I decided last week to give Precision Nutrition a try. It’s been on the back of my mind for some time, and I’ve also been half-heartedly trying to drop 5-10 lbs for some time, but without success. And one day, I just realized that if I want different results, I have to try something different.

I am generally not a fan of most “diets”, or even “nutritional approaches”. They just seem to be spending too much effort trying to convince people of their merits. I don’t know why that turns me off, but it does. Maybe because in that process, they tend to ignore a lot of truths to support their thesis.

Precision Nutrition appealed to me because I am a big fan of Dr. John Berardi. In fact I wrote a whole article about one of his articles. I’ve also attended a presentation he gave about the role of nutrition for injured athletes, which he has turned into an article. In other words, the guy knows nutrition, and he knows performance. That appeals to me.

Fast forward a week and I received my Precision Nutrition binder and had a read through.

Based on a quick first read-through, I’m impressed. Here’s why:
– It seems to talk about overcoming the personal challenges of healthy eating in addition to just the food. I’m a firm believer that psychology is at least as big as physiology when it comes to weight loss.
– There is room for individualization, which I love.
– It addresses athletic performance.
– It provides useful guidance.
– It includes a “quick start guide”, which means I could start right away even though I don’t really have my plan set up yet.

On that latter note, I bit the bullet, pulled out the grocery list in the quick start plan, and popped over to the grocery store after my tennis game this evening, for some chicken, spinach, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, oranges, olive oil, chick peas, frozen blueberries, and almonds.

Then I came home and followed the one hour guide. In less than an hour, I made dinner as well as prepped food for tomorrow. So for tomorrow, I have the fixings for an omelet all ready (it includes cheese. mmm), some chicken, quinoa and spinach, a cucumber&tomato salad (recipe was olive oil with salt + pepper but I went with olive oil and balsamic. I’ll find out when I read more if that is considered okay), and the beginnings of blueberry steel-cut oats. I’m particularly curious about the latter, as I’ve never had it before.

Then I ate dinner – chicken with chick peas, garlic, onion, tomato and spices, along with more of the cucumber and tomato salad. The dinner was decent – it filled me up, although I’m not in love with the recipe. But as I was eating it, I realized that it was basically channa masala with chicken. So next time, I will use this recipe instead, and I’m confident it will be delicious.

That’s all I have so far. One thing that is disappointing, is that I did not see Cheetos on the shopping list.

If you’re intrigued, check out the Precision Nutrition site.

Click here to go to the next entry in My Precision Nutrition Journal.

Elsbeth Vaino is a certified personal trainer in Ottawa, Canada.