The Important Role of Protein and Physical Activity in Preventing Muscle Mass Loss While Losing Weight
March 31, 2025Categories: Bariatric, Blog, Health & Wellness
Reading nutrition labels can be overwhelming and confusing when you first begin to pay closer attention to the foods you are buying and eating. With a little practice and some time, you will become a pro and feel more informed about your food purchases and be able to make healthier choices. The first place to begin is looking at the serving size. This amount is what the nutrition information is based on, but it is not necessarily a recommendation of how much to eat. Sometimes even small packages of food can contain more than one serving so be sure to check the number of servings per package. Will you be eating more or less than this amount?
A common mistake people make when comparing foods based on their nutrition labels is only looking at the calories. It’s not just about choosing the option with the lesser number of calories. It’s important to also look at what is making up those calories. Are most of the calories coming from added sugar and unhealthy types of fat? Or is the food item high in protein and fiber? The macronutrient composition of the food is crucial to pay attention to, because this affects how filling that food is going to be depending on how quickly it gets digested.
How do you know if something is high or low in a specific nutrient? Instead of trying to memorize gram and milligram ranges on what is considered ‘high’ or ‘low’ for each nutrient, an easier and faster way to interpret a nutrition label is by looking at the % Daily Value (% DV) on the right-hand side of the label. The % DV shows how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to the total daily intake.
- If something is 5% or less, it is LOW in that nutrient.
- If something is 20% or more, it is HIGH in that nutrient.
For example, a food may have 160mg of sodium and the % DV is 7%. 7% is close to 5%, making that a lower sodium item. Another example: a food item has 10 grams of added sugar listed on the label. Doesn’t sound like a lot, right? But it’s 35% of the DV making it high in added sugar. Nutrients that you want to limit are added sugar, saturated fat, trans fat, and sodium. Nutrients that you want to eat more of are fiber, protein, vitamin D, calcium, potassium, and iron.
Not every single food is going to contain protein or fiber, but that doesn’t mean it is not a healthy choice. For example, a piece of salmon is naturally not going to contain any fiber. But it does contain protein and the healthy type of unsaturated fat, known as omega-3, making it a good choice. When comparing two items in the grocery store, there may not always be a “clear winner” where one item has less sugar, less sodium, less calories, more fiber, etc. than the other item. In these situations, you have to choose the nutrients that are most important to you based on your health goals. If you have prediabetes or diabetes, you may want to choose the item that has the least amount of added sugar, and not care as much if the sodium is slightly higher.
Find a food item in your house that has a nutrition label and see if you can better interpret the numbers now to help you make more informed choices!
Meal Planning 101
Learning meal planning skills can not only save you from unwanted weight gain, but it can also save you money and prevent food waste! Learning how to cook is a basic life skill that everyone should know. It takes practice to become good at it, just like anything else! If you don’t have a strong culinary back ground, be patient with yourself while you are learning and don’t expect to become a Top Chef overnight! Start out with simple recipes with minimal ingredients until you have mastered those skills and then you can try out more adventurous recipes and cuisines. There will be some failures along the way – so don’t get discouraged, every failure is a learning opportunity! There is a reason it is hard to replicate restaurant meals at home – often they use a lot more butter, salt, or sugar than you would preparing the meal at home. The more meals you cook at home, the more control you have over the ingredients and calories in the meal.
If you are new to meal planning and it sounds overwhelming, start out by choosing 1 meal that you usually struggle with. Maybe its breakfast – your mornings are hectic and rushed and you don’t have time to make something and end up grabbing a breakfast sandwich from the gas station or a sugary latte from the drive through. You start your day with a high carbohydrate meal lacking in protein and fiber that won’t sustain you very long. After that initial blood sugar spike comes the inevitable crash, low energy, and cravings for more carbohydrates. Take some time on Sunday to make veggie egg bites that you can grab and go during the week. Or make Greek yogurt and fruit parfaits that have a perfect balance of protein and fiber from the fruit that will keep you feeling full until lunch time! Spending a little time on the weekends to meal prep can make the rest of your week so much smoother.
Keep meals simple in the beginning, especially if you are short on time or don’t feel like spending an hour in the kitchen after a long day of work. Focus your meal plan around lean proteins and vegetables. If you’re in maintenance then you can also incorporate whole grains like quinoa or whole wheat pasta or starchy vegetables like beans or sweet potatoes. It can be as simple as this:
- Monday – Pesto chicken with steamed green beans
- Tuesday – Ground turkey taco salads
- Wednesday – Slow cooker shredded BBQ chicken with coleslaw
- Thursday – leftover BBQ chicken and slaw
- Friday – Teriyaki salmon with zucchini and peppers
When making your weekly meal plan, don’t forget to consider your schedule. If you know you’ll be getting home from work late one night or have a kids' sporting event to attend in the evening, preparing a complicated recipe with a long prep and cook time is not going to be ideal. Those are the nights that you want to plan a simple, semi-homemade meal utilizing a frozen or premade portion of the meal or have leftovers that you can just reheat so you’ll want plan to prepare extra portions of the previous night’s dinner. Or throw something in the slow cooker in the morning that will be ready waiting for you to enjoy when you get home!
If you have a habit of ordering take out for lunch and struggle with eating healthy at that meal, prepare extra portions of dinner so you can take the leftovers for lunch the next day. Or, prep several portions of something different on Sunday that you can take to work for your lunches. It could be as basic as doing deli turkey and cheese roll ups with baby carrots and low fat ranch dip or an apple with peanut butter.
Another strategy for meal prepping is batch cooking, where you cook several different proteins and vegetables all at once, and then combine them in different ways throughout the week to create meals. For example – bake or grill a large family pack size of chicken breasts and keep the seasoning pretty basic so you can be flexible with what you do with it. One night you could chop up the chicken and have it over a salad. Another night you could shred it and add it to a vegetable soup. Another night you could cut the chicken into strips and have it in a whole wheat wrap with lettuce, tomato, and cheese. You get the idea! Even just washing and chopping vegetables and fruits on the weekend can speed up the time it takes to put meals together during the week.
