I hope you are enjoying the fine weather!

Although the weather in Ireland is amazing at the moment, the photo above is actually from my recent holiday in Bali. It's not totally unrelated to this email, I promise....

One of the most common questions I received while on holidays was how I would maintain healthy eating practices while away. Personally, my goals do not require me to weigh and track my food while away, as that would be a pretty extreme practice that should be reserved for more extreme goals. Of course, if you simply enjoy doing that, that is completely cool. 

It got me thinking about how so many of us are virtually dependent on active tracking as a means of "eating healthy" (whatever that means for you). Realistically, there has to come a point where you step outside of your comfort zone and ditch MyFitnessPal, which is something a lot of people never really try to learn how to do. I say "learn" because like anything, eating a healthful diet without obsessive measuring is a skill. 

Personally, I probably actively track for no more than 50% of the year. If I am simply trying to maintain my weight or gradually gain weight, active tracking just isn't really a requirement. I think a lot of people can relate to this. If you have dieted down to a bodyweight/level of leanness you are satisfied with, then you don't necessarily need to keep tracking. 

Here are two of the most potent strategies you can implement to make this process easier (these are also helpful for dietary adherence in general, regardless of who you are):

Ideally, you want your days to be as consistent as possible. If 3 meals per day suits your schedule, then eat 3 meals every day. Your goal should be to make your meal timing as autonomous as things like brushing your teeth, making your bed, driving to work etc.. This is not because of the magic properties of specific meal times, but rather because behaviour change is far easier to sustain if you can make it autonomous. 

The second step to this is to make those meals pretty similar each day. I don't mean that you need to have the exact same thing every day, but having a degree of consistency will be very, very helpful in making your meals habitual. For example, rather than subjecting yourself to the decision fatigue of deciding every evening what you should cook for the next day, give yourself a rough framework; 1 portion of red meat, 1 fistful of a carbohydrate source and 2 fistfuls of vegetables. That way, you simply choose which meat, which carbohydrate source and which vegetables you want that day, as opposed to totally changing that structure each and every day.

Trust me, putting your nutrition on auto-pilot is going to make your life far easier. There are very little specific nutritional changes you can make that will outweigh the benefits of not worrying about the minutia. 

This somewhat fulfils the needs of part 1. The goal here is to foster a food environment that is conducive of healthy choices. This may include:

It sounds simple, but honestly, this is an incredibly potent "hack". Think about where most of your nutritional downfalls happen; they are probably in your own home, where you have the option of consuming convenience foods. If you created the barrier of having to go to the store to buy the same foods, you would be far less likely to go and buy these foods.

Everyone is so focused on theory these days that nobody actually sticks to a new behaviour change for long enough to see how it affects them. If you GENUINELY make these changes, I guarantee you will find adherence to healthful eating far easier, regardless of whether or not you actively track your nutrition. It just happens to be especially helpful that they are conducive of you controlling your caloric intake and reducing the decision fatigue caused by dietary choices, without any weighing, measuring or tracking.

Let me know how you get on.

Kind Regards,