Stop using moderation as a weight loss strategy unless you’ve done this first
Restriction diets aren’t my jam. I’ve done them, hated them and the real kicker is that I ended up gaining more weight back than I lost. I always loved the idea of just eating in moderation but it didn’t seem to work for me mostly because I didn’t really know what moderation was supposed to look like! It wasn’t until I learned about my personal nutritional needs that I understood what moderation looked like and how to make it work for me.
The biggest reason that eating in moderation doesn’t work is because it’s just too broad of a term. Does that mean you can have dessert once a day or once a week? Does it mean one glass of wine with dinner each night? Does it mean eating chicken and broccoli every day?
Eating in moderation can be your end goal, but until you understand your personal nutritional needs, you can’t start with it
Take notice of your current nutritional practices
A lot of mamas dive into restriction-based diets because they assume they’re overeating when in reality most mamas are undereating - or at least undereating in certain macronutrients!
Busy mamas are usually living off their kids' leftovers, drive-thru food and loads of coffee! We are so busy trying to keep all of the plates spinning that we don’t take time to eat like we know we should.
The first step in any diet or health change is taking notice of the habits surrounding your nutrition. Most of us are unaware of the unhealthy habits we’ve picked up because we’re living in survival mode! Ask yourself these questions about your habits to get a baseline of where you’re at.
Do you eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
Do you snack throughout the day?
When do you eat your bigger meals?
Do you always eat out or do you cook at home?
Are you eating fruits and veggies each day?
Are you eating protein with each meal?
How much coffee or caffeinated drinks are you having to make it through the day?
How much water do you drink?
I advise my clients to track their food and habits for at least a week without making any changes. One of the biggest mistakes people make is seeing their bad habits stack up and trying to change them all right away. This is the fastest way to burn out. Don’t do it!
Instead, pick one habit that you want to improve and work on that. Once you’ve created one healthy habit you can move to a new one.
Use macro tracking to understand your nutritional needs
The absolute best thing I did for my health was macro tracking. Macro tracking is the easiest way to understand where you’re at nutritionally so that you can make healthy choices that lead you to intuitive eating.
Sometimes we struggle to understand what food costs us nutritionally. But food is a lot like money - when we know our budget we can make informed choices.
Let's say that I give you $500 to go shopping at your favorite store, and because we're all mamas, let's be honest we love Target. So let's say I hand you $500 to go to Target and buy whatever your little heart desires. You stash the money in your purse. You're super excited to get in your car and drive to Target. You pull up to the store with your $500 in your wallet, you grab a red cart and you start shopping.
As you zoom in and out of the aisles you're looking at prices and you're like $20, awesome I can get that. Then you find something that’s $120 and you’re not quite sure yet, but you decide to throw it in and decide later. You fill up your cart with everything you want. Then you take a minute and you look at everything you’ve picked out and you're calculating the cost of everything. You put a few things back and you’re happy with your choices.
You go to the register you put all of the merchandise on the belt and you're excited looking over everything you chose. You're at the register, you have your $500 in your hand and the cashier turns around and tells you, “Alright, your total's going to be $500.” and you’re like, “Perfect! Here you go,” you hand her the $500. You walk out of the store, you're in the parking lot and you're super excited to get home and hang that t-shirt in your closet, put that coffee mug in your cabinet, put that beautiful vase or frame on your wall.
You are excited. You feel confident. You feel good. Everything worked out perfectly.
Now let's think about it again like this; I give you $500 to go to Target, but there's a caveat on this trip: you're not allowed to look at any of the prices. But, you’re still a strong, confident mama so you’re like I can do this!
You go into Target and you start looking at things you’re like I think this is $40, but I don't really know. You put it in your cart. You’re going along thinking, “does that look expensive?” “What do I put in my cart?” but you fill up your cart and you walk up to the cash register. You put all of the things on the belt and you're sweating a little, the blood rushing to your face as the cashier starts scanning things. There's a long line of people behind you and the cashier is ringing it all up. Then she looks at you and says, “that'll be $750.”
Anxiety starts to rise up in your sternum, and you’re red, and you're sweating, and there are people behind you. And you’re trying to figure out what to do. You’re like let me put something back. And now people are staring at you, and you're sweating, and like, “Oh my gosh. Let's just get this over with.” so you scrounge around in your purse you find your credit card and you put the extra $250 on your credit card.
You walk out into the parking lot and instantaneously have buyer's remorse: shame, guilt, regret, all the bad feelings. You get into your car and you're looking at everything thinking, “Oh my gosh. Do I go back and return something? No, that's so embarrassing.” So you go home and your husband's home and you're like, “Oh my God!!” Now you have to hide the evidence! The whole experience is ruined because you spent way more than you meant to.
This is exactly how you are with your nutrition right now. If you’re relying on “eating in moderation” but you don’t know the cost of your food, you’re stuck overpaying every single day!
The way to be like the first trip is to macro track. Through macro tracking, you’ll learn
What your daily food budget should be.
What each food is costing you in terms of protein, fat, carbs and calories.
How to leverage your food to increase your results.
How to use food to power your busy life as a mama.
How to include alcohol, dessert, and your favorite foods into your diet so that they work for you instead of against you.
Until you learn these things you’ll never understand what moderation looks like for you!
Use moderation for weight maintenance
Once you’ve learned about your nutritional needs and what food costs you, then you can move into eating in moderation.
The amazing thing about macro tracking is that it leads you to flexible dieting. With macro tracking you lay the foundation for your nutrition, then you can use your knowledge to maintain your weight with flexible dieting.
Flexible dieting is where you don’t necessarily track every piece of food you put in your mouth but you still are paying attention to what you eat.
But the caveat here is that eating in moderation isn’t a useful weight loss strategy.
There are four cycles of weight loss:
Reverse
Maintenance
Cut
Surplus
Moderation and flexible dieting work best in the maintenance and surplus cycles because they offer the most flexibility. During these two cycles, you aren’t trying to lose weight like you would in a cut or reverse. So if you overeat or undereat a little each day it won’t make a big difference.
However, when you’re actively trying to lose weight, like in a cut, you’re going to want to pay attention to your food, so that you can hit your goals.
The amazing thing about flexible dieting is that you don’t stay in one cycle forever. Just like life, there are different seasons for each stage.
If you’re going on vacation, you’re probably going to want to go into a cut beforehand so that you can feel confident in a swimming suit. But in the dead of winter, when you’re enjoying all the holiday treats and you’re wearing lots of cozy layers, you would be fine to eat in a surplus.
There’s a season for everything! You shouldn’t stay in weight loss mode forever! I teach the mamas in my Macros Made Easy program several strategies to help them move from macro tracking to flexible dieting so that they can continue to make healthy decisions for the rest of their life - not just while they’re in my program.
If you want to lose weight in a healthy, sustainable way that can lead you to eating in moderation, then let’s chat! Schedule a free discovery call today and we’ll get you started on a real health and weight loss journey that will last a lifetime!
