Eat foods you enjoy
The next step of the program is to incorporate any foods you like eating.
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The reality is weight loss just boils down to the numbers. There's no such thing as a "good" or "bad" food. You can still eat your favorite foods - you just need to make sure they are as part of an overall balanced diet.
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In fact, having fun and enjoying tasty foods are a really important part of creating a sustainable eating routine that you can stick to. You need to feel like you can eat what you enjoy and not be on an eating plan that has a restrictive list of "can" and "can't" haves.
eatwell hack #4: hold back 10% for treats
To create a sustainable approach to eating better, you need to change your mindset so that you do not think of foods as a cheat foods or bad foods. You can enjoy whatever you want - just in moderation!
So take your daily calorie target from step 1, and break them up across your day for mealtime targets. We recommend starting off with an allocation of 30% to breakfast, 30% to lunch and 30% to dinner and 10% for a treat.
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We recommend allocating this 10% treat as a mid-afternoon meal. And you can eat whatever treat you want - chips, cake, chocolate, wine, beer - just need to make sure you are keeping within your calorie target for the treat.
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going out for a meal
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You can absolutely store up your 10% allocation as a "treat bank". So if you are going out for a nice meal at the weekend or cocktails with friends, hold back about 1,000 calories from your treat allocation. You can forgo your treats for about 5 days to "save" up these calories and enjoy them all in one go.
portion sizing
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Another good trick is to only buy portion-sized treats. It is easy to overeat when you have a huge tub of ice cream so try buying of a couple of wrapped, individual ice cream cones instead.
Macronutrients
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Finally, it is worth talking about macronutrients (protein, fats and carbs).
Whilst your quantity of calories will determine how much weight you lose or gain, the quality of those calories will determine the type of weight loss or gain.
So eating a well balanced 500 calorie meal of chicken & veggie pasta will fuel your body better than eating 500 calories of candy.
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So you should try to get a good mix of macronutrients. You can use our "Macro Allocation" feature in the NUTRIENT GOALS section to play with this.
