Template Progression
When embarking on a journey to implement the Template as a framework for nutrition, it is common to experience feelings of being overwhelmed. Other thoughts like “this is too much food, how can I possibly lose weight?”, “this is so far from how I am currently eating, it feels like too much change”, enter people’s mind and cast a shadow of doubt on their ability to make ANY nutrition habit changes. This is extremely common - as a result, we recommend for those having these feelings that they follow a gradual ramp-up in nutrition habits, which we outline below.
In THIS Blog post (and the associated podcast), you can read about the steps that we recommend to follow in order as you progress through. You can learn about WHAT the steps are, however here we will provide some strategies of HOW to implement them into your life.
We recommend taking the following steps to allow you to build sustainable habits. Look at this as laying the foundation for your house. When you build a house, you need all the components: foundation, support beams and framing, walls and windows and the roof. Without a solid foundation, your house will fall over. Once these foundational nutrition habits are established, you can build up from there. It may feel like you are moving too slow - so many of us are used to jumping feet first into significant nutritional changes, only to burn out after a period of time and revert to old habits. This is a sign to stick with the progression. If you are used to doing one thing and struggling to find success, it's time to try something different.
Step #1: Quality Food Choices
This is the very first step in the progression when starting out in making changes to your diet. Jumping in feet first and following the template as it is described is something that works for some people, but not for most. Depending on what your nutrition currently looks like, the template can be very overwhelming. You may be currently consuming lots of processed foods, sugar, soda, etc. so the thought of consuming 3-4 meals a day of primarily whole, unprocessed foods and drinking 50-100 ounces of plain water does not seem like something that is possible.
If you relate to this description in some form, what we recommend is to start with ADDING in a few items. This may be surprising to hear that if you feel you have a long way to go in improving your nutrition that we are recommending adding and not removing from your diet, but the fact is, it is much easier to stomach not changing your entire diet and ONLY adding in something. You are NOT being told to not eat something - which is a surefire way for you to want to rebel and want to overeat those items.
Consider adding one (or more) of the following to your current daily intake:
One extra 8-10 ounce glass of water (plain, non-sparkling water!)
One fist-sized serving of veggies
One open, cupped hand-sized serving of fruit
You can take as long as you need in this stage whereby you are gradually adding more of these items to the point where you COULD be consuming 3-4 servings of veggies and/or fruits per day and up to 50 ounces of water. What you will very likely notice as you make these gradual changes is that you may consume less processed foods and sugar, etc and start feeling better overall - all by adding in quality food choices.
Balance Your Plate
Once you feel comfortable with the additions you have made with your diet (and by comfortable, we mean that it is not a significant effort to maintain and you don’t feel deprived), you can take the next step which involves consuming a balance of the macronutrients Protein, Carbohydrates and Fat. If you need a visual, picture your plate with:
½ of it covered in a mix of starchy carbs and veggies
¼ covered by your chosen protein source
¼ containing some healthy fats!
Our nutritional recommendations include consuming 3-4 meals (or 3 meals and 2 smaller meals/snacks) every day to optimize satiety and help manage blood sugar fluctuations. That said, if the thought of doing this for every meal is too overwhelming - start with one meal. The meal that is the easiest for you to manage. If that is breakfast, great. If it is dinner, go for that one. As you get more comfortable with building your meals balanced this way, you can add additional meals throughout the day.
There is no requirement to move on further from this point if you are happy with how you are eating and are making the sort of progress you are hoping to make.
Eating with your Hands
When and if the time comes where you are balancing the majority of your meals in the day and you are ready to begin to hone in on your portion sizes, the Palm method is the next step! While this is an approximate method, we love this approach for determining portion sizes for a few reasons:
Your hands go with you wherever you go, so you have no need to bring any measurement tools with you to determine how much of certain foods you should eat.
Your hands are generally proportional to your body size. Larger bodied individuals typically have larger hands and vice versa. This is not always the case, but in general. This means that the portion sizes should be roughly appropriate for your body size.
The palm method portion sizes per meal for each gender and goal can be found HERE. Similar to the guidance in the Balanced Plate method above, we recommend gradually incorporating this portioning approach. You could start with one meal using your palm and the remainder balancing your plate. As you get more comfortable with the palm method, you could increase the number of meals you do this for.
Many people find the palm method a perfect place to stick with for the long term, so if this is you, there is no pressure to move forward.
Weighing and Measuring - Template or Calories/Protein Targets
The final stage in this progression is the most precise and this is where you are weighing and measuring your food, following the Street Parking Nutrition Template or Calories and Protein targets.
All of the prior methods we explained are the building blocks for this stage and this is the “roof” in our house example. The prior methods are approximations of this approach. In this approach, you would follow the Nutrition Template (click HERE for a video on what the template is/how it works) OR set your own calorie and protein target (click to learn how to do this.)
Both of these approaches are somewhat of a guess for your starting point of your caloric intake (albeit an educated one, leveraging your current bodyweight and goals.) We always recommend sticking with your initial plan for several weeks (ideally 4-6) and assess your progress not only based on the scale weight but also based on measurements, how your clothes fit, what your energy and recovery is like, and how you look and feel. After that period of time, if your progress has plateaued (based on any of the metrics mentioned), you could consider making a small adjustment, no more than 10% reduction in calories. We do recommend keeping calories as high as possible while still making progress. While it can be tempting to slash calories to help achieve your goals quicker, this can quickly backfire when your progress ultimately stalls and you are left with a super low caloric intake and metabolism and end up in a vicious cycle of eating less and less to continue to make progress. Eating enough calories to fuel your activities while still experiencing a caloric deficit can take some time to find the sweet spot, but with patience you can get there!
One approach does not fit all
The one thing about the concept of a progression is that many people consider it a linear approach and it is not possible to go backwards/going back to an earlier stage is a “failure.” This is part of the reason why people feel like a failure if they experience a time in their life where wherever they are at nutrition-wise becomes unsustainable for a period of time. That’s why it can be helpful to look at this as a progression spectrum, whereby you can move back and forth between stages as needed to allow for overall nutritional consistency.
Just because you get to the point where you’re weighing and measuring all your meals, doesn’t mean that you A.) have do it every day or every meal, B.) can’t step backwards in the progression (say to palm method or even balanced plate) when you find yourself in a season where you need your nutrition to be less complex (like you’re expecting or just had a baby, you’re starting a new job, etc.). Meeting yourself where you are at now and setting a nutrition plan that works for you now is what will help you have continued success through various stages of life, without throwing in the towel altogether. Just like the “more than nothing” mentality that Street Parking promotes regarding fitness, we believe in the same concept as it applies to nutrition. You’re better off having only one serving of veggies in a day than none at all (for example.)
We hope this helps you envision how to progress from where you are in your nutrition journey, along the spectrum of varying complexity as it pertains to portion control. There is no right or wrong way to approach implementing changes to your nutrition. Trial and error may be necessary to figure out what works best for you, but keep experimenting to find the right balance for you!