Level A

Level A is the simplest form of nutritional management, ideal for those who are just starting out with nutrition or for those who have far bigger things to worry about in their life; such as those who are extremely busy with a career or running a family home. This is also generally a nice place to end up after using the other methods long enough to have a keen intuition around food, as it’s by far the most sustainable over the longer term. Level A nutritional management focuses on a few very basic things which we outlined in a very brief way in the last module.

To use level A planning you would need a general idea of your calorie requirement as a means of framing nutrition properly, but you wouldn’t really make it a key day-to-day focus. Rather, this non-numerical nutritional approach is led primarily by food choice, portion size, consistency and adjustment at a very low level of analysis, all while using food labels to ensure you are consuming foods which will meet your macronutrient requirements without over-consuming saturated fats or added sugars. This means that you would, for example, eat 3 square meals per day using the portion control methods mentioned in module 5, along with a (preferably whole food) snack of choice when genuine hunger strikes. You would track what you have eaten to keep a record then after a given amount of time – say a week or a month, it is easy to assess the impact this has had upon other data points such as weight or waist measurements (covered later in this module) and decide whether an adjustment needs to be made. If it does, this is done in a very simple, straightforward manner. We’ll give you an example:

Let’s say that over a 2 week period you have consistently eaten 3 rounded meals and 1 whole food snack throughout the day, but on 3 days you have eaten ‘off plan’ in some way by adding an extra snack or eating a far more calorically dense meal than planned. If, during this time, your weight loss has stalled or weight has increased more than was desired, then over the next 2 week period you could simply make sure you only go ‘off plan’ once and see what happens as a result. If there is still no progress, you could tighten things up further by sticking to the plan 100%, or if you would rather not do this you could also use ‘unusual meal tracking’ method or create a ‘calorie sink’, both of which we will explain at the end of this module.

If you have stuck to a plan 100% but snacked 15 times over the week rather than 7, it would be prudent to look to stop snacking between meals and not change anything else. This habit change alone might cause significant weight loss.

Finally, if adherence has been high, it might simply be a case that removing a carbohydrate or fat source from one of your daily meals (or halving both) is needed to reduce your calorie intake.

By using this process (tighten up adherence, then reduce portions) it is easy to restrict your calorie intake or that of someone else, and therefore help move towards the calorie balanced needed to reach a goal, but it removes the need to look in depth at the numbers involved. All that has been done is to make wise and informed dietary choices. Protein may be a little lower than the hypothetical ideal for optimising body composition and of course calorie and macronutrient intake will go up and down day-to-day so results are not as predictable as they could be, but so long as your portion sizes remain relatively consistent then for the vast majority of the population this method will allow for improved health and lifespan while also maintaining a healthy weight.

There are a number of different ways to apply this approach but perhaps the easiest introductory method would be to plan out some core meals for a week using a simple table which has the days along one axis and the meals along another, similar to the below.

To use a table like this with yourself or a client, all you would need to do would be to decide on a preferred meal frequency and then fill in the gaps ensuring each main meal contains:

• A portion of lean protein, which along with the other portions of protein for that day makes up close to your total daily protein target
• 2-3 portions of fruits or vegetables, ensuring as much variety as possible throughout the day. Limiting fruits to two of those portions throughout the day isn’t mandatory but if weight loss is slow this could be a good adjustment to make – fruits are more calorie dense than non-starchy vegetables are
• A portion of starchy carbohydrates, using packet serving suggestions to guide you
• A portion of fats from minimally processed sources such as avocado, olive oil or cheese
• Foods which are chosen specifically because they aren’t especially hyper-palatable and are great at causing satiety (meaning generally whole foods as mentioned in the last module and carbohydrate sources rich in fibre). This will make internal appetite regulation a far more reliable metric of how things are going, and will also reduce any need to snack or desire to overeat

Ensure that any planned snacks are relatively low calorie and targeted towards a specific purpose. Would a pre-workout banana or handful of raisins be a good idea before a workout if it’s been a while since lunch? Would a protein shake after the gym be useful because it’s going to be quite a while before your next whole food meal? Is a mid-afternoon latte a habit that’s just too enjoyable to forego? Planning these in to your daily nutrition means that they are accounted for and recorded, and when adjustments need to be made it allows you to decide if removing these is a good idea or not.

Note: If you or a client are opting for 4 or more main meals per day, it would be wise to consider using level B tracking, because frequent ad libitum eating tends to result in a positive calorie balance simply due to having more opportunities to overeat. Level A tracking works best with a 3 meal approach, perhaps incorporating snacks if needed.

Once this is planned out, all that remains is to create a shopping list and buy everything needed; ideally only that for reasons we will discuss later in this course. From here a notes app or pen and paper can be used to record what choices you make throughout the week. Accuracy is critical here, especially for unplanned snacks and ‘off plan’ eating.

Inaccurate recording gives misleading data, and any adjustments made from misleading data are less likely to be as useful as they could be.

After a while when this is as a solid habit by which you can live, tracking and recording every day becomes less important as you will intuitively know approximately how much you should eat per sitting and what to do if you want to alter your calorie balance.

As a summary of level A:

• It is the easiest level to implement, but this comes with less accuracy and therefore a reduced ability to control results with precision relative to the other tracking methods
• Great for lifestyle dieting and long-term nutritional management, especially for those without extensive athletic or aesthetic goals. Great for those running households or those with busy careers
• Use portion control to build meals, ensuring you choose foods based upon your macronutrient needs and information on food labels
• Plan meals for the week wherever possible, and make sure that your kitchen contains everything you need
• Record food intake accurately and honestly, sticking to recommended portion sizes initially, then making adjustments as needed