My relationship with food
Understanding what is on the plate without turning every meal into an accounting exercise.
Food becomes unnecessarily complicated the moment fitness enters the discussion. The same rice that was lunch yesterday is suddenly a controversial substance.
I like food. I would prefer to keep liking it while learning to eat better. That means understanding the meal in front of me, including the portions and preparation, instead of deciding whether an ingredient belongs to the good team or the bad team.
It also means admitting that food does several jobs. Hunger is one. Convenience, taste, and sitting down with other people are others. A plan that ignores all of them except the nutrition label is going to be difficult to live with.
Calories / Nutrients
A calorie is a unit of energy. The kcal on a food label is what people normally mean when they talk about calories. The body needs that energy for ordinary functions as well as exercise.
Energy intake and expenditure affect body weight over time. Eating more energy than the body uses tends to increase weight; eating less tends to reduce it. This describes energy balance. It does not tell us whether a meal supplies enough protein, fibre, vitamins, or minerals.
Two foods can provide similar energy and have different nutritional value. So “how much energy?” and “what else am I getting?” are both useful questions. I do not have to discard one to care about the other.
The serving-size problem
The number on the front of a packet is missing an important detail: for how much food? Check whether the information is per serving, per 100 g, or for the whole pack. A serving on a label is not an instruction about how much you personally need to eat.
Imagine a fictional 60 g snack packet. Its label gives the following values for a 30 g serving. Eating the whole packet means multiplying both numbers by two. Very basic maths, but quite easy to forget when the front of the packet has already said “high protein” in a large font.
| Amount eaten | Energy | Protein |
|---|---|---|
| 30 g (one serving) | 150 kcal | 6 g |
| 60 g (whole packet) | 300 kcal | 12 g |
Working with the food I already eat
A practical place to start is the usual meal. Rice or roti, dal, vegetables, curd, eggs, tofu, fish, chicken: there are plenty of familiar ingredients to work with. The combination and portions matter. There is no need to replace everything with food that comes in a subscription box.
My approach to planning a meal is fairly simple:
- Identify a protein source. If the meal barely has one, consider what could be added.
- Keep a suitable source of energy, such as rice, bread, potatoes, or another staple.
- Include vegetables or fruit, and some variety across the day.
- Consider the practical details: taste, cost, preparation time, and whether I would eat it again.
The part a spreadsheet cannot fix
If lunch keeps getting delayed because work takes over, a more accurate calorie estimate will not create a lunch break. If the kitchen has no convenient ingredients, motivation has to do an unreasonable amount of work at dinner time.
Keeping a few repeatable meals available sounds less interesting than finding the perfect diet. It is also much easier to use on a busy day. I would put some effort there before buying another supplement.
And a meal out can remain a meal out. I do not find the term “cheat meal” useful. Enjoying dinner should not create a debt to be repaid on a treadmill the following morning.