Wanting to measure your food intake but not keen on counting calories or blocks? We use a much simpler method advocated by Precision Nutrition - a world-renowned body transformation programme that focuses on simple, flexible, realistic and sustainable nutrition.

With this method, you can essentially eat whatever you want, as long as you refer to the portions that suit you. There are a lot of other methods out there for measuring food intake, but many are too complicated to follow in the long term.

All you need for this is your hand, and the ability to count to one or two!

WOMEN

• 1 cupped hand of carbohydrate dense foods with most meals
• 1 fist of vegetables with each meal
• 1 palm of protein dense foods with each meal
• 1 entire thumb of fat dense foods with most meals

MEN

• 2 cupped hands of carbohydrate dense foods with most meals
• 2 fists of vegetables with each meal
• 2 palms of protein dense foods with each meal
• 2 entire thumbs of fat dense foods with most meals

The above is based on around 3-4 meals each day, however, there are always going to be exceptions to this so it's important to be a little flexible. This includes being smaller or larger in stature, how satisfied you feel after your meals, how frequently you eat throughout the day, how active you are, what your goals are, and whether you're getting the results you want.

Because of that it's also important to remember that this is all just a starting point and portions and ratios may need adjusting depending on how your body responds. For example, if you want to gain weight and are having trouble doing it with these servings, you might add an extra thumb of fats or an extra cupped palm of carbohydrates. If you are hungry you might add an extra serve of protein.

That said, this is a great starting point and we advise that you give this a really solid go for at least two weeks consistently before considering making any modifications to it.

What about meal plans?

As for meal plans, we see the benefits in planning your meals ahead but prefer to assist you with doing this yourself rather than handing you set plans telling you specifically what to eat. This is because we want you to get results in a healthy way that's sustainable in the long term, and the way to do that is to make small habit changes over time (rather than completely revamping everything you're doing!).

Meal plans also don't take into consideration what to do when you go on holiday, social occasions, restaurant trips, what to do if you've forgotten to get specific ingredients or can't for whatever reason, takeaways... we would rather that we teach you how to tackle ALL these occasions and the way to do that is through macronutrient portion serves and mindful eating.

Reference / https://www.precisionnutrition.com/calorie-control-guide