When it comes to a healthy life, diet is the most important part. Exercise is extremely important. However, it is possible to be healthy by eating a healthy diet with a mediocre fitness plan. It is not possible to be healthy with a great fitness program but a crappy diet. This does not mean you have to dive into fad diets or something super serious like counting macros. You may eventually work your way into something like keeping track of your protein intake. However, we’ve discovered over the years of helping clients with their diets that small changes can make huge differences in overall health and fitness. Counting macros isn’t necessary for a large portion of the population, and may actually cause more health issues than it is worth.
That’s why we designed the Practice Diet Revolution. The goal of the program is to teach you how to make smart diet choices that fit within your every day life. This isn’t anything magical. We aren’t going to tell you what to eat and what not to eat. And, yes, it is going to take some time and effort on your part. However, you will learn how to organize your diet, your life, and develop the desire to choose the healthy option over the easy option.
What Makes It Practical?
We don’t like this question because we feel so hokey answering it. How many times have you heard that this or that diet is perfect for your life? We don’t want to be another diet program making those “sales pitch” claims. The reason we call it practical is because we don’t try to force you into a box. Instead of telling you that you can eat this or you can’t eat that, we help you learn to make smart choices in your life regarding when to eat, what to eat, and a basic idea of how much to eat. Don’t have time or the desire to weigh and measure your food? Great, we will help you learn to eyeball it. Still want to indulge at the birthday party? We agree that you should feel like you can. We will help you organize the rest of your diet so indulging doesn’t equal five pounds. Going on a work trip? Let’s sit down and figure out the best way to stay healthy while traveling.
It’s practical because we are doing to best with your purpose and motivation.
What’s the Diet?
Let’s get one thing clear, a “DIET” is simply what you eat. The word has become associated with eliminations, limitations, short term, extreme, or fad programs. However, really, your diet is simply what you eat. You could have a good diet, a bad diet, a meat-filled diet, or a vegan diet.
Similarly, nutrition describes the contents of that diet. Nutrition, or “nutrient,” is the content of the food we eat that is used by our body for energy, repair, growth, hormonal regulation, etc. A nutrition program focuses on the contents of our diet. For nutrition, we are focusing on the protein content, or the type of carbohydrates, or the micronutrients found in foods like vegetables.
In the Practical Diet Revolution, we focus first on what you are eating. We focus on your diet. Along the way, you will develop a nutrition program without really focusing on one. Over time, once you are happy with your diet, and you are ready, we can start to focus more on developing a formal nutrition program.
Why is This Program Revolutionary
A revolution is a sudden, radical, complete change. Controlling your diet isn’t an easy thing. Sometimes it takes radical change in your daily schedule, or your understanding of food, to get you to meet your dietary goals. We all fall into habits that are easy. It’s human nature to take the path of least resistance. However, with today’s technology to mass produce food items for us to eat, easy food often isn’t healthy. It is processed food packed full of calories, sugar, salt, and chemicals. Therefore, a healthy diet forces us to change from our conventional thinking and reframe what we’ve learned in the past. You may have to suddenly remove something like cookies from your daily diet, or add something simple liking drinking water.
Figuring out what information out there is credible isn’t an easy task either. Whether it is paleo, zone, keto, intermittent fasting, vegan, vegetarian, or whatever diet program you’ve heard of, there are common themes. Themes like eating all natural food until you are full, but not stuffed. Sometimes, we need to start by helping you change what you are reading or seeing when it comes to helpful information about what to eat.
Looking More at The Practical Diet Revolution
It’s taken us a few years, lots of clients, and some advanced education to come up with a program that we think can get just about anyone eating a healthy diet. You need to come with some motivation and be ready to put in some work. However, we will take you through the steps you need to regain control and reach whatever goal you have. As you move through the process, you might find that you are happy staying at one particular step (like learning to use your hands as a reference to control portions). If so, that’s great. We’ve discovered what works for you.
We start with consistency. Consistency is key to achieving any goal. Consistency comes in many different forms. Sometimes it means consistently avoiding unhealthy snacks. It might also mean consistently eating three meals every day. Consistency might mean you are trying to plan meals once a week, or going to the grocery store on the same day each week. When it comes to diet, for example, we might start by working on three consistent meals every day around the same time of day.
From there, we start to look at your diet, what you are eating. It’s great that we have you eating three times a day, but are you eating all fried food and pasta? Can we start to sub in a salad here or there instead of french fries? Can we remove the bun from the burger you have on Friday night? These are all small steps that you are willing to make. That’s what makes this diet practical. If you are happy eating pizza once a week, and you are still meeting your dietary goals, then we aren’t going to demand that you remove the pizza from your diet. It’s once you stop reaching your goals that we have to take a stronger stance on those unhealthy options.
After we’ve consistently cleaned up your diet, now it is time to start controlling your portions. You can overeat fruits, starches, fats, and even vegetables. However, you don’t need to pull out your scales and measuring cups just yet. We give you a simple system that uses something attached to you at all times, your hand. You use your hand to gauge rough portions of what you are eating. Over time, you develop an eye for guesstimating, but in the beginning, we work to get some specifics. For example, we might ask you to eat seven handfuls of vegetables a day. Or, we might ask you to try to eat five fist sized pieces of meat each day.
If that is starting to sound like weighing and measuring, it is, kind of. That is where most people stop in the Practical Diet Revolution process. There are only a few people who are so dedicated to big time goals that they want to move on to actually weighing and measuring macronutrients (“macros”). The three macros found in food are protein, fats, and carbohydrates. For starters, we try to get everyone to level out their macros into: 40% carbohydrates, 30% fat, and 30% protein. That’s considered a good baseline for anyone. Once that proportion is consistent, we can move on to specific macro breakdowns if that is needed or desired.
Someone who is a top level athlete, or trying to really focus on a fitness goal, or other health related goal, might want to move into step five, adjusting portions. For an elite runner, we night increase carbohydrates and decrease protein. For a bodybuilding, we might increase protein and decrease carbohydrates. The final step in this process is where most people think they have to start and can fail because of really fast burn out. This is an extreme step and should only be maintained for a short period of time. We are often depriving ourselves of something at this step and that deprivation can cause serious problems in our bodies.
Regardless of where you are in your diet, you fall somewhere along the process of the Practical Diet Revolution. Once we have a picture of where you are and where you want to be, we will help to lay out your plan. We move to the next step only when you are ready. If you decide to stay at one particular step, that’s ok. We will help keep you accountable along the way.
If you are curious about how we can really help you, fill out this contact form. We will reach out soon!
