Nutrition for Your Best Weight
With so many diets and weight-management options, it’s hard to know what’s best for your goals. Understanding the pros and cons of different approaches helps you make healthy choices for gaining, maintaining, or losing weight. Let’s explore what a healthy weight means for you and the best tools to help you reach it.
Important Education Takeaways
Find the right balance. Energy balance isn’t as simple as calories in versus calories out.
Your specific energy needs are unique to your body in considering factors such as age, gender, physical activity, lifestyle, and medical conditions as well as food quality, food quantity, meal composition, and eating patterns.
Aim to consume adequate calories to fuel your body and to support a healthy metabolism. This doesn’t always mean eating less, cutting calories, or going on a restrictive diet. Focus on consistent mealtimes, balanced meals and snacks consisting of foods you enjoy, and moving your body more each day.
The ultimate goal is to establish a healthy eating plan that is tailored to meet your unique food preferences and your body’s unique needs.
Lay a healthy diet foundation. Maintain a quality eating plan by primarily choosing foods that benefit your overall health and wellbeing.
Strive to choose fresh, whole foods, and scratch-prepared meals from home most of the time.
Choose foods that nourish your body and leave you feeling satisfied.
Think beyond the calories and choose nutrient-rich foods such as:
Vegetables & fruits: Eat a variety of colorful produce for best nutrient benefit. Focus on non-starchy veggies as a low calorie, high fiber food option to fill half of your plate. To learn about starchy vegetables, visit our Ask the RD blog.
Whole grains: Opt for minimally processed whole grains for a satisfying, high fiber, nutrient-rich energy source.
Legumes: Include beans and lentils regularly for a high fiber, plant-based protein source.
Lean animal proteins: Choose lean, unprocessed meats, poultry, seafood, and eggs for protein, vitamins, and minerals. Include reduced fat dairy products such as milk, milk alternatives, Greek yogurt, and cottage cheese for a good source of protein, calcium, and vitamin D.
Unsaturated fats: Found in olive oil, avocados, nuts, seeds, and fish aid to keep you feeling full and satisfied.
Limit foods of low nutritional value, such as highly processed food products including refined grains, added sugars, processed meats, convenience items, and restaurant meals. These foods are typically high in calories, unhealthy fats, added sodium, sugar, and preservatives. Though these foods may taste good in the moment, they fail to provide lasting satisfaction and often lead to food cravings and over-eating.
Practice proper portion control. Utilize the healthy plate method, hand estimations, smaller meal plates, or a food diary to help you choose appropriate food amounts.
Balance your meals and keep portions in check with the plate method:
½ plate as colorful produce
¼ plate as whole grains or starches
¼ plate as lean protein
Learn more about the healthy plate method with this video.
Use your hands to estimate portion sizes:
Palm = one protein serving (chicken, fish, tofu, eggs)
Two hands cupped = one veggie serving
One hand cupped = one fruit serving
Fist = one starch serving (rice, pasta, potatoes)
Tip of thumb = one fat/oil serving (olive oil, mayo, peanut butter)
Thumb = one cheese serving
Eating from smaller plates or bowls and taking half of large restaurant meals to-go can help avoid temptation to overeat.
Consider keeping a food diary to improve food awareness, accountability, and motivation.
Be mindful. Practice mindful eating techniques to improve your food habits and promote a healthier relationship with food.
Listen to your body
Listen to internal hunger and fullness cues
Avoid emotional eating during times of stress, sadness, or boredom
Reduce food cravings
Be present & intentional
Remove distractions
Avoid multitasking
Create a calm, pleasant eating environment
Sit at a table, eat from a plate
Check in with your body frequently
Eat slowly
Carve out mealtimes
Chew slowly and savor each bite
Eat intuitively
Trust yourself to choose foods that satisfy and nourish your body
Learn to enjoy eating instead of obsessing about good foods versus bad foods
Shift your behaviors and adjust your expectations. Managing your body weight requires behavior modification to create lasting healthy habits.
Set individualized, specific, and realistic health goals.
Celebrate your successes and learn from your failures along the way. Instead of striving for perfection, practice being consistent with small healthy habits day after day, week after week, and year after year for lasting benefits.
If aiming to lose weight, refrain from focusing only on eating less and exercising more, and instead try to take a more holistic approach to promote better overall health. By thinking beyond the number on the scale, you are allowing yourself to create sustainable lifestyle changes that will ultimately lead to a happier and healthier you.
Incorporate nutrition, hydration, movement, rest, enjoyment/pleasure, social fulfillment, and mental wellbeing into your goals. It might mean managing your stress levels, prioritizing sleep, or establishing social connections that foster happiness and fulfillment.
Learn to love your unique shape and size, while appreciating all that your body does for you.
Find movement that makes you feel strong, energized, and that you are excited to do.
Medications can be successful in weight management but should be used in conjunction with a healthy diet and a regular exercise routine. Consider if these medications may be right for you by discussing with your physician and/or a registered dietitian. You can also read more on this topic from a prior Ask the RD blog post.
Maintaining a healthy body weight can look different for different people. While many folks struggle with undesired weight gain, others may have a difficult time eating enough to maintain a healthy body weight.
If you find yourself struggling to eat enough due to poor appetite, limited tolerance to food, lack of food appeal, forgetfulness, limited physical ability, or increased nutritional needs, you may benefit from some of these strategies to optimize your eating plan.
Eat small frequent meals and snacks throughout the day
Maximize calories by adding fat to meals and snacks
Prioritize protein foods at each feeding
Make it easy and convenient to eat
Choose bland, well tolerated foods if experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms
Utilize nutritional shakes and supplements as needed
Recipes
Recipe of the month: Hearty Chicken Harvest Dinner
As always, this recipe is the showcase of our live taught, virtual cooking class. Our chef and registered dietitian bring the recipe to life as they walk you through food prep, swaps to meet dietary or taste preferences, plus tips and tools to support you being your own healthy chef at home.
Bonus recipe: Carrot, Beet, and Apple salad
From Jamie’s kitchen to yours, our monthly bonus recipes are published on our website and social media the 4th Wednesday of each month. We invite you to browse our recipe collection and come back often to find more flavorful and heart-healthy recipes.
We invite you to join us for the live taught, virtual nutrition classes each month to gather more information on our nutrition topics. This is also an opportunity to ask topic-related questions of our experts as well as connect socially with attendees for idea sharing. As a registered participant for our In the Kitchen program, you receive a few reminders ahead of each scheduled monthly classes, but here’s an easy to remember schedule: Nutrition Education (30-minutes, 2nd Wednesday, 12pm), Cooking Class (up to 60-minutes, 3rd Monday, 12pm).
Contributing authors: Jamie Libera, RD, LD, CCTD, registered dietitian, Providence.