5-Day Mini Course: Day 3
What, How Much, When
The 5 Levers of Nutrition
Objectives:
- Make better food choices by understanding the 5 levers of nutrition
- Pick 1 or 2 levers to pull
- Track what you do for 3 days
The Big 3:
- WHAT
- HOW MUCH
- WHEN
Bonus Meal Time Levers:
- HOW
- WITH WHOM
THE Big 3 Levers — what, how much, when — You must be pulling at least one of these.
Think about the standard American diet → you’re eating WHATEVER you want, HOWEVER MUCH you want WHENEVER you want. Most people are also eating as FAST as they can, alone or in front of screens. This is a total disaster!
So, here’s the overview of these levers.
WHAT you eat: This is exactly what it sounds like. What you put into your mouth. Pulling on this lever means you avoid certain food groups. This is where all the nutrition dogma lives. The keto, vegan, paleo, clean eating diets all fall here.
The neat part about pulling on this lever is that by avoiding certain food groups you will almost always drive down the next lever which is total calories, or in other words, how much are you eating.
HOW MUCH you eat: This is simply the overall amount of energy that you eat, measured as total calories. As much as the butter in coffee keto people will tell you that calories don’t matter, calories DO MATTER. This is probably the most important lever out of the bunch. There are laws of the biological universe that we can’t ignore.
Many other levers, especially the “what” and “when” lever will have a direct impact on how much you eat. For example, certain food groups (think cookies and breads) will drive up hunger. Other food groups will drive down hunger (think fiber and protein). Hormonal activity in the body will also impact how much you eat.
If you have a goal of losing body fat, this lever MUST be pulled, whether directly or indirectly as you’ll see below.
WHEN you eat: This is pretty simple. Do you eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Or do you graze throughout the day eating every 2-3 hours? Or maybe you skip breakfast and eat 2 larger meals later in the day?
This is arguably the easiest of the levers to pull. For many of my fat loss coaching clients, I simply have them eat between 11am – 7pm. By closing down the eating window, again, we are reducing overall calorie consumption.
Hopefully, you’re starting to see a theme here. Many of the levers, especially 1 and 3 will drive down the “how much”, or the total calories consumed.
Meal Time Levers
How you eat: This is more subtle, but still very important. Are you eating slowly? Mindfully? Or are you crushing food over the kitchen sink? Are you stuffed after meals? or comfortably satisfied?
With whom are you eating: Do you eat alone? In front of the TV or on your phone? In your car? With your family?
5-Minute Homework Day 3
1. How many of the levers are you pulling? Which ones?
2. If you are pulling on none, pull on 1 lever.
If you are pulling on 1, pull on 2. If you are pulling on 2, try pulling on 3.
Write down the lever(s) you will pull and how you will track it. Be specific.
For example, let’s say you pull the “what” lever. You will avoid all refined carbs so that means no breads, pastas, cookies, crackers, or cakes. You will track this for 3 days. Or let’s say you’re pulling on the “when” lever, maybe you only eat between 10am – 7pm. For 2 days, can you execute on that task? Track it.
If you want to get advanced, you can use a food log tracker like LoseIt which will give you calorie and macro breakdown for all the food you enter into your log. Counting and tracking macros is a very effective tool but it’s an intermediate to advanced strategy. Start with the basics and understand the overall framework before you dive deep into the world of macros!
Some helpful tools:
