No meal plans. No banned foods. No weighing your lettuce on a set of scales you bought specially. Just a few simple rules that work.
The lie
"I barely eat anything."
The short version
- Build most meals roughly like the NHS Eatwell plate.
- Get enough protein. Use the calculator below, or just use your palm.
- Treats, not cheats. A planned treat meal is fine. A cheat week is a holiday from your own life.
Today's rep: Use the calculator. Jump to it
The food that doesn't count
The fish fingers, the free biscuit, the 11pm cheese. All of it counts.
"I barely eat anything" is usually true of meals. It's the bits between meals that do the damage, because none of them count. The corner of a sandwich doesn't count. The kids' leftover fish fingers don't count. They were going in the bin anyway. You were practically recycling. The biscuit that came free with the coffee doesn't count, because it was free. The handful of crisps from the bag you were "just putting away" doesn't count. The cheese you eat standing up with the fridge door open at 11pm, lit like a man in a painting, definitely doesn't count, because nobody saw. None of it counts. All of it adds up.
This isn't about guilt. Have the biscuit. Just count the biscuit.
The plate
A third veg, a third starch, the rest protein and dairy. Not a beige crime scene.
The NHS Eatwell Guide splits a day's food roughly like this. Just over a third is fruit and veg. Just over a third is starchy food like potatoes, bread, rice and pasta, wholegrain where you can. The rest is smaller amounts of protein, dairy or alternatives, and a little unsaturated oil. Aim for at least five portions of fruit and veg a day.1
You don't need to measure anything. Just look at your plate and ask whether it looks roughly like that, or like a beige crime scene.
Protein: the builders
Think of training as knocking down a wall so the builders can put up a stronger one. Protein is the builders. No builders, no new wall, just a hole and a skip. Too many builders and they stand about drinking tea and listening to the radio, and you pay for that too.
The UK's standard recommendation for adults is 0.75g of protein per kilo of body weight a day.2 That's set for the general population, not for people training. Sports nutrition guidance suggests more if you exercise regularly, from around 1.2g per kilo upwards.3,4 One large review found the extra benefit for muscle levelled off at about 1.6g per kilo.5 So for most beginners, 1.2 to 1.6g per kilo is a sensible target.
The protein calculator
Pop your weight in. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
The palm method. If numbers make your eyes glaze over, use your hand. A palm-sized portion of meat, fish, tofu or eggs is roughly 20 to 30g of protein. It's a rough rule of thumb, not a lab measurement, and that's fine. Your palm comes with you everywhere, which is more than you can say for the calculator.
Good protein foods: chicken, fish, eggs, lean mince, Greek yoghurt, cottage cheese, milk, beans, lentils, tofu. Protein powder is just food in a tub. More on that in chapter 16.
The calculator works the same for everyone. Protein needs go by body weight, not by whether you're a man or a woman.2
Mostly for women
Men, you need a bit over half the iron women do, so you can skip ahead. Unless you've ever said "I barely eat anything" with a sausage roll in your hand.
Iron, bones, and eating enough
Iron. Women aged 19 to 49 need 14.8mg of iron a day. Men, and women over 50, need 8.7mg.6 Heavy periods are one of the most common causes of iron deficiency anaemia,7 which leaves you tired and breathless at things that should be easy. Good sources include red meat, beans, nuts, dried fruit, dark green vegetables and fortified breakfast cereals.6 If you think you're low, ask your GP for a blood test rather than buying tablets on a hunch.
Calcium. Adults need 700mg a day,8 from milk, cheese, yoghurt, and fortified alternatives. Your bones need it more after the menopause. The getting older chapter has the rest.
Eating enough. If your periods stop while you're training hard or losing weight, that isn't a sign you're doing brilliantly. Doing too much exercise and sudden weight loss are both listed by the NHS as causes of missed periods.9 See your GP. If food has started to feel like something you have to earn or punish, Beat can help on 0808 801 0677 in England.10
Treats, not cheats
A planned treat is fine. Twenty-seven pizzas in a dressing gown is a heist.
Nearly every diet fails for the same reason: it ends. So don't build one that ends. Build one you can live with, and that means treats.
A planned treat meal is fine. Fish and chips on a Friday. Cake at a birthday. A curry with friends. Enjoy it properly, without guilt, and then carry on.
What doesn't work is the cheat day that becomes a cheat weekend that becomes a cheat week. You order one large pizza on the Friday, as a treat. On the Saturday you order two, because one's a treat and two is basically the same treat, again. By Wednesday the pizza place has sent a different driver, because the old one asked to be moved. You've eaten 27 large pizzas in a dressing gown while watching a documentary about people climbing the Matterhorn, pausing now and then to say "I could do that". That isn't a treat. That's a heist, and you robbed yourself.
There's research behind this. People with a flexible approach to eating, where nothing is completely banned, tend to have fewer problems with overeating than people with rigid all-or-nothing rules.12 All-or-nothing usually ends up as nothing, with a pizza on top.
Breaks and holidays are fine too. A week in Spain eating everything that isn't nailed down won't undo months of work. Enjoy it, come home, and pick up where you left off.
Your rep for this chapter
Use the calculator. Then look at today's meals and add a palm of protein to the one that hasn't got any. Count the biscuit.
The lie: "I barely eat anything."
The short version
- Build most meals roughly like the NHS Eatwell plate.
- Get enough protein. Use the calculator below, or just use your palm.
- Treats, not cheats. A planned treat meal is fine. A cheat week is a holiday from your own life.
Your rep
Use the calculator. Then look at today's meals and add a palm of protein to the one that hasn't got any. Count the biscuit.
Your browser forgets. Your photos don't. Save it, and the rep turns up in your camera roll at 7am when you're looking for something else.
Sources
1. NHS. The Eatwell Guide.
2. Department of Health. Dietary Reference Values for Food Energy and Nutrients for the United Kingdom. Report on Health and Social Subjects 41. HMSO; 1991.
3. Thomas DT, Erdman KA, Burke LM. American College of Sports Medicine joint position statement: nutrition and athletic performance. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. 2016;48(3):543-568.
4. Jäger R, Kerksick CM, Campbell BI, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: protein and exercise. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2017;14:20.
5. Morton RW, Murphy KT, McKellar SR, et al. A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of the effect of protein supplementation on resistance training-induced gains in muscle mass and strength in healthy adults. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2018;52(6):376-384.
6. NHS. Vitamins and minerals: iron.
7. NHS. Iron deficiency anaemia.
8. NHS. Vitamins and minerals: calcium.
9. NHS. Missed or late periods.
10. Beat, the UK eating disorder charity. beateatingdisorders.org.uk. Helpline (England) 0808 801 0677; Scotland 0808 801 0432; Wales 0808 801 0433; Northern Ireland 0808 801 0434.
11. Robinson E, Almiron-Roig E, Rutters F, et al. A systematic review and meta-analysis examining the effect of eating rate on energy intake and hunger. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2014;100(1):123-151.
12. Smith CF, Williamson DA, Bray GA, Ryan DH. Flexible vs. rigid dieting strategies: relationship with adverse behavioral outcomes. Appetite. 1999;32(3):295-305.