Constructing a diet and how you diet has 3 main considerations – Physiological, Psychological and Satiety. Of course there is other ‘’environmental’’ factors like schedule convenience, financial and preparation but they are what I like to call secondary consideration. Oh and how could I forget COMMON SENSE and MODERATION? Anyway back to the main topic. Long term dietary adherence with a complete and balanced dietary intake is THE most important factors for health and body composition. Assuming everyone is up to speed with flexible dieting and understanding individual nutritional targets, this is how you go about using PERSONAL PREFERENCE in constructing your dietary intake that accounts for physiological, psychological and satiety requirements. Generally we will have a set of macronutrient targets (protein, carbohydrate, fats and fibre) that we go off as the basis for our food intake. Micronutrient (vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients etc) targets are a little harder to calculate, monitor and such. This is where eating flexibly and smart will pay off from a physiological health requirement. Oh the pure clean eaters, the brosephs, the fitness and bodybuilding types, please take note that when we talk about flexible dieting and dieting in a flexible manner and using macronutrient targets as the basis of our food intake, WE DO NOT eat a diet that is just whey protein, ice cream, poptarts, chocolate, quest bars and a multi-vitamin pill. Your extremists’ ideology is completely misguided and just as extreme as your 5 clean food diet. Now you’d be surprised but the 5 clean eater’s food types tend to be found in many flexible dieters’ dietary intakes. Wow so really we are just undercover clean eaters? Hmmm not sure I’d say that. We are more SMART eaters than anything else. I will make note that just because a food is ‘’processed’’ that DOES NOT mean it is nutritional void and simply calorie dense. Hell coconut oil is processed and contains NO nutritional value other than being calorie dense. Yet somehow that is perfectly fine if you speak to clean eaters! Yes logic is strong. Back on topic (again). As I mentioned trying to track, monitor and calculate mincronutirent needs and intakes is probably the most difficult thing to do dietary wise. However, when choosing your food types, if you are using and consuming a wide variety of foods (primary whole foods are the most nutritionally dense) you will be getting a larger range of nutrients in your diet. For example, you can either have one kilo (total) of three different vegetables or you could have that same kilo yet use five different vegetables. Which one is going to be offering the more complete nutritional range to your diet? Yes of course the five different vegetables will be offering a far greater spectrum of nutrients. Now do you need to do that every day? No. It can be a different variety of vegetables used each week, the simple point being the more variety you use, the better the chance of having a complete nutritional intake and less chance of micronutrient deficiencies. The same goes for meats, fruits, grains, nuts & legumes. All of those food types have varying micronutrient densities and compositions (as well as differing macronutrient composition). In the context of constructing ones diet ALL FOODS will have their place in one way or another and in differing quantities. Having a diet with a larger food type options will certainly help meet the 3 main dietary considerations – Physiological, psychological and satiety. Not to mention my point from the last paragraph, ‘’the more variety you use, the better the chance of having a complete nutritional intake and less chance of micronutrient deficiencies’’. When meeting your macronutrient needs by using variety in your food choices so you can also meet a wider range of your micronutrient requirements, you DO NOT have to meet 100% of your calorie and macronutrient targets with nutrient dense whole food types. This is where psychological aspect comes into play. Now of course, with all your whole food choices you are eating the foods you enjoy the taste of while satisfying your dietary satiety considerations. A diet isn’t going to work (for long) if you are either too full to eat all your required food OR you are still hungry after eating all your food. So if by choice and you psychologically you truly enjoy your diet made up completely of nothing but meat, veg, fruits and grains then all power is with you. However, if as mentioned you use a wide variety of food types (typically whole foods) you can certainly allow for parts of your dietary intake to be made up of more tasty treats that are less nutrient dense food types. Rule of thumb and what some initial research has suggested, is that if a wide variety of nutrient dense food types have been used in your diet, you could still meet the vast majority of nutritional needs even if you consumed approx. 20% of your daily calories from nutritional sparse food types. Let’s put that into perspective, for some individuals 20% of their daily calories could be 600 calories. That would allow for some decent tasty not so nutritious treats. For others 20% might be 200 calories. Yeah, you are not going to get a whole lot. So what are your options? Well first thing is of course you don’t have to go out of your way to fit in a treat. The beauty is you can IF you so choose to. If you don’t have much to ‘’play with’’ on a daily basis, of course you could save it up and use it at a later date. For instance, you could save yourself 100 calories a day and then come a day where you have an outing it will then allow for more freedom and flexibility in your food choice for that occasion. See what I mean about flexible diet and dieting in a FLEXIBLE MANNER. I just think it is all pretty easy, simple and logical, not to mention the 3 main consideration are achieved.
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 22:10:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015