How healthy do you eat on a scale from 1 to 10?
Don’t answer right away. Just think a little. Do you eat healthy? This is an important question because providing the body with a healthy diet can mean the difference between losing weight, avoiding illness, gaining natural energy, unimaginable mental clarity, feeling younger, etc. As your body gains weight, it is more susceptible to disease, fights chronic fatigue and energy drops, and, consequently, you see a person in the mirror who seems much older.
If you want to improve your health and change the way your body feels and looks, it’s time to pay attention to your diet plan. Most people have the wrong diet I’ll be honest: most people have no idea what it really means to eat a healthy diet. But it is not their fault. There is a multibillion-dollar health and fitness industry that relies on selling new food ideas and dietary trends, and it fills your head with contradictions, misinformation, and bold lies. Many people I talk to are stuck due to poor nutrition (and therefore poor body appearance) for 3 main reasons:
- Information overload – They are overwhelmed with a huge amount of information available and therefore do not start making any changes to their diet.
- Wrong choices – They follow dietary guidelines that lead them astray.
- Dietary inconsistencies – They switch from one diet to another, never committing to a plan that will bring them results.
Healthy Eating Mistakes you must avoid
Skipping breakfast
There are many reasons why breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but one of the crucial reasons is often overlooked: what you feed your body with in the morning will dictate the desire for food you face (or don’t face) later in the day. If you are a victim of cravings for afternoon or evening food, there is a high probability that you have skipped to provide your body with the necessary nutrients.
Eating too much
Eating too many calories is one of the main reasons why a third of adults in North America is overweight. However, the problem is partly because most people don’t know how much food is actually too much. People only eat until they are full. With a relatively healthy diet and a typical sedentary lifestyle, the average man aged 21-40 does not need more than 2,400 calories a day, while a woman of the same age does not need more than 2,000 calories a day.
Eating too little
Some people go to the opposite extreme, following an overly limited diet. Don’t fall for those black and white claims that tell you to eat 500 calories less a day to magically burn fat. Your body is not a mathematical equation. If you eat too little, your body goes into “accumulating” mode, which means that it will try to save energy as much as possible. Your metabolism will swell, lean mass will fall, and body fat will remain the same (or even increase!).
Your macros are missing
One of the main problems with a standard diet is macronutrient imbalance. We eat too many carbohydrates, often because the cheapest and most affordable foods are based solely on carbohydrates. Although macronutrient recommendations can vary from person to person, there is no denying that most people have a serious deficiency in healthy sources of fat proteins. Carbohydrate diet creates food enjoyment, energy drop and overeating.
Reliance on vitamins and supplements
You may know that vitamins and supplements are not a substitute for real, nutritious foods. Some vitamins, as well as many other micronutrients, cannot be adequately absorbed from the pill format, nor are the doses contained in tablets almost equivalent to a whole variety of foods (regardless of advertising or packaging). In addition, the preparation of many whole foods allows us a wide range of nutrients, many of which we would never get in a traditional vitamin supplement. For example, cooking tomatoes releases lycopene, a powerful antioxidant that fights cancer and heart disease. If you skip the right foods in favor of synthetics, there is no way to access these benefits.
Eating 6 small meals a day
You have probably heard that eating 6 (or more!) small meals a day keeps your metabolism working, burns fat, keeps you feeling full … Recent research has shown that eating smaller, more frequent meals works for some people, but can actually make others find it harder to gain weight because it is harder for them to count the total calories consumed per day.
They eat exactly the same meals over and over again. When it comes to a healthy diet, food diversity is important. I will be the first to tell you to make grocery shopping and food preparation as easy as possible, if you had to learn to cook a new meal every day. But consuming a variety of foods does two very important things: first, it ensures that your nutrient needs are met (so you can say goodbye to vitamin supplements). Second, diversity helps reduce the chances of developing harmful food intolerances that can destroy your digestion and lead to immediate fat storage.
Eliminating bad foods
Eliminating “bad” food from your diet sounds like a good plan, but what makes food “bad” in the first place? Is the bread bad? What about fat? Dairy products are certainly bad, right? My point is the following: many focus on what they do NOT eat. They desperately eliminate sugars, salt, gluten or some other substance from their food, but they don’t care what they eat. Your body is a function of what you eat, not what you avoid.
Drinking calories
Whether you drink juices, coffee with milk and sugar, green smoothies with fruit and fruit juices, you will probably kill a well-planned diet. Drinking calories is a sure way to underestimate how many calories you ingest each day, and we’ve already learned that many of us do it with food!
Do not eat before exercise
There is no conclusive evidence that exercising on an empty stomach makes your body burn more fat as fuel. In fact, the research has shown that it is quite the opposite. In addition, exercising on a completely empty stomach deprives your body of the energy it needs to perform. Of course, you may be able to complete the training, but, was that the best training for you?
Do not eat after exercise
You go to the gym, burn a lot of calories, and then skip the next meal to lose more fat. Unfortunately, this strategy, whether done on purpose or because you are “too busy” to eat after a workout, will actually prevent your body from seeing the physical improvements you want. Traditional research has shown that after each workout you have what is known as an “anabolic window”. This is the time period during which your muscles crave food, especially protein and carbohydrates. The duration of this “window” is foreseen for discussion, but it is clear that refueling after exercise is crucial.
Eating until you are full
This common advice relies too much on subjective measurement. How does it feel “full”? People usually confuse the state of “fullness” with exaggeration. If you are waiting for the physical signs of your body that you do not need more food, there is a high chance that you have already eaten more food than you actually need.
Eating your “fruits and vegetables”
You’ve probably heard it a thousand times: “Eat your fruits and vegetables and you’ll be healthy.” Unfortunately, a diet full of apples and oranges is not nearly as healthy as one full of vegetables. Fruits can be great (in the right amounts), but fruits are full of sugar, already have a glycemic index, and contain fewer essential nutrients than vegetables.
A few healthy steps are taken in order to avoid dietary mistakes
After reading these mistakes of a healthy diet, you may not feel so great about the diet choices you have made. I don’t want to make you completely change your diet. Instead, I would like to motivate you to think about your relationship with food, and then take one small step that will improve that relationship.
Which step will be yours?
Here are a few examples you could choose depending on the mistakes you have faced (or you can come up with your own action step):
- Drink a large glass of water and eat something for breakfast every day.
- Eat a breakfast that includes some form of protein.
- Keep a record of everything you eat and drink for 3-4 days to see if you have eaten too much or too little.
- Eat vegetables during every meal.
- Try one new vegetable every week for the next 4 weeks.
- Sit while eating each meal.
- Dedicate 20 minutes to eating each meal.
- Eat at least one meal a day with other people.
- Find a healthy and portable snack that you can eat right after exercising.
- Chew each bite 10 times.
- Eat one vegetable for each fruit you eat.
- One week, keep track of how you feel before and after each meal.
- Learn how to prepare a new healthy meal every week of this month.
- Experiment by eating small portions of different foods before exercising. See what gives you the best energy during exercise.
- Eat without distractions (i.e. TV, computer, phone, etc.) to know what and how much you actually eat.
- Make a meal plan for dinner for this week.
- Make sure you don’t buy sweetened drinks this month.
- What step of a healthy eating action will you take? Tell us in the comment section below.