calories per week.)

·         For teenage girls 15-18 years, the caloric input should be around: 2110 calories.  

·         For teenage boys 15-18, the caloric input should be around: 2755 calories 

However, this also depends on activity level, height and weight. Please check this website for more personalised information: http://www.vitalhealthzone.com/health/tools/recommended_calorie_intake_calculator.html

For those keen for more information on healthy eating, the following are recommended websites: 

www.smartshape.com.au

www.health.ninemsn.com.au
 

While it is important to eat the right foods - eating the right amount is just as important. If you have cleaned up your diet but aren't seeing the desired results, maybe it is the amount of food rather than the type of food that is holding you back.  

The reverse can also be true - if you cut your food intake down too low your body can resist losing body fat and start losing muscle. Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is a measurement of how much energy you need in your day to complete all the basic internal processes. If you go below this level, your body will go into survival mode.  

"Obviously food is in short supply, lucky I have some extra fat set aside just in case! But I don't want to waste it, first I will become more efficient - if I get rid of some of my muscle, I'll be able to survive on these rations and I won't have to dip into my reserves just yet."

Once you lose muscle your BMR drops (meaning you require less food to complete the normal daily processes) and this is why fad diets often result in the dieter losing weight and then putting it back on (sometimes with re-enforcements). Once you stop the diet and go back to your normal eating habits there is a bigger gap between the energy you are feeding in and the energy you are using up.  

Losing body fat is all about one simple equations: 

Energy Expenditure > Energy Input

RULE: Use more energy (move!) than you consume.  

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY : Energy (food) input must be the best quality possible for best nutrition (this is NOT the place to save money – either you pay for the better food now and less health problems later, or you pay for the doctors later…either way, you pay!) You will find that the healthier the food input, the more you can eat of it in terms of calorie intake because the healthier the food, usually the lower the calorie! However, the healthier the food, the less you need of it so in reality you actually SAVE money, especially when you compare it with the cost and nutrition level of the foods you eat now!