Using a Food Diary
TRACKING YOUR FOOD
In the Powherful Program we focus on tracking our daily intake of food in a Food Diary. This is valuable for accountability, awareness and reflection to know what you are eating, and how it is affecting you. There are two ways you can track, either in a manual Food Diary or in the app Myfitnesspal. Myfitnesspal is more accurate, but can take a bit more time to get used to, so to start with it is always best to keep track of your food.
The way a Food Diary works is you simply write down everything you eat in a day. Then you can reflect on how this is affecting your mood, energy and your progress towards your goal.
Now tracking is the first step, and will make you more awareness of what you eat, so you will choose better options. But just eating “healthier” isn’t enough to see consistent and measurable change in your body. You need to follow a system.
You can use the Handy Guide to Portions to portion control your food to reach your goals. If you want to figure out your estimated calorie numbers based on your age, height, weight and activity levels, head to https://healthyeater.com/flexible-dieting-calculator
MACRONUTRIENT PORTION SIZING
A great guide to making sure that your meal is balanced is by using your hand for portion sizing. Luckily your hand is in proportion to your body and always with you so is a great tool when you don't have a scale or are out and about. Becoming familiar with foods that contain the different macronutrients and balancing them in your meals is a very useful skill to use.
PROTEIN
PALM-SIZED PORTION
This comes to 100-150g of protein
Which is 30-40g of the macronutrient protein
VEGETABLES
FIST SIZED
Get as many veggies in as possible
CARBOHYDRATE
HALF A CUPPED HAND
This comes to 100-150g of carbohydrate
Which is 30g-40 of the macronutrient carbohydrates
FATS
THUMB SIZED
Comes to about 30g of fats
Which is 7-12g of the macronutrient fat
PORTION SIZING FOR GOALS
Once you have understood how to use your hand for portion sizing, you can use it to establish a calorie deficit, maintenance or surplus with a correct balance of the macronutrients, which is the way you can establish consistent progress towards your goal.
There are 3 basic goals:
FAT LOSS
You have over 10kg of extra body fat that you would like to lose. It is useful to establish a 20% deficit to lose the body fat and improve your health, while you build up your muscle. Then when you have lost enough body fat, you will need to build up your calories to Body Recomp or Muscle Build.
Eat at a 20% deficit.
To establish a Fat Loss deficit Eat 3 Balanced Meals and 1 snack.
BODY RECOMPOSITION
You have been training regularly and have built some muscle, you would like to lean up a bit, but need to keep you energy higher to maintain your muscle. To do this you will need to be in a deficit, but a smaller one (10%) to maintain the high level of muscle you have built.
Eat at a 10% calorie deficit.
To establish a smaller deficit 4 Balanced meals or 3 Balanced meals and 2 snacks
MUSCLE GAIN and STRENGTH
You have been training, but feel that you have not built enough muscle mass for the tone and definition that you want to show through. Or you are happy with your body fat levels and want to build more shape.
Eat at maintenance calories or in a surplus.
Eat 5 Balanced Meals a day or 4 meals and 2 snacks
Remember this is a great starting tool for understanding your food better, but if you want accurate measurements and data that you can reflect on, start using Myfitnesspal.