Thriving Not Surviving - Part III: Good Nutrition

Welcome back! In Part I, we looked at the formula for feeling physically awesome. In Part II, we looked at how to increase your activity to benefit your health. Now time for Part III, and how to nutritionally support your new healthy lifestyle.

So we’ve got our activity nailed. Our NEAT is up, we’re fitting in a few training sessions a week... Things are going in the right direction.

But what about nutrition?

It’s extremely important to get this one right too if you have any goals around improving your health and fitness.

Being under-nourished can lead to fatigue, demotivation, irregular hormone function, fat gain, muscle loss, poor exercise performance and illness.

It’s not uncommon for someone who is relatively new to exercise to push it hard in the first 2-3 weeks, then fall ill, fatigued and subsequently demotivated. This is even more likely to happen if they’ve drastically reduced their food intake at the same time.

With your increased activity comes increased needs from your diet. Your body needs more fuel to perform the increased workload. This comes in the form of Calories*.

There’s a reason your car has a fuel gauge- it’s important for you to know how far you can go before you grind to a halt on the M1. It stops you from guessing how much fuel you need to complete your journey and if you’ll need to fill up again en route.

Understanding your body’s approximate caloric needs will help you to understand how much fuel your body needs to keep it going and performing optimally.

You don’t need to obsess about Calories, though an understanding of your requirements will always help you get the most from your exercise. If you've found you've been gaining unwanted weight, this is a good exercise to see where it's coming from too.

How to work out your approximate daily calorie requirement:

Use the Schofield equation on the GlobalRph site- https://globalrph.com/medcalcs/schofield-equation-bmr/

This will give you a number for your basal metabolic rate (the Calories you burn daily by existing), and your Total Daily Energy Expenditure or TDEE (the Calories you burn daily including your exercise and lifestyle activity).

If your goal is simply to maintain your weight, then you want to be eating in line with your TDEE.

To gain weight, you need to eat above it, to lose weight, you need to eat below it. Your TDEE here is an estimation, and may need some monitoring and tweaking, but it’s a good place to start. Just be careful not to reduce or increase the calories too drastically either way. Start around 300-500 calorie difference daily, and review every 2-4 weeks.

For body composition change, other factors are important too, such as exercise selection and frequency, but in terms of Calories that’s the basics. To track your food intake, use the myfitnesspal app, it’s excellent. I recommend tracking rigidly for 10 days or so start with. It's an eye-opener to understand where the calories are coming from.

After the total calorie number, you need to ensure you’re getting enough quantities of your macronutrients: protein, carbohydrates and fat. Protein and carbs have 4 Calories per gram, fat has 9.

Ensure that you’re getting enough protein- at least 25% of your total Calories is a good guideline, and more if your exercise programme is rigorous. Protein is essential for repair and recovery.

Carbohydrates are important for performance and personally I don’t advocate a low-carbohydrate diet to my clients. Typically I’ll set a minimum of 30% of their total Calories from carbs, more if they’re training for strength, endurance and performance.

Dietary fat is important for helping fuel your body’s aerobic energy system, and also for vitamin absorption and insulating your organs. Aim for around 20-35% of total Calories, and prioritise ‘good’ fats daily, just bear in mind that ‘good’ fats are still 9 Calories per gram, just like ‘bad’ fats.

On top of the above, prioritise nutrient dense foods, including 5-9 portions of fruit and veg per day in order to take in adequate levels of vitamins, minerals, fibre and antioxidants.

That concludes Part III of our blog! It’s by no means an exhaustive guide to nutrition, though hopefully it helps you to understand the importance of adequately fueling your body for activity. Stay tuned for Part IV, good rest.

* If you’re wondering why Calorie is written with a capital C here, it’s because we’re talking kilocalories. A kilocalorie is actually equivalent to 1000 calories (with a small c), a calorie being the energy requirement to heat 1g of water by 1 degree Celsius. We use kilocalories (or Calories) as standard when we’re talking about nutrition. Everyday’s a school day!