Realistic Nutrition

Since my self-promotion game is awful, I thought I'd explain a bit about what I do... . ❗WHO AM I? . I’m Tasmin – nutritionist, powerlifter and firm believer that improving your diet and achieving your nutritional goals doesn’t have to be difficult or painful... . ❗WHAT IS REALISTIC NUTRITION? . Realistic Nutrition provides bespoke nutritional programmes the fit you, your goals and your lifestyle. No cookie-cutter programmes, no stupid fads, no starvation, no magical superfoods – just actionable and realistic nutritional advice designed specifically for you. . ❗WHAT DO I GET? . There are 3 tiers of programme available. More details available on my website (link in bio), but the short version is: ➡️ Macronutrient analysis – the quick ‘n’ dirty for those looking for just a framework with the most flexibility possible ➡️ Online programme – I provide you with a form to fill out which provides me with information about you, your diet, lifestyle, health and other relevant data, and I use this to put together a nutritional programme that meets your goals and fits your lifestyle. Includes a month of follow-up, a shopping list, recipe suggestions and other relevant handouts ➡️ 3 month weight loss (or gain!) programme – Everything that comes with the online programme plus weekly check-ins, weight and progress tracking, programme tweaks, motivation and suggestions . Drop me a message or visit my website to enquire! #nutrition #nutritionist #protein #carbs #healthyeating #lunch #dinner #macros #iifym #weightloss #fatloss #diettips #dietingtips #realisticnutrition
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#cleaneating #dettolfordinner

What you eat is no one else’s business. . Unless you ask someone for their opinion on what you’re eating, they have no place commenting on it. . 🚫“I could NEVER eat that much.”... . 🚫“Are you having ANOTHER slice of toast?” . 🚫“Do you just live on rabbit food?” . Even having someone look at your lunch and say, “Oh THAT looks healthy” makes people feel embarrassed and defensive, as though they’re supposed to be apologetic or self-deprecating about it. As though the correct response is something like, “Oh yeah, but I had cake for breakfast," or pulling a face and complaining, “Eurgh, I know. It’s because I’m on a DIET.” . These comments are almost never a genuine observation about what the other person is eating. They're just a window into our own insecurities and food demons. . 🔹️"Oh shit, someone eats a lot healthier than me and now I feel bad about my own diet so I’m going to make them feel like they’re trying too hard." . 🔹️"If I ate that much I'm certain I’d get fat so I’m going to make this other person feel guilty for it." . 🔹️"I’d be too embarrassed to be seen eating that much so I want this person to feel embarrassed about it too." . Ignore anyone who makes judgmental comments about what you’re eating because all they’re doing is trying to foist their own neuroses onto you. You don't need that shit. And if you’re the one commenting, just don’t. It only makes the other person feel shitty or annoyed. . Feelings of guilt and obligation around food are rife in our culture. Losing them is 🗝 to developing a healthy relationship with food. 🍉🍰🥗🍷 . #nutrition #nutritionist #protein #carbs #healthyeating #breakfast #lunch #dinner #macros #iifym #weightloss #fatloss #diettips #dietingtips #realisticnutrition
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❗❗ Reminder that @w10strength and I will be doing a talk on the hows and whys of fat loss on Sat 16 Feb at @castironstrength gym, 10 Swanfield, Edinburgh, EH11 1QT. . Come and learn how to lose weight while retaining lean mass, avoiding pitfalls and gimmicks, and how to achieve sustainable weight loss without turning into a hungry, grumpy bastard. . £10 entry. DM me or visit https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr… to book.... . #weightloss #fatloss #leanout #cutting #diet #dieting #weightlosstips #fatlosstips
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I am doing a talk on fat loss together with Steven Wylie of W10 Strength at Cast Iron Strength gym. We will discuss the science and practical application of losing weight, and - in a world full of comedy misinformation about diets - what to avoid!

New blog post up!

#Repost @realistic__nutrition • • • • • This is just a series of rambly thoughts about the phenomenon that is the ketogenic diet, rather than Here’s My Opinion On It (that would be way too long for an Insta post)… . 🥓 First of all, if the pic above shows us anything, it’s that no one really knows whether the ketogenic diet is good, bad or totally benign for the general population. Anyone who categorically states one way or the other is cherry-picking. Mass and social medi...a are rarely if ever a comprehensive and unbiased source of dietary information so take everything you read with a pinch of skepticism. If scientists who have spent their lives studying the topic can’t reach a conclusion, then WellnessFoodKetoBabe0548🌷🌻🌱 off of Instagram probably shouldn’t be trying to either. . 🥓 There is evidence that the ketogenic diet may be helpful in the management of certain conditions such as epilepsy, some neurocognitive diseases, metabolic disease and some cancers, however there isn’t a consensus. . 🥓 If your eating habits are so far outwith your own control that you have to completely eliminate an entire macronutrient in order to achieve some semblance of discipline, your problems may be psychological. . 🥓 The advocates trumpeting the fact that the Kardashians and Mick Jagger – all known for their expertise in the area and rational life choices – are using it, need much better criteria for judging the merit of a diet. . 🥓 You absolutely don’t need to read a book issuing you with instructions and restrictions to not be fat. . #keto #ketodiet #ketogenicdiet #lowcarb #lchf #nutrition #nutritionist #protein #carbs #healthyeating #iifym #weightloss #fatloss #diettips #dietingtips #realisticnutrition
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It's no news that people do some properly unhinged things in the name of weight loss, but the world of weight gain has plenty of its own wtf going on. I came across an article recently on clean bulking. One example of a day’s eats includes such culinary delights as: . 🎉 Meal 1: Scrambled eggs and oats 🎉 Meal 2: Tuna with quinoa 🎉 Meal 3: Good ol’ chicken and sweet potato 🎉 Meal 4: Drain cleaner probably, after the morning you’ve just had... . Good idea! Set someone a bulking plan that makes it as difficult as is humanly possible to keep eating 👌 The calorie intake for this day is north of 4000 (there are another 3 meals of parched misery to follow) and it has a hefty protein intake of 380g. That’s 380g of dry, unadorned protein. Mmmmmm. Good luck working up the saliva to chew your way through that. . It’s easy to put a meal plan online that consists of nothing more than disjointed ingredients with no regard for the sanity of the person who’s meant to follow it, but people don’t eat like that. If you tell people that this is what a ‘clean’ or healthy diet looks like, no one’s going to go anywhere near it and I wouldn’t blame them. Where’s the taste? Where’s the enjoyment? This kind of austerity is depressing enough when you’re cutting, but trying to force down EXTRA dry tuna and quinoa? Adherence is kinda important so this sort of regime just isn’t going to fly. . You don't have to eat like this in order to not be dirty bulking. There's a whooooole happy middle ground in there somewhere. . #bulking #bulk #cleanbulk #dirtybulk #nutritionist #protein #carbs #healthyeating #lunch #dinner #macros #iifym #weightloss #fatloss #diettips #dietingtips #realisticnutrition
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New blog post up! My clients know that I like to bang on about vegetables. Here's why.
http://www.realisticnutrition.co/eat-your -damn-veggies/

Adventures in Homemade Quest Bars #3. . These came out niiiiiice 👌 I'm making my own because kicking my protein bar habit could definitely fund a holiday. These work out around £1.70 per bar with the freeze-dried strawberries, but if you skip them they'd be around £1 each (turns out going into Waitrose with no agenda is expensive when you're as suggestible as I am 😐). So a decent saving for a high-fibre protein bar. This is the latest incarnation: . Per bar:... 🔹️ 30g vanilla protein powder (this time I used a 50/50 mix of whey and soy protein, which definitely seems to make it less sticky and easier to work with) 🔹️ 55g Vita Fibre 🔹️ Freeze-dried strawberries 🔹️ Half a square of Lindt 70% chocolate . Macros: 4g net carbs (44g carbs, 40g fibre), 3g fat, 27g protein. . They also freeze well. 20-ish seconds in the microwave and they're good to go. Or just take it out of the freezer at the start of the day, take it to work and by the time you come to eat it it should be defrosted. Enjoy! . #proteinbar #protein #homemadeproteinbars #nutrition #nutritionist #healthyeating #carbs #macros #iifym #weightloss #fatloss #realisticnutrition
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Hello folks - just to let anyone who wants to get in touch know, I will be uncontactable for a couple of days, but I'll come back to people around mid-week 😁

Pre-training brekkie. . Leftover chicken sausages, crumpets with light Philly, tomatoes and avocado. . 478 kcal, 52C, 15F, 38P.... . I almost always base my breakfast on what I'm doing in the early half of the day. Today I'm off to train in a while, but on a day when I'm desk-bound all day I'd normally have fewer and lower-GI carbs. If I'm doing a particularly heavy or hard training session, I'd up the carbs a bit more. . You also want to give yourself time to digest your pre-WO meal. If I were short on time and heading straight to the gym, I'd have something higher GI and calorie-dense, or just a fast-digested carb. . Some people are all for fasted training. If it works for you, great, but it doesn't for everyone. It definitely doesn't for me. I have never in my life had a decent fasted training session so I like to get a meal or 2 in me first. If I do train first thing in the morning it's always weights I know I can roll out of bed and lift while half asleep, or cardio or accessory work. I like to be fed for my heavy sessions! . #preworkout #training #preworkoutmeal #nutrition #nutritionist #carbs #protein #iifym #carbsarenotbad #healthyeating #fuel #trainingfuel #powerlifting #powerlifter #breakfast #diet #weightloss #fatloss #realisticnutrition
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If you’re looking back on your weekend and feeling full of guilt and regret about what you ate, you need to stop associating food with YOLO and punishment. It’s amazing how many people eat an insanely puritanical diet all week, and when the weekend hits they Lose. Their. Shit. . One begets the other. Starve all week and you are literally laying the groundwork for a weekend binge, especially if you’re already prone overeating. Then you compensate by eating salad all week, and ...by the weekend you’re hungry, pissed off, have zero fucks left and are primed for an all-out binge. . STOP ⛔🤚 If this is a recurring cycle that you can’t seem to break, take a week out. Use that week to change focus. Forget about food quantity and focus on quality instead. 🔷️ Rather than trying to choke down plain, bland salads, see what you can do to make them delicious. Try olive oil, make your own vinaigrette, nuts, seeds, meat, fish, add veg you don’t usually put into a salad. 🔷️ Rather than having a tiny pot of low-calorie fruit yoghurt, try some real yoghurt – natural yoghurt, the kind that has some fat in it and isn’t full of sweeteners and flavourings. Chuck some fruit in. 🔷️ Have the odd treat. But enjoy it, don’t bolt it down and immediately reach for another. 🔷️ Don’t stuff your face, and don’t beat yourself up. 🔷️ Get enough sleep, a bit of exercise, spend some time outdoors. . I guarantee when you reach the weekend you won’t be so desperate for that take-away pizza or whole tub of ice cream or whatever it might be. . Breaking the boom-bust, splurge-guilt seesaw is key 🗝Try hitting the reset button for a week and then revisit the diet with a plan, willingness to compromise, and realistic expectations of yourself. . #nutrition #nutritionist #protein #carbs #healthyeating #lunch #dinner #macros #iifym #weightloss #fatloss #diettips #dietingtips #realisticnutrition
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http://www.realisticnutrition.co/do-i-loo k-healthy/
New blog post up! It's a short-and-ranty. Ranting, me?

So the wisdom holds that dietary animal protein creates acidity in the blood. Acidity needs to be buffered by something. What does the body use? Calcium (think antacid tablets – calcium carbonate). Where does the body get calcium? Well, nearly all of your stored calcium is in the bones so… bye bye bones. Which means eating meat is bad for bones. . IS it, though…? . Nah. It’s true that meat is rich in the sulphur-containing amino acids cysteine and methionine, which create aci...dity. And it’s true that acidity in the blood needs to be buffered. But: 🔷️ it isn’t just calcium from dem bones that’s used to do this – bicarbonate, potassium and haemoglobin are among the other buffering substances in the blood 🔷️ the increased calcium excretion that’s seen with animal protein intake has been found to be accompanied by increased calcium absorption, so it appears that the calcium being used to buffer the blood is the calcium you just ate 🔷️ a decent intake of protein, including animal protein, is positively associated with bone mineral density. . However, if you’re eating inadequate calcium, bone mineral loss may occur, so don't skimp on that. You also want to make sure you’re eating your veggies – a good source of potassium. . If you keep your diet varied, keep processed (low-nutrient) foods to a minimum and do some resistance exercise, you’re putting yourself in a good position to have a Wolverine-like skeleton in old age. . In short, don’t eat like an idiot and sit on your arse all day, every day #toptip #youhearditherefirst . #nutrition #nutritionist #protein #carbs #healthyeating #realisticnutrition #breakfast #iifym #diet #weightloss #fatloss #realisticnutrition
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Diet and sleep, sleep and diet. They affect each other in more ways than you know. . If you’ve ever noticed that you don’t sleep well in a calorie deficit, there’s a reason for it. Food restriction can increase cortisol output (as can just monitoring your food intake, interestingly) as your body tries to free up energy stores. Cortisol is a stress hormone whose job, among other things, is to make sure that our cells have the energy they need to keep going under conditions of ...food deprivation. It does this by releasing energy stores into the bloodstream, preventing energy storage and promoting wakefulness so that you’ll go off and find food. . High cortisol is consistently associated with poor food choices, due in part to its role as an insulin antagonist. Insulin, unlike cortisol, promotes storage. It’s secreted in response to glucose in the bloodstream and is an indication that we’re fed. With chronically high cortisol, our insulin sensitivity therefore decreases, leading to hyperglycaemia which can in turn lead to a host of downstream problems including type 2 diabetes. . Obviously, I’m not saying that if you go on a diet you’re getting diabetes. What I’m saying is, the body has ways of protecting itself from our idiocy (think how much work your liver had to do when you were a student). Deliberately depriving the body of food has effects beyond just weight loss, many of which have the sole purpose of making you eat more. Insomnia is one such effect. . How to combat this? 🔹️Make sure you’re not eating too little – you have to eat ENOUGH to diet effectively 🔹️Eat a wide range of foods – too few carbs, too little protein, not enough vitamin C, low magnesium… these are all associated with increased cortisol 🔹️Eat carbs on the low end of the glycaemic scale for better blood sugar control 🔹️Try shifting more of your food to later in the day (no, eating after 6pm doesn’t make you fat) 🔹️Manage your stress 🔹️If you train hard, try doing it earlier in the day. If you can’t, phosphatidylserine has been shown to be effective in blunting the post-exercise cortisol response, which may be helpful for those who are too amped up to sleep after training in the evening
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Yes yes yes! THIS. . I've noticed this rite of passage in the nutrition and fitness industry. Let’s take our hypothetical person called Sam. . Sam becomes interested in 'getting healthy', so she goes online.... . Sam comes across Paleo, gluten, websites with the word 'wellness' in the name, kale and low-carb. . Sam discovers that a lot of foods which she’d been getting along fine with for her entire life were bad and going to kill her, so gives up gluten, wheat, dairy, carbs, sugar and meat. . Sam starts telling other people about her findings and becomes firmly entrenched in her belief that everyone should be eating in this way. . After a few months of sticking puritanically to this newfound life of nutritional enlightenment, Sam realises that her social life has gone to shit, going out for meals has become an ordeal, she’s starting to get pissed off – I mean is she supposed to NEVER eat bread ever again, ffs? – and is feeling tired and pissy. . Eventually Sam crashes off the diet with the force of 1000 megatons of TNT, piles on weight (I’d say she piled it ‘back on’ but she hadn't lost any due to the jar a day of nut butter she was eating) and eventually accepts that since eating is something she’s going to have to do every day for the rest of her life, she may as well not do it in such a way that makes her miserable. . Sam discovers that she actually isn’t coeliac, lactose-intolerant or pre-diabetic, that she fucking hates kale and that meat doesn’t actually rot in your colon, and manages to lose the weight slowly by paying attention to portion size, eating veg and quality protein and exercising regularly. . Don't listen to anyone who bans foods or food groups without giving you a reason why YOU shouldn't eat them. Don't be like Sam. . . . #Repost @thealanaragon • • • • • We’re all adults here, right? Well - most of us are (some of my kids’ friends follow me). One way to spot a quack/charlatan is someone who says that everyone needs to completely avoid [insert naughty food or food constituent here]. Another way to spot a BS-er is the claim that everyone must consume [insert list of “superfoods” here]. #dontgetmadatme #getmadatscience
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Something I posted a year ago... I was reminded of it again today. High protein peanut butter is still ridiculous 🙄
#Repost @tazzy_cam • • • • • Today in the supermarket I saw high protein #peanutbutter and because evidently I get really bored when grocery shopping and need to get a life and/or grip, I decided to compare it to 3 others... High protein in top left.... . At most there's an extra 6.2g protein per 100g, at the least 4.3g. Unless you're on a megabulk, are trying to achieve vegan ketosis or just totally lose your shit around peanut butter (guilty 😬), you're unlikely to eat 100g of it per day. If you're the type to pick up a 'high protein' product instead of the standard model it's unlikely that you'll suck up the 50g of fat you'd need to eat to get the 30g of protein in that amount. . If you take a 'standard' serving of peanut butter (30g) you'll get between 1.3g and 1.8g additional protein with the high protein version 🤔, which is clearly nothing to write home about. That amount could be explained by variations in label accuracy. If you're getting enough protein each day anyway, that amount isn't going to make a difference; if not, less than 2 additional grams per day isn't going to cut it either. . Since my preferred vessel for peanut butter is scrambled eggs I'm probably good for protein anyway 😄🥚🥚🥚🍽 #nutrition #nutritionist #eggs #protein #macros #macronutrients #carbs #food #powerlifter #powerlifting #girlswholift #girlswhoeat
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