What my 2 1/2 year old son taught me about nutrition!

During my years as a personal trainer I had many teachers, professors, trainers, and more who have taught me a lot. One of the most unlikely teachers about nutrition though, was my 2.5 years old son. Today was not the first time that I noticed his behavior, it was just the first time I thought of writing about it.

Table covered with prepared food @ Shape Up Fitness & Wellness Consulting

 

My son like many kids his age is picky about his food. What he likes one day, he does not like the next. There has been more than once the battle of the wills. He did not want to eat and I sure as hell did not want to cook him something else because his highness decides he does not like the food I prepared today….Back on track.

He did remind me of  something great though:

  1. When he has freshly prepared healthy food he eats until he is satisfied and would stop eating and maybe come later back to it.
  2. When he gets something like chocolate, chips, (not that I as a personal trainer would ever give something like that to my son 🙂 ) etc., foods that kids (and I) really like, he would just eat more and more. He would get cranky and it would take as a couple of days to get him to eat prepared food again.

I have seen this behavior not just in him but in me and many of my clients.

Conclusion:

  1. It is so easy to forget that food manufacturers are for profit organizations. There is nothing wrong about that but their goal is the bottom line of their shareholders not our health. How do food manufacturers increase the bottom line?
  2. It is done by exploiting human physiology and creating food that stimulates our taste buds more than unprocessed foods can. It makes us crave for more. This mixture of sugar and fat and other taste enhancers cannot be beat.
  3. There will be a withdrawal phase for most of us when we switch over to self-prepared food again. Go easy on yourself, even if you overeat on something else. Find foods that come close to satisfying the cravings but are as healthy as possible. I for one replace chocolate with banana mixed with almond butter and cocoa. I can eat it and stop whereas I don’t have a stopping point with chocolate itself.
  4. 80/10 or 90/10 Rule? It really does not matter. Either way is pretty good and probably better than 90% of the American population at this point. Try to get 80%-90% of your food from healthy sources and minimize processed food to 10-20%. This way your food will be more nutrient dense than calorie dense.
  5. You will not necessarily lose weight! You might be saying now: “What the heck? I am doing this to lose weight!” Stay calm! Unless you have no stopping point when it comes to eating (some of us don’t) you probably will lose some weight. Eating healthy food is not a free pass to go into “All You Can Eat Mode”. A caloric balance is still important.
  6. Know what and how much you eat. I am not big into calorie counting for my clients or myself, but I will write down what I eat. An easy way to do so is using your smartphone and the computer by using myfitnesspal.com. It is a great and easy way of keeping track of what you are doing.

I know this might sound like a rant against food companies. I assure you it is not. It is their right to make a profit and I don’t fault them for it. It is my choice if I want to make use of their products or rather prepare my own food. I do use food products myself. I have a protein shake pretty much every day. I use it for training performance and out of convenience. I am very aware of the ingredients and have chosen it carefully. I still make sure it is not my main source of food.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Michael

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