Hi, I’m Samantha!

I'm a nutritionist and I work in the online space helping people lose weight in a healthy sustainable way!

After working with hundreds of people transform their health I thought I’d chat about the 3 most common mistakes I see by people on their weight loss journey.

1. Client’s are often undereating!

If we aren’t giving our body the fuel it needs its going to slow down its function to preserve energy. So just say you were eating 1000 calories a day, your body isn’t going to function at it’s optimal rate. Your digestive system will slow down, your menstrual cycle most likely will stop, your brain slows down, plus much more to help your body adapt and conserve energy because we're not getting enough in. All these processes contribute to our energy expenditure and if they slow down we are therefore expending less energy. Now imagine how hard it would be to get in a calorie deficit if this happens? We will have to eat the bare minimum.

If we start to get enough energy in, our metabolism will work faster and when it's able to work faster our metabolism increases which means we burn more, making it much easier for us to get in a calorie deficit. We want to make sure our diet for fat loss is in a moderate calorie deficit, which is from 200-500 calorie deficit.

To add on to this, when we are not eating enough it's going to cause us to binge eat. Think about this, when we aren't eating enough throughout the day we might get to the point where we are absolutely starving and then we end binging at night! Remember our body is going to fight against us, it wants us to eat more food and it is only so long before you find yourself bingeing or snacks later in the afternoon or after dinner.

2. Meals aren’t nutritionally balanced.

I see this so so often, clients will have a piece of toast for breakfast with maybe some butter or vegemite and this simply is not a balanced meal. Toast is a great source of carbohydrates and fibre but it doesn't have enough protein or any fats in there. What we want to do is add something else to our toast to make it a little bit more nutritionally balanced and also fill us up a little bit more. An example of this is adding a couple of eggs on top or, some avocado, a slice of cheese or some peanut butter. Adding another macronutrient to the meal will help keep us fuller for longer and reach our nutrient requirements.

Another example of not making a nutritionally balanced meal would be lunch. Do you have something like a ham cheese tomato sandwich? Although it does have all the macronutrients in it, it doesn't have enough of a particular macronutrient called protein. We're better off adding in some shredded chicken breast, turkey breast, or tuna. This will make our meal more filling, we are able to get to our protein intake and we're able to see fat loss results a lot easier.

3. Client’s aren’t meal planning!

It is so important no matter where you are on your health journey and how experienced you are with nutrition that you meal plan. It doesn't have to be meal prepping where you cook your meals in advance. Just planning your meals out. I personally do it every Wednesday night. I sit down and think “okay, how many variety of meals do I want to make this week?” I usually prefer to have the same meal for a week and then change it each week. However what works for me, doesn’t necessarily mean it's best for you. If you prefer to have different meals each day or you prefer to double up your meals and have it for lunch the next day that works too. I also have some clients that prefer to have the same meals for the week for breakfast lunch and snacks and then have a variety for dinner and that just helps if they have families to feed. Once we have figured out the frequency of how we want to have our meals set out you can plan out what meals you’d like to have.

When you plan your meals in advance you are less likely to get take away or skip meals. I also recommend planning a treat into your diet, whether it's once a day or every couple of days just to help us feel not so deprived or that we're restricting ourselves too much!

So these are my top three mistakes I see with clients! I hope you found this helpful if you want to follow me on Instagram my Instagram handle is at @nutrition_bysamantha and there I posed a heap of weight loss, binge eating & emotional eating tips to help you with achieving the body of your goals. I also have an Instagram account called @nutrition.bysamantha where I talk about all things fertility and pregnancy nutrition!

Do you need help achieving sustainable weight loss? Without feeling restricted or deprived?

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