Simple Nutrition Strategies for Real People

At Showtime Strength & Performance, we work with a lot of adults who simply want to move better and feel better in their daily activities with the people they care about the most. The adults we work with don’t care to be professional athletes or have the biggest muscles. They also quickly become overwhelmed with the amount of information available online. Most of the information online for nutrition is written for sports performance or the extremes to catch attention. What we have found over time is that people often feel like they should have a meal plan or set eating schedule every few hours throughout the day, but the reality is they need some structure to their eating habits. Meal plans don’t help people learn how to create a system that works for them. In fact, they often create stress because over time people feel limited to what’s on their plan without options. This is why we don’t recommend meal plans. As we go through this list, it can be helpful to think of how each example applies to your life and how well you feel you’re doing with each strategy. Our hope is that these make nutrition a much less stressful thought and a much more rewarding process. 

Planning Ahead

When I was 20 years old, single, and competing in bodybuilding it was easy to plan ahead my meals. Every day it was eggs and grits for breakfast and then every meal after that was loads of chicken and rice. At 35 and married with a spastic work schedule, that doesn’t work now. What has helped us a lot is planning ahead. This doesn’t mean cooking one time and eating left overs all week. My wife and I enjoy fresh meals too much for that. Instead, laying out our calendar a week at a time and figuring out what days will be good to cook and what we want to eat those days and then what days will be better for left overs due to work schedules. We generally will either order pizza and go out for a date night on Friday or Saturday, so we can easily take that day off the menu. Saturday and Sundays we have more time for bigger breakfast and dinner meals. This plan generally leaves one or two nights through the week for left overs that we don’t need to prep. This allows us to actually have more variety in our weekly meal plan and less likely to order take out during the week. This has been one of the best tools we’ve used for our nutrition. 

Create a Winning Environment

This might sound crazy, but we’re much more likely to eat potato chips when we buy them and they’re a few feet away in our cupboards. Same with alcohol, ice cream, and anything else that might be a tough item for you. We all have a breaking point with will power and the more we test it the more likely we’ll give in. This isn’t to say you can never have those items, but the easier access we have to items the less friction there is to getting them. Think about how often people use door dash to get food delivered straight to them. Now even if you want take out that isn’t healthy for you, you don’t need to leave the couch. We’ve removed one major step that could’ve prevented people from over doing unhealthy food items. Most of the people I’ve talked to that have healthy relationships with ice cream and alcohol don’t keep them in their house. They enjoy them when they’re out for a special occasion and I think that’s a great tool to use. 

80/20 Rule

Eat well 80% of the time and enjoy yourself 20% of the time. The practical application of this is so great that it almost makes everything fool proof. If you have 3 meals a day, this rule allows you to have 4 meals on a weekly basis that maybe you enjoy a little more, but don’t hit great as far as nutritional value goes. Something I will couple with this is if I know we’ll be meeting friends for a dinner or eating pizza, I will make sure my meals leading up to are hitting the 80% healthy mark so I won’t feel like I ruined my nutrition by the end of the day. By 80% consistently in all things will put you so far ahead compared to being 100% some of the times. 80% is relaxed and sustainable and 100% leads to burn out. 

Protein is King

At each meal, make sure that you have at least one quality source of protein. This will help keep you feeling fuller longer, aid in recovery, and protein has a higher thermogenic effect for your body than fat or carbohydrates. Aim for 1 gram per pound of bodyweight. If you’re nowhere near that and it sounds like a huge task, then simply work to add a little bit more each meal. This has helped our clients a ton and they notice a difference in how they look and feel quickly after starting it. Powders and bars can be a way to bump your protein intake up, but shouldn’t be the base of your intake. Whole food is the optimal choice for this. 

Stop Eating at 80%

We don’t have to eat and have the feeling of Thanksgiving dinner every meal. In fact, we shouldn’t eat that way. We should reframe our eating habits from eating until I can’t eat another bite to eating until we’re no longer hungry. In recent years this has become more difficult as more people are distracted eating meaning they’re watching television or on their phone while eating. This occupies the brain so we don’t recognize that we’re no longer hungry until we’ve already had more to eat than we normally would. By eating to 80% we also help our digestive process improve which means we’re able to better utilize the nutrients we’re taking in. 

Those are the biggest habit changes that have helped our clients reach their goals. There are other strategies that can be used on a more individual basis. These are are the support system that makes the healthy changes easier and more manageable for people. If you’re struggling to create the change you’re looking, email nick@showtimestrength.com so we can help.

Nick Showman

Showtime Strength & Performance

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