The meal tracking sheet is designed to keep you on track each day as you transition into your new healthy lifestyle.
The first items to note are the three meals. Contrary to popular advice 5-6 small meals per day is only necessary for elite athletes and competitors, and NOT good advice for a client with general fitness and weight-loss goals. You will be far more effective at reaching your goals with the simplicity of only 3 meals.
The first suggested meal is an egg-based meal. The largest portion should be eggs, followed by your choice of a smaller portion of veggies, fruit, and/or meat. By starting your day off with eggs, you will get a perfect balance of good fats and protein, as well as numerous vitamins and minerals. Include the yolk with all your eggs. As a general rule, the more you cook eggs the more the micronutrients will become damaged, so try to keep eggs on the softer side when you cook them. We also encourage you to cook them using coconut oil or butter.
The second meal is a salad based meal, but really, you could consider this a “vegetable” based meal. You could also do a soup, for instance. For a salad, the key ingredient is a healthy dressing, which will likely have to be homemade. Store bought dressings always have “canola oil” as a main ingredient, it is best to use a high quality olive oil based dressing you make from scratch yourself. The largest portion should be greens and veggies, followed a smaller portion of fruit and/or meat.
The final meal is a meat-based meal with a side. The meat can be any meat you prefer, but it is advisable to have more fattier cuts of meat over leaner cuts. You need the fats for cellular function and to maintain strong satiety. All of these meals have a heavy focus on fats as a key ingredient, as it will lead to a strong feeling of satiety and therefore reduced snacking. Snacking is one of the key culprits of weight gain, as it implies lack of proper satiety and metabolic function.
For the side, it is advisable to have only vegetables or a starch. Feel free to use coconut oil, olive oil, or butter to flavour your sides.
As you complete these meals, simply check the box to indicate you’ve done so.
As well, any of these meals can be substituted by one of the others. You could have egg-based for lunch for example, or have meat and a side multiple times per day. It is up to you. If you don’t personally enjoy salads, you could permanently replace it with meat and a side instead. Don’t feel restricted.
The other two check boxes beside the meals are to emphasize waiting a minimum of 5 hours between meals. After a typical meal of any type, it will result in an increase in blood sugar. Insulin will then be released to reduce your blood sugar level. This usually takes around 3 hours. It is only after blood sugar is reduced back to normal that you body will start to use body fat for energy. By waiting 5 hours between meals, you will allow fat burning to occur for around 2 of the 5 hours. Contrast this to those who eat 5-6 meals per day, or roughly every 3 hours, they will never get into a state where they use body fat for fuel.
One of the advanced strategies we get our clients to do is called “intermittent fasting.” Intermittent fasting is the controlled skipping of a single meal, extending the time you go without food. This has numerous health benefits for your body, and is extremely powerful in causing positive changes to your body, in both energy, vitality, and appearance. You should skip 2-4 meals in any 7 day period. You can denote a skipped meal by doing a “strikethru” of the box rather than a check mark. Most clients find breakfast easiest to skip, greatly extending the natural fast that starts during sleeping all the way to lunch.
The first bottom box is to further emphasize the daily goal of not snacking. If you eat these meals with the focus on fats and protein, you will likely achieve a high satiety and the ability to last 5 hours without snacking. This is a very balanced state where consistent weight loss is possible.
The second box is to emphasize the daily goal of going for a walk. While our approach is to designed to help you achieve leanness without an excessive need for activity, it is very useful and healthy to add a daily walk in order to accelerate you results.
There is a final box which is unlabelled in the corner. This is to be checked off once per week to denote you had a “cheat meal.” This can be any one meal where you have whatever you like. These cheat meals are helpful to tell your body to keep the metabolism high, as extended periods of controlled fat loss can lead to your metabolism adapting to less food intake.
That finishes the overview of our meal tracking sheet. Every client that diligently fills this out has experienced enormously positive results. Most clients need only need to fill out about 3 sheets before they gain an intuitive sense on how to eat and arrange their meals properly.