It seems it comes down to this: Eat a variety off foods. Get some protein sometimes, eat fruits and veg. Try to get whole grains in there. Watch the added and refined sugar, regardless of source, but there is no need to avoid it entirely. Make sure to eat some fat and dairy. Heck, even high activity isn't necessary if you make the right life adjustments (like walking most places) or have the right sort of job. Cook your own food, and develop a few flexible meals that are easy and nutritious. Stir fries and the like come to mind.
The real trick is the personalisation. For myself, I'm hungrier in the evening so I eat lightly during the day. I skip breakfast (I'm not hungry). I eat fish but not other meats, but this is mostly due to the lack of a gallbladder. I also had to learn to be more comfortable with hunger. I did this with a combination of delaying snacks (it is easy to tell yourself to wait a short time) and working on portion sizes. The last one was simple: I'd eat a portion, and be done. I always knew if I was hungry in an hour or two, I could get a healthy snack. The snack rarely equals the food I'd have eaten if I got more on the plate, so it works.
And just to be fair: At one time, I weight over 200 pounds. I'm a 5'6" woman. I now am fully in a healthy weight and trend towards thin. I'm don't know my weight, but i'm about a size 6(US) and have kept the weight off for years with only minor fluctuations.
Edit: I should mention that I didn't keep good records, just observed my general diet and made improvements and adjustments.
Trying to do everything at once is guaranteed to make you hate dieting and fall off the bandwagon quickly.
For example: if you want to lose weight, find out your TDEE - 350--500 calories. Spend two or three weeks trying stick to that total amount, without worry too much about changing everything you eat. Just get used to a different amount. Once you have that down, start swapping out big meals with healthier foods, then snacks.
Also, meal prep. It will help curb impulse meals and poor snack choices if you don't have to think about it.
This has worked very well for me, I stated on May 15th and I am down 35lbs/16kg [1]. Curbing cravings and not eating at night have been the hardest obstacles to overcome.
I practice IF, just works with my natural eating habits. Was never a breakfast person but giving up eating late night snacks has also been tough for me.
The hardest part is trusting the process of cutting and sticking to it even when not seeing immediate results.
For me, I fall apart when I'm hungry. So my diet is based around "efficient" foods (most fullness for least calories) and easy-to-follow guidelines that I can fall back on when I'm too hungry to think straight.
- Protein makes me full. Lean protein makes me stupid full.
- Vegetables make me feel like I've had a real meal. It's hard to add so much oil or butter to a vegetable to make the calories matter.
- I can eat infinite carbs. Carbs + fat is an easy way to put down 2,000 calories in a single meal.
- Most places have a salad. When in doubt, order the salad. Add protein.
- Cooking at home means meat + veggie. I make whatever I want, as long as it's meat + veggie.
- Breakfast doesn't make me full for long. Coffee is equally effective.
Figure out what works for you! Maybe keto is easy to follow. Maybe lifting makes you crave fewer pizzas. Maybe you can outrun your food habits by training for marathons. Maybe you should eat 7 meals a day, 3 of which are soylent.
It's all about the habit. If you can figure out what the happy output is, optimize for the fewest inputs that get you there.
The human body is pretty good at telling you what it needs.
I've eaten a banana, pear, cereal, chicken and rice today and drank about 2L of water. Feel fantastic :)
Eat animal products when hungry. Ignore the fat content (don't purposely eat too much nor too little.)
Eat fruit and plants, but not too many.
If you're happy with your body composition (can you see your abs?), add complex carbs to your meals (rice, bread, potatoes, etc) and liquid calories such as milk or kefir.
It's okay to eat junk from time to time.
Promoting animal products seems to be somewhat en vogue.
But please open your eyes and look at the data, the history of the human race (starch based!), and for the love of "god" (ie the universe with all that it contains, not the religious kind), look at the cruelty against animals. Bad karma. Really bad karma.
And considering that the human population nowadays with meat, dairy and eggs in their diet is getting sicker and sicker (studies, numbers, all there for you - just have to look), maybe animal products aren't exactly on the safe side..
:-/
Anyway, since I didn't want to spend all my time researching this or become a doctor, I just looked up the USDA guidelines and tried to eat more in line with that.
3 meals a day, minimal snacking, home-cooked food, ~2400 calories per day (for my body & weight loss goals), 3+ servings vegetables, 2-3 servings fruits, 2-4 servings dairy, some meats and eggs, etc.
The USDA site even gives you recommendations to eat certain amounts of specific types of vegetables weekly (greens, starchy vegetables, orange vegetables, etc.) which I assume is an attempt to abstract things out a bit so we can worry less about levels of specific micronutrients
There's also an app called MyFitnessPal that lets you log food intake by scanning barcodes with your phone's camera and tracks some nutrients (vitamin a, c, potassium, iron, a few more)
Soup is also quick and easy. A pressure cooker or slow cooker can speed up the prep.
Brown rice, buckwheat, amaranth seeds, and quinoa provide additional nutrients. I don't think that "carbs" are bad -- only refined carbs. A rice cooker or pressure cooker is useful.
I think that if one only eats high-nutrient foods, there is less need to worry about the details.
I went from 215 pounds down to a healthy 145 (currently 150). There are some examples of my food experiments in my blog: https://blog.artofmemory.com/tag/food-and-nutrition
In simple terms: Eat plant-based foods, period. Veggies, fruits for snacks, beans, nuts, etc. Avoid processed foods other than plant foods that are minimally processed for freshness (liked canned foods).
I thought I would struggle to stop eating meat, especially chicken. After the first few days, vegetables and beans started to taste amazing! I had no idea what I've been missing all these years since meat mutes the taste of everything else.
I also avoid dairy and snack foods. I "cheat" about once every two weeks during social events, but even then I crave the healthier options. I now look at bad foods differently and I feel better than ever.
Tip: Take a one-a-day multivitamin that includes B12. When you’re getting started, get rid of all the bad food. If it's there, you'll eat it.
I had the benefit of growing up in a green belt, so there was a lot of food agriculture and farmers markets, produce stands, and the local grocer received shipments from chain warehouses as well as local farmers.
Growing up we didn't have a lot of money so we prioritized fresh and cooked vegetables (nothing special, just plenty of dark greens and kept some variety). Meat was often lean ground or pork then, and I kept my meat rations pretty lean (though later opting for more chicken and beef) until my doctor instructed me to eat more red meat.
That's pretty much it. Limit carbs but don't cut them out. Don't count calories too closely because it makes living dreary, just keep a ballpark. With enough exercise it shouldn't matter anyway.
I was in high-performance sports in my teens, and this was pretty typical. Just eat balanced for your needs, a lot of vegetables (esp. dark greens of your preference), plenty of water, and plenty of exercise and if you like beer you don't have to give it up. I didn't see much in the way of obsessive diets and protein powders and supplements outside of a few guys who went crazy on creatine and later cut it out due to less than desirable outcomes.
Nutritionists I've known have generally shared similar sentiment. Beyond working out any details they do, their advice to me has always been more general and simple. That's totally circumstantial, though.
I also take a multivitamin and a B12 to keep up on anything that falls out of balance.
On the other hand, my brother who was never the type recently went vegan for his wife and swears he feels better than he ever has. And he has to keep up with physically-demanding continental shifts on a provincial police service. So there's that...
Assuming that you want to do it properly, that is you want to replace meat with various vegetables, nuts, and beans etc that provide protein you automatically increase your intake of healthy foods.
You can of course just eat chips, cheese and margerita pizza which won't help. But being vegetarian does open your eyes to a wider variety of food than just meat + x (e,g. buger + fries). Meat is so tasty on it's own that you can ignore other things.
By going vegetarian I don't have to count calories, I've actually struggled to keep weight on since going full vegetarian, when I had been gaining weight prior to that.
Plus you don't even have to go fully vegetarian, purely just reduce meat intake and up vegetable/bean/nut intake.
Echoing this. Also, Mediterranean diet is still the best diet if not based on current nutritional trends, but also anecdotal evidence (The most places with the highest life expectancies are clustered around the Mediterranean)
As for the health benefits, I'm not so sure there either. I eat a mostly meat diet and my wife has been vegan for last 10 years and vegetarian for the 15 years before that and my numbers are better pretty much across the board.
Sure it seems like a vegetarian diet should be better for you but with nutritional science in the state it is it is hard to know much of anything for sure.
The gist: Limit the fats. If your exercising and/or are at least moderately active, you can have some more nuts and seeds etc. But if you're sitting at the computer all day, limit fats to the absolute minimum. Eat lots of carbs. The body will not turn them into fat. Lot's of studies (100 years+) on this. Just open your eyes and read online and the books I mentioned.
Funny example: Oven chips vs french fries. Prefer oven chips with <= 2% fat and your "OK". Steamed potatoes with zero fat are, of course, better in this context.
Not saying keto diets (meat based or not, but protein+fat instead of starchy/sugary carbs based) don't work. Just really bad karma with the cruelty against animals in meat farms etc. Not cool. Not cool. Anyway, long term data isn't there yet on keto diets. And generally speaking: The world is getting sicker. And Campbell & Co seem to hint at food - mainly animal products - are the cause. McDougall etc show that the human race survived and thrived on starch. (Low fat! Actually.)
Consider this..
Vegetarian or vegan means little. WFPB (whole food plant based) is a better term. And find your sugars and starches under this WFPB umbrella and your good. These foods have only little amount of natural fat. Look at WFPB / 80/10/10 athletes for examples..
Just my two cents..
It works well for me as I create my meal plan in the white space (see example) looking up the values from calorieking.com
EDIT: Note that this math comes from a book "Bigger, Leaner, Stronger" - calculated for Men. There is a similar book for Women that may differ.
Perhaps his key observation is the relationship between oils and so many of our modern diseases. I do suspect that some oils have benefits which outweigh the costs (a subtlety which isn't reflected by his coarse data) For example I suspect that oils from Salmon and Walnuts may have benefits yet to be fully quantified.
I appreciate the interest in knowing what your virtual colleagues do, but honestly some topics covered on Ask HN simply cannot be answered with the same expertise as tech related questions.
In a nutshell: Veggies, limited fruits (1 serving per day), some protein (red meat, lamb, fish, chicken (go for organic and grass fed for meat if you can)), good healthy fats (coconut oil, MCT oil, some butter)
avoid anything and everything that comes in packaging. Packaging and long shelf life = preservatives, additives and all that crap.
You're in luck, we've just imported 175K Open Data products from the USDA, so it now works in the US :-)
Also it's collaborative, so please take pictures as you scan products :)
https://android.openfoodfacts.org https://ios.openfoodfacts.org
If interested, add How Not To Die by Greger. Nice youtube video of him at Google online. But a lot of information. Don't get confused by this. Go back to McDougall after watching this! :-)
Add Campbell's Whole or one of his recent youtube videos. If you want to be blown away by what the meat and dairy industries are doing to humans (and animals of course). It's like with the tobacco industry 50-something years ago! It's a shame that money is allowed to kill people in the millions with the governments knowing about it. And oh my the cruelty against animals.. Bad karma.. :-(
Anyway, avoid processed foods, yes. Processed sugar. Don't say "avoid sugar". Don't fear natural sugar! Fruits are good for you. But don't combine with fat! In a gist: The fat will be in your blood stream, blocking absorption of the sugars when you really want the sugar to be available for your muscles. Studies and data online. Known for many decades.
Somewhat more extreme: Read Graham's 80/10/10.
I'm on his high fruit 80/10/10 raw diet as much as possible - living in Germany where there isn't that much good fruits. I compensate with McDougall based starchy foods when i run out of fruits. I sometimes eat two to four pounds of oven baked potatoes.. :-) Eating between 3000 and 6000 calories a day. Exercising moderately for 30 to 60 minutes 3 to 5 days a week. Spending rest of time mostly sitting and standing(!) at my computer. Keeping my weight and body fat around 10% easily. The body isn't stupid. It will not turn carbs into body fat easily.
Note that I'm not saying keto diets etc don't work. High carb diets just seem to have a much better karma. Environmental factors, animal cruelty, and looking back at history, the human race survived and thrived and starches. Studies and data all there online. The gist: We could easily feed 10 billion people on this planet with carbs. But doing this on the back of helpless creates like cows, pigs and chickens, will f* up our environment and cost far too much of our resources.
Consider karma in all you do.. ^^
1. Eat out as little as possible cook everything at home, so I know exactly what is going into my body. 2. Make sure I eat a salad or a meal that includes vegetables once a day. 3. SHAKES!!! I make shakes daily a great way to get nutrients and fill yourself up. My shakes generally contain (berries, banana, power greens mix, plant protien, soy/almond milk). 4. Excercise daily. 5. Take a multi-vitamin (optional)
https://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Diet-Discover-Greatest-Athl...
I love cooking. But never for myself, and 90% of my meals are by myself.
With ready-to-eat or drink stuff, you just calorie count. Miss bits or increase bits depending on other things you've eaten (ie when out, someone has cooked, etc). Feeling fat today? Miss a meal. Feeling a little light? Snack a bit more.
Many people should consider whether to take a Vitamin D supplement.
I tend to agree with other people - eat a variety of fruit and vegetables, small amounts of meat or fish or alternatives for protein.
Other than that, it depends on how heavily you want to keep track and for what purpose.
I'm not saying you should only eat a few foods. But Adding multi vitamins has been shown to be somewhat more on the detrimental side. See for example How Not To Die by Dr Greger.
Just my two cents..
https://www.drfuhrman.com/learn/the-nutritarian-diet/how-it-...
Then I agree.
For 30 consecutive days:
- Think of food as a source of nutrients, not pleasure.
- Only eat once a day.
- Only eat beef.
- Only drink water.
After 30 days, introduce 1 new ingredient a week.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/red-meat-a...
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/colon-rectal-cancer/causes-ris...
i try to break it down into first principles, then try to break those principles into components and start to familiarise myself with as much information as possible
it can help to apply arbitrary constraints to aide in reducing the initial barrier of entry
from there you can start to construct your own diet around your interests, your body, and your goals
one day i became obsessed with cinnamon and would put it on everything
once i ran out of the cinnamon i had i went out to get more and learned there are different kinds of cinnamon
from different places with different preparation practices that result in different flavors, of cinnamon
so i'd try one, then another, then another, and eventually i developed a preference, now i know what kind of cinnamon i like.. and why
there is a lot to consider in regards to food and diet, but that is mostly what attracts me to it
for the most part it is an unsolved problem, but there are many great theories and theorems in regard its practice
curiosity ensures development
To repeat -
1. Avoid sugar like the plague. 2. Exercise. 3. Sleep.
kthxbye.
I assume you mean refined sugar.
Ketones are an alternative to glucose.
Proteins can be converted to glucose.
Sugar is okay if and only if there is a high fiber count as well. Ketogenic and Paleolithic diets show that high sugar intake, especially with breads, grains, and refined sugar is not healthy and not necessary.
"Polyunsaturated fats can have a beneficial effect on your heart when eaten in moderation and when used to replace saturated fat and trans fat in your diet."[1]
1. https://healthyforgood.heart.org/Eat-smart/Articles/Polyunsa...
looking at human history it was starches that kept people surviving and striving. there is no real long term data on keto diets. i personally experimented with high/low carb and the simplified gist is: low carb works because you take away the carbs. high carb works because you take away the fat. protein doesn't really matter. but see for example "whole" from campbell on the potentially negative effect of excess protein. excess is pretty much more than 5-10%. look at graham and many more wfpb 80/10/10 athletes.
anyway, i'm currently on high carb, wfpb, tropical fruit. eating sometimes 5000 kcals a day. exercising less than an hour a day. max 5 days a week. spending rest of time at the computer. keeping my weight. 44 years btw.
there seem to be non-trivial relationships between the macros. and you need to look at the micro nutrients if you want to support long term health.
if you look at how much sicker the general population gets, it's really hard to argue that dairy, eggs and meat are really "healthy". only the greens in keto diets will compensate for the negative effects of animal products. again, see whole, and how not to die and many more. in there you find (by now thousands! of) studies on this. get rid of animal products and stick to fruits and vegetables if you prefer raw food, or starches and vegetables otherwise to avoid burdening your body in the first place.
i really don't get how this knowledge has not reach "the computer people". i understand how the industries control the government and "the general population". but "us guys and gals" have the information at our finger tips. so weird.. :-) read up on how the tobacco industry fought like 50 years ago. the same is happening with meat etc. eventually they will have to add the same labels to meat etc like we see on cigarettes today. the government websites already contain warnings about meat, dairy and eggs causing cancer. the industry pays a lot of money to keep the government from promoting a healthy diet.
well.. main issue i see with high carb wfpb is that people at some point are really too sick to properly digest grains etc. that's why keto diets work so well for many people. let's wait and see about their long term effect. (then again, on a personal note, i'm hoping all these meat-promoting keto people die of cancer sooner rather than later. it's a karma thing. the cruelty against helpless creatures in meat dairy and egg farms.. not cool.. no matter what you may believe.. not cool..) anyway, i was really f*ed up from unhealthy eating for like 30 years. i got rid of my 30+ years allergies and chronic sinusitis by water and juice fasting for two months. and i settled with a high carb wfpb 80-100% raw diet. raw because i have access to fresh tropical fruits. which isn't a given for everyone in germany.. :-) feeling really good so far. on a side note: but i do consider trying out the Dr. Nun Amen-Ra diet at some point.