Last week I started doing something I haven’t done for a while….I started tracking my food and eating. I haven’t done this in years and to be honest, this isn’t a practice that I recommend people do all of the time, but occasionally and for defined periods of time it can be very useful. I decided to track my food because I have recently come out of a period where my nutritional demands have changed dramatically with the recent arrival of my baby twin girls!
I was really fortunate that I felt good during my pregnancy, I had a few weeks of ‘morning sickness’ but this eventually eased and really just turned into ‘I need to eat frequently and I need some carbohydrates now’. This style of eating was quite different for me, coming from a fat adapted, athletic base of making sure I ate plenty of protein and good fats (up to 50% of my calories used to come from fat) to becoming so ravenous for carbohydrates during my pregnancy. At times these cravings for carbohydrates would lead me into the biscuit aisle of the supermarket where I would find myself gazing at the bright packets, mesmerised by the lure of sugar. I used to call my husband to ‘talk me down/out’ of the aisle before I came home with 10 packets (that he would probably have to help me eat!!). This was all very new to me, I never craved processed foods like this before falling pregnant so it was quite an eye opening experience. To move past it, I ultimately reminded myself of my health values, the importance of what I put into my body and how it would impact on my baby girls growing inside me and sought out much healthier carbohydrate sources!
But back to now, postpartum, with two high energy bubba’s who I am still breastfeeding now 8 months of age. So my energy demands are still elevated because of the breastfeeding but I was starting to notice that I was get a little ‘cuddlier’ than I had been previously and more so than I like to feel. When I first noticed this, I did the normal things like taking out any indulgent foods that I had been eating more out of comfort than anything else (goodbye dark chocolate after dinner) and increased my exercise minutes in the week but I didn’t notice a big change…so that was when I thought I would take a closer look at my nutrition.
I often share with clients that body shape changes are 80% nutrition and 20% exercise based…and I have the personal experience here to prove that. Upon eating what had become a ‘normal’ day of eating for me, I discovered that I was about 800 calories per day above where I should be if I wanted to drop a little body fat! Oops!! Good feedback!! Just to put this into perspective, this was easily a whole large dinner meal too much and 500 additional calories per week can increase body weight by 450g per week.
How did this happen? Simple. Changing nutritional demands changed my eating habits and what I thought was normal so I didn’t think anything of it until I looked a little deeper. It can happen to us all at any time. Might be after a holiday, after training for a fitness event, pregnancy, recovering from a injury and many other changes in lifestyle.
So I have been reminded of the importance of tracking your food every now and then. I definitely promote ‘trusting your gut’ as a day to day approach to healthy eating, this is generally less stressful and less likely to create those cravings that happen when you tell yourself you can’t have something. Also as a additional note…I don’t believe that counting calories is the key to making body shape changes. It is more important to focus on the quantity and quality of macronutrients you are eating but in my case this week, 800 calories was the telling factor for the results I was getting. Macronutrients vs calories is a topic for another blog…stay tuned!
Until next time…
Sharon
