Key principles from modules 1-4

Over the last four modules we have covered all you need to know about nutrition for health and weight maintenance.

You know how many calories you need to reach and remain at a healthy weight, you know how much protein, carbohydrate and dietary fat to include, you have an understanding of the importance of micronutrients and a practical means by which you can ensure you consume enough. You know what hydration is and how to maintain it, and you appreciate how much fibre you should really eat and why.

To recap, here’s what we have covered in modules 1-4:

• Your primary consideration when looking at nutrition for improvements in health is to achieve and stay at a healthy weight. This is done by manipulating calorie balance first and foremost
• To calculate your ideal energy balance, first estimate your resting metabolic rate (RMR) then apply a multiplier which takes your activity levels into consideration (TDEE). After this, if weight alteration is your goal, add or reduce calories by an amount in line with the rate at which you want to lose or gain weight. Remember that the faster things change, the harder it is to maintain, so ensure the magnitude of difference which you attempt to create is in line with your ability to make it happen (for example, the faster you lose weight, the hungrier and more lethargic you are likely to be)
• Then consider your protein needs which will be based on your current or goal bodyweight
• After that, decide on your fat and carbohydrate intakes which should be based around preference and your activity levels
• Next, make sure that you are consuming a wide range of diverse foods to ensure an adequate micronutrient and fibre intake. If this is not possible for you for any number of reasons, consider looking more closely at your micronutrient and fibre intakes using a relevant tracking method to spot any shortcomings and use dietary or supplemental intervention to compensate
• Get into the habit of drinking when you are thirsty rather than ignoring it, and don’t be afraid to lightly salt food if your diet is likely to be low in sodium

Now, while this is all you really need to know in terms of the technicalities of nutrition, we haven’t really begun to cover how exactly you use this information to make a real change to your diet or that of someone you are in contact with. Just like it’s not enough to know that squats are a good exercise to develop your lower body, you need to know how to do them, it’s not enough to know how much food you need to eat – you need to know how to implement that into your life.

So far, we have talked in terms of numbers, percentages and microscopic molecules, and for good reason. We want you to understand nutrition from a micro level (what is a protein) all the way up to a macro level (how much chicken should I eat with lunch?), and from this point onwards in this manual we will be looking far more at the latter and all of its nuances. You know why you should eat certain nutrients and so we don’t need to go back over these points to justify our position – now we need to show you how to make sure you get enough food, and how to achieve the calorie and macronutrient balances that you need to reach the goals.