Essential Nutrition Habits:The Best 5 That You Can Start Today

Essential nutrition habits allow you to eat for performance and health. By following some of the habits that we outline it will become easier. We are giving you the exact habits that we instill with our own clients.

ESSENTIAL NUTRITION HABITS

HABIT #1 CREATE A MEAL LIST

Creating a meal list is one of the most effective strategies that we have found for nutrition. It allows you to eat the foods that you like. It also works because it helps you discover the appropriate portion sizes for your meals.

We break our meal list into

• Breakfast
• Lunch
• Dinner
• Snacks

For each meal give yourself 3-5 different options that fit your health, performance and body composition goals.

HABIT #2 HAVE PROTEIN AT EACH MEAL

Clients we work with will see big changes when they start having enough protein in their diet. A really easy way to achieve this is making sure you have protein at each meal. Which is therefore a really easy process when you have created your meal list.

A really simple day might have

• 2 servings of 150-200 grams of beef, chicken or fish
• 1 protein shake
• 150 – 200 grams of Greek Yoghurt
• 2-3 eggs

If you spread that over your meals that is more than enough to get you started.

HABIT #3 LEARN TO MEAL PREP

One of the hardest habits to stay consistent with when we ask people that we work with. Life can be hard as we have different things pop up which make us time poor. However, this is one habit that you have to stick with the long-term if you want to be successful.

Some of the easy thing that you can do to start implementing this habit are

• Block out time during your meal prep day – for most people this is some time on Sunday
• Try and be as efficient with your meal prep as possible – feel free to write down the steps you need to do
• Always go for simplicity and you can add things later – a good example is adding sauce, herbs or other things to your pre-cooked meat

HABIT #4 DRINK WATER OFTEN

Easier for some and harder for others therefore this is aimed at the people who find it harder.

Another important point to realise is that if you exercise this must be taken into account. Some really good recommendations for water consumption we have seen are

• Per 25kg of bodyweight 1 litre of water per day
• Have at least 5 clear urinations per day and at least 2 of those after training (http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showthread.php?t=10257)

HABIT #5 VEGETABLES AND FIBRE ARE YOUR FRIEND

Vegetables and fibre are definitely your friend from keeping you regular to getting those micronutrients. A really simple thing to do is add them to each meal and spread them throughout the day.

A really great resource to work what 9 servings of vegetable and fruit looks like check out the following links

Here Are 10 Pictures of Your Daily Recommended Servings of Fruits & Vegetables

The Meal Plan to Get 9 Servings of Fruits and Vegetables Every Day

IN CLOSING FOR ESSENTIAL NUTRITION HABITS

A recap of the essential nutrition habits

1. CREATE A MEAL LIST
2. HAVE PROTEIN AT EACH MEAL
3. LEARN TO MEAL PREP
4. DRINK WATER OFTEN
5. VEGETABLES AND FIBRE ARE YOUR FRIEND

All of these habits certainly will help you with your health, performance and body composition. In saying that it is still a process in implementing each one in your life. This is because it can be tough to understand how to make them fit for you. I can guarantee though after working with many clients they make a big difference.

If you need help with your journey we would love to help you