Written by Matt Frazier
Cooking
setting with fresh organic vegetables. Healthy eating coThe more I learn about
habits, the more I believe that simplicity is the best policy — especially when
it comes to food. I’m not a fan of restrictions or numbers when it’s time to
eat. People often email me to ask why I don’t include nutrition facts with the
recipes on No Meat Athlete, and I always answer that I simply don’t believe
they’re good, except perhaps in cases where extreme weight loss is required. Food,
and the time we spend eating it, should be enjoyed — it’s one of the great
pleasures of life, and to constrain it with complicated rules and numbers is
completely unnatural.
Simple
is good
Simplicity
is the reason Michael Pollan’s three-sentence manifesto from In Defense of Food
resonated so well (“Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.”). And the
stickiness of that phrase is probably what led Pollan to write Food Rules,
another goodie full of short, memorable rules-of-thumb like “Eat only what your
great-grandmother would recognize as food.” And so here I list the simple food
rules I live by. They’re not meant to be as catchy or easy to remember as
Pollan’s, but they’re an honest distillation of what I believe is the
healthiest way to eat. Not just this month, or until you lose those last 15
pounds, but for life.
1. Avoid processed foods
and choose whole, unrefined foods instead. This one should
come as a no surprise. It’s listed first because if you were to throw out every
other message you’ve heard about healthy food and retain only the three words
“eat whole foods,” you would dramatically improve the way you eat if you’re
currently doing something different.
But
this single guideline flies in the face of the way people eat in the Western
world today, so you’ll have to reject the shiny pseudo-food that food
manufacturers want you to buy. Some specific examples of what this rule
implies:
Brown
rice instead of white.
Fruits
instead of fruit juice.
Whole
wheat flour instead of white (more on wheat in a bit though)
2. Get most of your food
from plants. I’m not asking you to become vegetarian or
vegan if you’re not already and it doesn’t appeal to you — I like to provide
tools and hopefully some inspiration to do so, but it’s never been my M.O. to
try to coerce people who aren’t ready.
Unlike
many other vegetarians and vegans, I tend not to believe that animal foods are
inherently bad for you (dairy products are an exception — I don’t think
drinking milk from another species makes any sense). We’ve seen that people can
thrive on a variety of omnivorous and plant-based diets, and I think we’re
built to handle either one pretty well.
The
problem with meat, to me, is the sheer amount most people consume. While our
ancestors might have gone several days between successful hunts and the meat
that resulted, modern people treat every meal like a post-hunt feast. The
caloric density of that much meat leaves little room for other foods, and puts
a digestive load on our bodies that leaves us feeling sluggish and full for
hours after big meals. People in many other countries than the United States
use meat as a flavoring agent — or as a side dish, perhaps, but rarely as the
focus of the meal. I believe that if you’re going to continue to eat meat, this
is the healthy way to do it
3. Cook your own food. To
follow the first guideline of eating whole foods nearly dictates that you
prepare your own food. Nonetheless, I’ve included it because it runs counter to
the way so many people now obtain their meals.
Several
posts on this site are dedicated to helping you make your way into the kitchen
and start cooking. But it doesn’t stop with preparing meals: just about any
food worth eating can be prepared at home, bringing you one step closer to the
food you eat and giving you complete knowledge of every single ingredient that
goes into it.
Here
are a few things you might be tempted to buy that you can make at home with
equipment no more sophisticated than a food processor or high-speed blender.
Hummus
; Baba ganoush; Pesto ; Sauces: tomato, barbecue, ketchup ; Nut butters; Flour
from grains or beans ; Sprouts; Smoothies ; Bread ; and Sports drinks
4. Make raw fruits and
vegetables a big part of your diet. There’s a lot of debate
over the virtues of raw versus cooked food. Some say that raw food is more
easily digested, since digestive enzymes that exist in the raw state are
denatured by excessive heat. On the other hand, many foods are inedible unless
cooked, and cooking is something that has gone on for much our existence (long
enough to have influenced our evolution).
I
take the middle ground on this one, choosing to eat foods in both states. But
since we’re so used to eating cooked foods, it’s only raw foods that we need to
make a conscious effort to make sure we eat each day.
One
of the best habits you can develop is that of having a mostly-raw smoothie each
morning and a big salad each afternoon. Combine this with a few pieces of fresh
fruit for snacks throughout the day, and you’re getting a significant amount of
wholesome, raw food without even thinking about it. Which brings me to
guideline number 5.
5. Drink a smoothie and
eat a salad every single day. Even if you ate whatever
you wanted the rest of the day, I’d be willing to bet you wouldn’t get fat as
long as you made sure to drink a smoothie and eat a big salad every single day.
Sure, if you were to eat at McDonald’s for lunch and Outback for dinner the
rest of the time, you could probably succeed at packing on a few pounds. But
here’s the thing.
The
smoothie and salad act as “anchors” that keep you on track, to remind you just
how great it feels to put real, fresh fruits and vegetables in your body. After
you start the day with a smoothie, McDonald’s for lunch doesn’t seem so good
anymore. And when it’s time to start thinking about dinner, the salad is there to
help you make a good choice. In this way, those two healthy meals turn into
three or four … which doesn’t leave much room for junk.
6. Don’t eat too much
wheat. (Or any one food, really!) I
realize that you might have no desire to stop eating bread and wheat pasta. And
that’s fine; I don’t either. But so many food products in our culture are now
based on wheat that it’s very easy for it to show up in every single meal you
eat if you don’t pay attention! Relying so heavily on a single food just
doesn’t make much sense, even before you consider the reasons many top athletes
now cite for avoiding wheat.
People
have varying levels of sensitivity to wheat. For some people, gluten is
tremendously difficult and inefficient to digest. For others, the sensitivity
isn’t so severe that it’s recognized as a problem, but wheat nevertheless may
adversely affect their energy levels. Problems associated with gluten occur
even with 100% whole wheat products, not just refined wheat flour (which most
athletes avoid anyway, except at certain key times around workouts).
The
good news is that there are now plenty of good alternatives to wheat products,
especially when it comes to pasta, the runners’ staple. My favorite is spelt
pasta, but there are lots of other varieties, made from rice, quinoa, and even
chickpea flour. My suggestion: Don’t cut out wheat completely, but limit it to
one meal a day instead of three or four, or ideally to just a few meals a week,
just like any other food.
7. Eat a wide variety of
foods. If the idea of eating a mostly-vegetarian diet doesn’t
appeal to you, it’s likely that you view it as a “taking away” process. Maybe
your meals are centered around meat, and without it, the plate would seem
pretty empty.
But
the reality is quite different than that. If you’re mindful of what you eat and
don’t simply rely on vegetarian junk food, you’ll actually end up adding many
foods to your diet as you’re forced to go outside of your normal routine and
explore new options at home and in restaurants. This is a great thing for your
health. It means you’ll get a broad mix of vitamins and minerals, rather than
potentially getting way more than you need of certain ones and none of many
others, as you might if you were to eat the same few foods over and over.
8. With the exception of a
daily smoothie, don’t drink your calories. If you’ve paid any
attention to healthy eating over the past few years, this guideline probably
isn’t new. It’s essentially a restatement of the “eat whole foods” guideline,
since most drinks with substantial amounts of calories are processed.
Since
drinks — even fruit juices — take up relatively little room in your stomach,
it’s very easy to take in way too many calories before you feel full. This
reasoning applies to smoothies as well, since you can drink much more fruit
when it’s blended into a smoothie than you could eat whole. But as long as
they’re made with whole ingredients, I give them a pass since they’re such a
great way to start the day with a bunch of fresh fruits and vegetables.
But
please, do whatever it takes to stop drinking soda, even the diet kind. It’s
caffeinated sugar water — or fake-sugar water, perhaps worse — and it has no
place in a healthy diet.
9. Eat when you’re hungry,
but make sure you really are hungry. Eating is one of the true
joys in our lives, and to me, imposing a limit significantly takes away from
that. Fortunately, if you’re eating
the right foods, limiting your intake is unnecessary unless you’ve got a
serious weight problem. As we’ve mentioned several times now, when you eat
foods that contain all of their original nutrients and are in a form close to
their natural one, your body will naturally feel full. The stretch and density
receptors in your stomach tell your brain that you’ve had enough for now, and
additional intake will become uncomfortable.
That
is, if you give your body a chance to realize you’re full. Rushing through your
meals sidesteps the system, allowing you to take in excess food before your
stomach has had a chance to sense fullness. So take your time, chew your food,
and pay attention to how you feel.
The
Japanese have a phrase hara hachi bu, which refers to the practice of eating
only until you are 80 percent full. It works well because there’s a lag time
between when you eat a food and when you feel its volume in your stomach. Start
paying attention to how full you feel, and use that as an indicator of when you
should stop eating — instead of waiting until your plate is clean or the sitcom
is over.
10. Break these rules from
time to time. To me, this guideline is crucial.
Especially if you’re new to eating healthily, the idea of “I can never eat ___
again” is poison to your long-term goals.
I’m not saying you should break all of them. Some — like eating only plant
foods — may carry with them an ethical obligation for you, in which case you probably
won’t wish to break them ever.
But
for the most part, I think being flexible in your approach to food is
healthier, and better for your entire being, than being overly restrictive at
every meal of your life.
So
break these rules when the time is right. For some, like Tim Ferriss, that
means having a “cheat day” once a week where you can eat literally any food you
want, and being uber-strict the rest of the time. If such extremity doesn’t
work for you, find an alternative plan for allowing yourself to zig instead of
zag.
Best
of all, strive to reach the point where you don’t need a plan — indulge when
the rare situation arises, knowing that your healthy way of eating is so
ingrained that you’re not at risk for “falling off the wagon” because of a
single transgression.
Don’t forget … start!
What
it comes down to, at the most basic level, is cooking your own food with real,
whole ingredients. It takes more planning, more time, and probably more money
than the alternative. But with practice it’ll become easier, and soon a habit
will form and this way of eating will be second nature.
And
in all likelihood, that means more time and money down the road, in the form of
a longer, healthier life and fewer medical bills.
There’s
no better time than now to start. Once you do, I promise you’ll wonder why you
didn’t start sooner.
Finally, a Way to Eat
Healthily & Plant-Based ... Without Stressing Out
All designed to take the stress out of meal planning and
help you experience the health and energy you know is possible. Health Made
Simple features five 30-day, plant-based meal plans for all different
lifestyles and needs, so that you can eat the way you know is right while
making sure you get everything you need.
And with live Q&A sessions built right into the program,
you'll never need to worry that you're not doing it right, or wonder how best
to adapt it to meet your goals.
Resource : http://www.nomeatathlete.com/simple-healthy-eating-guidelines/
