The Food Conundrum
Are these limiting beliefs and fixed mindsets around food holding you back?
“I can’t eat the same foods every day”
“I don’t like bland meals”
“I get bored with eating chicken all the time”
I 110% get it. I promise you I do. The thought of eating the same foods, standardizing your meal structure, and bulk meal prepping in general, can sound mundane. If…
If your goal is to have the most tasty and enjoyable meal every time you sit down to eat.
You’ve maybe heard us talk about the idea that food is many things to each of us, and how it serves many needs and desires? Sound familiar?
Food is fuel, nourishment, convenience, celebration, heritage, therapeutic, and many other needs and desires too.
Unfortunately, in many cases, these are competing outcomes. If we were to try to make a meal as tasty as possible, then we would likely add salt, sugar, and fats to the recipe to increase the deliciousness factor. There is no denying that the addition of such ingredients heightens the taste experience to a new level, and simultaneously heightens the caloric content too.
What to do?
This is about goal organization and understanding the tradeoffs by making adjustments to an optimal plan.
Consider the table below. Lets for this scenario say that you’re a busy guy working with builtXyou coach to lose body fat and maintain muscle and performance (1). Your food priorities will likely be different from those of a guy looking to enjoy a 5 star restaurant experience (2) or a dad of 2 looking to get food on the table conveniently and quickly (3).
There are trade offs when manipulating our nutrition and diet for any goal. Knowing this can help us zoom out and make clearer decisions.
An important note to highlight that I AM NOT saying that the everyday nutritious food you eat shouldn’t or can’t be tasty. Simply that a heightened taste experience is not the number 1 goal as it often comes at the cost of more important factors such as calorie content and macronutrient composition.
Many nutrition companies try to shoehorn your “favorite foods” into a daily fat loss plan. This is an admirable method, and one that many succeed with. It does however have a few drawbacks.
For example - If your favorite food is chocolate cake and you’re following a 2000 calorie diet, then you either eat a sliver of cake which tends not to be very satisfying, or you eat a slice of cake and use 25% of your daily cals in a meal making adhering to calorie and macronutrient constraints at other meals tougher. Again, it’s about goal organization and trade-offs.
We hope this thought experiment helps you zoom out and consider how food can serve many purposes for us, and that every choice we make comes with trade-offs somewhere else and that is OK.
If you’re a busy guy that knows he needs a clear and specific training and nutrition plan to follow to build the health, fitness, and physique he wants so that he can live a life he is proud of in a body he is confident in then click the button below to get started with a builtXyou coach today.
