Nutrition and Goal-Setting for the New Year
It’s that time of year again! Many of us have been indulging with our food a bit since Thanksgiving and now we feel it’s time to “clean things up” for the New Year. Often during this time of year people feel an urge to dive into the latest fad diet or eliminate entire food groups all together.
Not surprisingly, most New Year’s resolutions that focus on dieting and weight loss fail because they are overly restrictive and focus on unrealistic goals, which we know is not a sustainable approach to nutrition.
Instead of having an elimination mindset, we can instead look at ‘what do I want to add?’ What are the things I'd like to incorporate more of?’ To say ‘I want to add an additional serving of a vegetable with each meal’ as opposed to ‘I can never eat bread again’ is a gentler approach and helps create balance in the way that we eat. This mindset can ultimately lead to sustainable change and more successful health outcomes.
So, for this New Year:
Don’t make weight-related resolutions
Focus on behavioral changes
Avoid fad diets
Instead, focus on realistic nutrition-based goals, and behaviors that you can add, not take away, such as:
1. Increasing vegetable intake
Try to have 1-2 servings of vegetables with each meal, this can be as easy of incorporating a handful of leafy greens into rice or pasta or throwing some chopped veggies into your morning eggs.
2. Eating more whole grains
Choosing whole grain pasta, bread or crackers can increase fiber, which is important for digestive health and helps us feel fuller for longer (see previous Tasty Tuesday post!)
3. Cooking more meals at home / meal prepping
Food from restaurants tastes so good because it typically has much more calories in the way of added fat and sugar than we would ever use at home. Try to cook just one more meal per week week using whole foods. To go even further, try to meal prep for a few days at a time. Roast a few meals worth of meat and veggies and cook grains. This gives us healthy ready-to-eat options for those times when we don’t feel like cooking.
5. Spending more time outside / in nature
Spending more time outdoors has been proven to relieves tress, elevate mood and even lower blood pressure, not to mention the added benefits of sun exposure for Vitamin D synthesis and melatonin production which helps us sleep better at night.
6. Getting more quality sleep
Sufficient sleep is crucial to overall health, and lack of sleep may even increase your risk of weight gain, heart disease, and depression. For those of us who lift weights, sleep helps muscles release protein-building amino acids into the bloodstream at an increased rate which helps them grow bigger and stronger over time. Sleep also helps to release growth hormones during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep which helps with muscle repair. Some research also shows that insufficient sleep can lead to weight gain by causes hormonal imbalances as well as decreasing your resting metabolic rate.
6. Practicing self-care
Taking time for yourself is it’s imperative for health and wellbeing. This is especially true for those in caretaker roles, such as parents and healthcare workers. Self-care doesn’t have to be elaborate or time consuming. It can simply mean taking a bath, curling up with a good book, preparing a healthy meal, going for a walk in nature, or getting an extra hour of sleep.
This time of year, it is important to reflect back on what you did well to improve your health- did you make it to the gym more often? Prioritize getting more sleep? Increased your intake of whole foods? Be proud of what you DID accomplish, not what you didn’t do, and be mindful to set realistic and sustainable goals going forward.
Happy New Year!
If you’d like to discuss nutrition and game plan some strategies to help meet your goals, book a one-on-one session with Carissa here !