Nutrition tips for beginners
If you are making changes to your diet to improve your health, your body composition and your training performance, follow my nutrition tips for beginners. Implementing these tips will take you a long way, and will apply to most of the general public. Individual cases or circumstances come with a degree of ‘it depends’, and may need tailored advice or recommendations.
Put an eating structure in place before worrying about small details. Get regular, set meals into your day - 2-4 meals per day. This will solve a lot of issues before they arise.
Don’t allow yourself to go hungry or more than 3-4 hours without a meal. This is where energy and blood sugar levels drop, and you’re more likely to make poor eating decisions.
Eat natural, single ingredient foods as much as possible. Meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, oils, a little dairy.
There’s a lot of truth in what the late, strength coach, Charles Poliquin used to say: “If it doesn’t swim, run, fly, or grow in the ground, don’t eat it”.
Most general population people would favour protein/fat in the early part of the day, and protein/carbs in the latter part of the day.
Eat a source of animal protein with every meal.
Men should be aiming for at least 1.5 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day. Women should be aiming for at least 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day. Spread your protein goal across your meals.
Daily calorie intake will, more often than not, be somewhere along the lines of 10-18 calories per pound of bodyweight. Spread your calories across your meals equally.
Hit your daily protein goal, and the rest of your calories will come from fats and carbs. Apply point number (5).
The more body fat you carry, the more back in time your eating habits need to be (think paleo principles).
If you want to see fat loss results yesterday (!), every meal should be; half the plate animal protein, the other half leafy green vegetables.
Good sources of animal protein: beef, lamb, salmon, sea bass, chicken, turkey, cod, mackerel, tuna.
Good sources of carbohydrates: white potatoes, sweet potato, fruit, rice, oats, couscous, quinoa.
Good sources of fats: butter, olive oil, coconut oil, red meat, oily fish, eggs.
Good sources of leafy green veg: spinach, kale, broccoli, cabbage.
If you are building muscle, eating higher calories, the more you will need to eat calorie dense foods.
If your goal is to drop body fat, the more you will want to eat high volume, lower calorie foods.