The chat around weight loss can be overwhelming and confusing, but with Fresh Start, it doesn’t need to be! Our delicious recipes, combined with the handy, relatable and sustainable tips and hacks we’ll provide, as good starting tools to encourage healthy eating habits and new, achievable lifestyle changes to aid in your weight loss journey – however that looks for you.
Our team of in house dietitian’s and nutrition experts break down a few key elements below.
What’s the buzz around calories?
At Fresh Start, we’re champions of the nutrient-dense and nude food philosophy, which is hugely important for our health, but some of us may find it helpful to learn a bit about calories, aka ‘energy’. Learning a bit about the calories content of foods can help us to understand appropriate portions, and learn how to create balance – both of which are important elements of a high quality diet.
When it comes to the food we eat, think of those calories as calories in. When it comes to the energy our body uses, think of that as calories out. Although many factors can alter and affect our body’s ability to burn and store calories, put simply, when healthy adults eat more calories than their body can use, their body may store those extra calories as body fat, to break down for energy later. For most people, by reducing our daily calorie intake by around 500 calories per day from the RDI (recommended daily intake), we will start to lose weight. On the whole, highly processed foods tend to be high in calories, high in discretionary nutrients such as salt and saturated (not heart healthy) fat and low in protein, fibre vitamins and minerals – making them an easy place to start when focusing on improving our diet quality and moderating our calorie intake.
Calories aren’t the be all and end all though! Calories are one way to quantify energy, but they don’t depict the healthiness of the food. Low calorie foods aren’t always nutritious, just like some very nutrient dense foods are higher in calories. Nutrition and diet quality should always be our focus when it comes to healthy eating, as our bodies can’t function efficiently without key nutrients!
You can take our handy Calorie Guide Survey here for an idea of how many calories you should be consuming per day.
The importance of taking it slow
To enjoy the journey, it’s important not to rush into any heavy or crash dieting – this won’t be sustainable in the long run. If your aim is weight loss, losing any more than 0.5-1kg per week may mean you’re actually losing muscle mass. Muscle is important for functional strength and everyday health, so it’s important to protect it by fuelling your body properly.
Weight loss is strongly associated with healthy habits and habits take time to build. Meaning weight loss requires a longer term commitment to making healthier changes to your lifestyle. Focusing on adding one small positive change each day or each week is a great place to start. If you repeat this action every day or week thereafter, the cumulative effect is a healthy habit and the results will feel more rewarding and become effortless over time.
Focus on the food you’re nourishing your body with for week 1, and encourage yourself to eat well outside of Fresh Start dinners, and build on this with another healthy habit in week 2, and so on.
It’s better together, get support when you need it!
While your weight loss journey is personal to you, having support from others can help to not only motivate you, but also to learn from each other’s experiences and tackle your journeys together! Friends, colleagues or family members can be a great support to hold you accountable, and we also have our Fresh Start Wellness Panel who are happy to help and give advice and support along the way. You can reach out to our team of Fresh Start experts at [email protected]
Need a bit more guidance?
Each week of the Jumpstart programme, we’ll send you a menu plan showing you a few meal ideas that can help guide you on healthy choices and portion sizes – and taste amazing!
Log in to your account and select your recipes for next week here.
