In today’s Play Smart, we take a look at a new study from the American Society for Nutrition and what golfers can learn from it.
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Welcome to Play Smart, a column to help you play golf smarter and better from the Luke Kerr-Dineen Game Improvement Editor (who you can follow on twitter right here).
When golfers struggle to lose weight, one of the biggest obstacles they face is not changing what they eat. It is realizing what they eat. That is the first step towards change, and it is difficult for most to remove.
And a recent in-depth study of the American Society of Nutrition try it
The ASN study collected data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which surveyed nearly 10,000 Americans as they detailed their daily diet, and then asked participants to rate how healthy they thought their diet was. Research then looked at how healthy these people’s diets are. Really they were, according to their nutrition guidelines, and found a huge disconnect.
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Luke Kerr-Dineen
“We found that only a small percentage of American adults can accurately assess the healthfulness of their diet,” writes author Jessica Thomson, PhD, a research epidemiologist with the US Department of Agriculture’s Southeast Area Agricultural Research Service, in Science Daily. “Furthermore, most adults overestimate the quality of their diet, sometimes to a considerable degree.”
Specifically, the study found that approximately “approximately 85 percent incorrectly assessed the quality of their diet” and that, overall, 99 percent of the participants “overestimated the healthfulness of their diet.” Only those who admitted their diet was unhealthy tended to rate themselves more accurately.
Simply put, almost everyone thinks they’re eating healthier than they really are.
How to *really* improve your diet
After sharing the results, the study outlines ways this disconnect could be rectified in the future. Mainly, do people deliberately ignore what their diets are? Or just don’t know what a healthy diet is? appearance I like it?
As for what golfers can take away from all of this, first, understand what the ASN describes as some “healthy” and “unhealthy” foods.
Examples of foods that the ASN classified as “healthier” include…
- fruits
- Vegetables
- whole grains
- healthy fats
- low-fat dairy products
- Seafood
- Vegetable proteins.
And some “less healthy” foods…
- refined grains
- high sodium foods
- Foods with added sugars
- Saturated fats
Having a healthy diet in general does not mean completely eliminating these last foods. It simply means enjoying them in moderation. Portion control is another big component of all of this. You don’t have to cut out the unhealthy stuff entirely to improve your diet, but if you’re going to enjoy some “refined grains” like pasta, watch how much you’re actually eating. When I was working hard to lose weight, I literally started weighing those things, using a scale, and found that it really helped.
