You don’t want to track your food forever, so implementing habits and knowing when to manipulate them to match your goals can be very useful. Here are some tips on how to incorporate certain habits or practices to either increase or decrease your calorie intake. 

Increasing Calorie Intake 

There are multiple reasons you may wish to increase your calorie intake; it could be to gain muscle, fuel your exercise performance, or simply eat more. People often think, most commonly if the goal is muscle gain, that you just need to focus purely on eating more, not paying heed to where the calories come from and lose sight of the bigger picture. The bigger picture being your health. So when looking to increase your calorie intake, it’s vital that you are still mindful of protein intake, your micronutrient intake (fruits & vegetables), and your fibre. 

Drink Your Calories 

For many people, appetite can often be the limiting factor when looking to increase the amount they eat. Smoothies are a great example here. You could pack a smoothie with some Greek yogurt, a banana, some frozen berries, some fruit juice, and some peanut butter. Right there you could easily rack up 500 calories in one drink and at the same time, get protein in (from the yogurt), get carbohydrates in (yogurt, fruit, and fruit juice), healthy fats (peanut butter), and micronutrients (fruit). This isn’t an exact blueprint, just an example. You can add in or take away whatever you like, but drinking it will be much easier than eating the equivalent amount of food. 

Increase Your Fat Intake 

As mentioned in last week’s blog, fat contains 9 calories per gram. This is why high-fat foods are typically considered to be ‘calorically dense.’ How could you do this? 

· Include nuts (or nut butters) in your day; this could be as a snack or included in meals. 

· Add avocado to meals. 

· Use more oil in your cooking or meals (as part of a salad dressing, for example). 

· Add seeds to dishes, such as chia seeds in your overnight oats. 

· Choose full-fat dairy items over the reduced-fat options. 

· Choose higher fat cuts of meat. 

· Include more oily fish such as salmon or mackerel into your week. 

· Increase your snacking between meals. 

Snack More 

Fill gaps between meals with snacks. What are these snacks? That’s completely up to you! However, along with the example of nuts above, another good example of a calorie-dense food is dried fruit. Dates, dried mango, raisins are all good snack options. 

Don’t be afraid to include highly palatable foods 

The more palatable a food is, the easier it is to eat! That’s why, once you ensure you are consuming adequate protein, fibre, and micronutrients, you can include foods that are easier to eat larger quantities of to make up those extra calories. A bowl of cereal, some Nutella on toast, glasses of fruit juice, dark chocolate are just some of the many examples here. Some people might think it sounds counterintuitive that a Nutritionist is recommending some of the above. “Bowls of cereal? That can’t be right!” It all comes back to one of my first points, the bigger picture. I’m not suggesting that you make up the majority of your diet with these foods, but once you have your big boxes ticked these can absolutely be included in a healthy diet, regardless of your goal, however, it’s easier to include them when you are looking to eat more calories, not less. 

Decreasing Calorie Intake 

Doing the opposite of many of the above points will help with reducing calorie intake, and then there are a few other practices that will help. 

Don’t Drink Your Calories 

This shouldn’t be taken as “you can’t drink smoothies” when looking to lose weight but if you are looking to reduce calories you may change what you put in the smoothie. It could be as simple as Skyr yogurt and a large amount of frozen fruit, which is guaranteed to fill you up thanks to the fibre content of the berries and the protein in the Skyr. To add to this though, if you were to eat the equivalent yogurt and berries as solid foods, they would probably fill you up even more due to the chewing required to eat it. It’s ultimately personal preference here though, as I said, I’m not saying anything is better than another; it’s just finding what works for you. Avoiding full-sugar soft drinks and avoiding or reducing calories consumed in drinks such as coffees in the form of flavoured syrups, sugar, or milk can be helpful as these will not fill you in any way but add to your total daily calorie intake. 

Choosing lower fat foods 

Fat is very important for our health, and I recommend for most people not to reduce your fat intake below 25% of your total calories (e.g., 25% of your calories coming from fat, 30% coming from protein, and 45% coming from carbohydrates). As mentioned in the previous blog, fat has many health benefits, a major one being its involvement in hormone production, and reducing your intake too much can have negative health implications. However, when looking to reduce calorie intake it can be helpful to choose leaner meats and reduced-fat or lower-fat foods such as 0% Greek Yogurt or Skyr yogurt.

Choose eating habits that suit you 

Fasting is something that constantly goes in and out of fashion, with it currently being more in than out. There is nothing inherently special about fasting; however, things such as intermittent fasting can help people lose weight, but why is it? If someone who’s typically awake for 15 hours, for example, 7 am to 10 pm, they will probably consume more calories in that period than if they only allowed themselves to eat in an 8- or 6-hour window (12 pm to 6 pm for example). Intermittent fasting, therefore, could help someone reduce their calorie intake due just to the fact that they have less time to eat. Setting such rigid rules and labelling it ‘fasting’ can sometimes do more harm than good though. Life happens, and the 12 pm to 6 pm window may not suit some days. Whether it be a dinner invite at 7 pm or a brunch meet-up at 10 am! What happens then? Instead, I recommend structuring your day around your hunger levels. If you are someone who wakes up and isn’t hungry for the first few hours of the day, then maybe it works better for you to push your breakfast back. However, this could also be counterproductive for some people. For example, someone might not eat for the first few hours of the day, then by the time it comes to eat, they’re ravenous and consume a huge amount of calories at this meal. Quite often people overeat in the latter half of the day and this can be for a number of reasons but one of these reasons could be that they restricted themselves too much in the first half of the day and their hunger levels caught up with them in the second half. Hunger levels can become quite regular so when looking to reduce calorie intake you can use this to your advantage by consuming high-volume, lower-calorie meals that fill you up and keep you going until your next meal at regular times throughout the day. 

Consuming more whole, minimally processed foods 

Not only when you have a lower calorie target do you have less opportunity to make sure you get in the all-important micronutrients, fibre, and sufficient protein, but in general, it is much harder to over-consume on whole foods than it is on highly processed, highly palatable foods. Filling your meals with large amounts of vegetables which are high-volume, low-calorie foods is a great way to fill yourself up. It’s possible to bulk up the size of a meal massively by adding a large quantity of vegetables to it and only marginally increase the calorie content. I’m not saying you cannot include processed foods whatsoever but for a lot of these foods, it is either the content of fat, sugar, or combination of the two that makes them highly palatable and therefore easy to overeat. There’s a common phrase used in nutrition and it’s “the dose makes the poison” which is appropriate here as it is a good idea to be conscious of your consumption. 

Consume a high-protein diet 

Protein is the most satiating of the three macronutrients. Therefore, including a large portion of protein (20g+) at meal times or in snacks can help regulate appetite and help keep you full for longer. 

Nutrition is not black and white, so none of the above is to be taken as “you can only do this when looking to increase calories and do that when looking to decrease calories.” These are just suggestions for ways that you can make choices that may help you achieve your goal, but ultimately you have to find what works for you. I hope this helps!