my way - to the healthy way

Growing up I was always the happy, active kid so, it has not been until my late ‘20‘s that I seriously started looking into and understanding nutrition and how our body reacts to it.

For about 4 years now, I felt that I had come to a maturity in my knowledge on the subject and started seriously tracking the benefits and keeping notes of what was happening.

At the beginning it felt like nothing has changed, but them, as if all of a sudden, everything started to change. I feel better than ever, comfortable in all situations and delighted to pass a mirror or see myself in pictures. It’s not about numbers for me… it’s about balance and confidence… it’s about feeling good and free to pursue anything you want.

I used to look at food very differently… now I feel I have a balanced relationship with it. I enjoy my meals without the fear of what comes next.

There was a time I would honestly have said it’s genetic …as I felt that I was doing everything right and still very little results to show for … but now, I feel it’s better than ever. I’m at peace, balanced… in control.

Below I've centralised my thoughts and experiences in hopes of paying forward.

First things, first :

• Forget having a set, numeric goal, it’s more about evolution and trends. Try to strive for feeling good in your skin, happy about your body and confident in every situation. I am not sure you can put a number on this feeling… so, just focus on doing better each day;
• Do not fault yourself too much. All of us slip up, make mistakes, give into cravings … from time to time. The more relaxed you are about it, the better chance you stand to get over it quickly. If you fault yourself too much you’ll have a tendency to continue with another small cheat before getting back on track.
• Allow yourself a couple of months before seriously focusing on losing weight. For me weight loss is a mix between understanding your body’s needs, understanding how it processes food and handles different situations. So, just allow yourself a couple of months where you understand all this… think of yourself as a casual observer.. not emotionally engaged in any way… that just sits back and takes in the data.

Getting to know your body: it’s a process, so allow for time. I personally have spent a long period of my adulthood completely ignoring all the signals it was giving me so it took a lot of time to finally stop ‘driving’ and start ‘listening’. It’s not rocket science; it’s just about taking time to observe and asses the following data:

Take your weight every day – no exceptions! Pick a time of day that works for you and get on that scale every day. Even if you feel guilty about over indulging the day before, you have to do it. Take down the weight and keep track of it.

• It’s essential as it will help you understand how your body processed food and how it reacts to it. It will be the bases of weeding out food myths to actual truths that are valid for you.
• If you do it every day you stand a solid chance of gathering fresh data as yesterday’s behaviour (what you ate, what combinations, what intervals..) is still very fresh in your mind. And as you have taken your weight the day before… the difference between the two numbers can only be justified by your actions in the last 24hrs.

Spend a couple of seconds really looking at yourself in the mirror – every day. I know, it might sound cheesy, but it’s not. It prevents avoiding the subject. It enables a short moment of reflection just dedicated to this and it also helps bring about positive feelings.Or combine the two by placing a long mirror right in front of my scale. So, like it or not… you do it every day.

Ask yourself how you feel after each meal. Here are some questions to start with:  

• Do you feel light?
• Do you feel energized? (helps determine if I got enough vitamins and nutrients in my meal; normally if the food is lacking these elements I would feel weighed down and would just generally just want to continue sitting for a while)
• Can you continue your day? (sometimes, after a meal you just want to go to sleep… and that’s a sure sign of a meal that is not right); typically for me it means it was too heavy or a bad combination of ingredients that will be tough for my body to digest;
• Do you feel any hunger? (helps determine portion size and general food intake quantities)
• Do you carve anything? (even if full after a meal, I can sometimes feel a pestering, unforgiving crave for something sweet or salty- normally this means that I have eaten something unbalanced and rich in what I call ‘destabilisers’)

Funnily enough, this is how I finally managed to cut out french fries and pastry from my diet; after having eaten them I realised I felt neither full, nor energised and I was still craving something; so, the next time they were near me it was easier and easier to just not eat some. Now, I don’t even look at them twice.

Mentally prepare for changing your habits and getting your body to help you instead of fight you.

• Shift from daily meals thinking to weekly meals thoughts; for me a day is just too short in terms of possible meals to fit everything in. So, in a week, I can better plan and have a balanced outlook about my food; in a week I’ll try to have fish at least twice, read meat once, indulge once (for me it’s mostly pizza or pasta), have a sweet (once a week an ice-cream or piece of cake), have at least two vegetarian meals, eat some fruits…. you get the idea.
• Reflect on what which meal you can give up (see below). I am a big fan of the 16/8 diet, or otherwise known as intermittent fasting. I strongly believe that our stomach is an equally important organ that also needs to rest. So, for it to rest, you need to allow it time to digest the last meal you’ve had and then allow for a solid 8hrs of ‘sleep’. So, the principle is simple: you can eat for 8hrs and allow for at least 16hrs of pause between your last meal of the day before and the first meal of the current day.

And here’s where we come back to which meal are you willing to skip. The 16/8 does not allow for three meals as we have been used to; as this would stretch way beyond the 8 hours of eating. So, after some reflection, I realised that the easiest for me would be to give up breakfast. I am fine with a cup of coffee in the morning. On the other hand, dinner is very important for me for two reasons:

1. It’s very social – it’s typically the time of day when you get to see friends and family or go out and have some fun;
2. I cannot go to bed on an empty stomach. Late at night, if hungry, I am most vulnerable to overindulge in the wrong stuff;

Ask yourself the hard question:

• are you into sports or not? Does it give you pleasure of is it only your guilt that pushes you to do it. The sad fact is that 80% of weight loss (or gain) is due to what we eat; sport only has a 20% bearing on the matter; sure, it’s important to get some exercise in, but depending on who you are, this can mean different things;

Personally, I enjoy some sport from time to time, but I am nowhere near as sporty as other people; so, if you are like me, you can balance this out with walking. You only need at least 30 mins every day. That’s it!

Furthermore, I noticed that if I try to force myself to exercise more, I tend to make up for it with more indulgence while taking my next meal; it’s like you feel you can reward yourself a little or you feel like you can allow yourself a bit more since you just consumed some more calories….

• Why do you eat? Live to eat or eat to live? Too often we are driven by food in terms of craving, wanting something. Normally, it should be the other way around; I eat to nourish my body so that it supports me throughout the day. My objective is not to eat… it’s to accomplish all the things I set out to do today.

• Go against social norms if it feels right.

I will often order two appetisers instead of appetiser and main course if I don’t like the selection or I feel the portion would be too big for me. I also like to try a lot of things, this way I feel I took full advantage of my meal. At the end of the meal I am full and happy.

I always pass on dessert, but take a (decaf) expresso or tea, not to be out of pace with the rest of the dinner.

Below you’ll find My eating rules, but they do not need to be 100% the same for you. The journey of self-knowledge never stops. I am convinced that there are some universal truths out there, while allowing for individuality of what works for each of us. So, test mine, but always analyse what you feel… I am sure you’ll find different ones J

• No sugar – never – sugar is an artificial product that is addictive and the simple truth is that we do not need it. Normally, in a well-balanced diet, you’ll get all the natural sugar your body needs; the only exception I make is when I indulge in ice-cream or a sweet (once a week tops);
• There are 3 types of everyday drinks: water, coffee and tea. Once a week there can be a nice glass of wine. That’s all you need to stay hydrated;
• Smoothies or fruit juices – never. Whether you’re taking the evolutionary , pragmatic or the caloric view it’s still a no no.

Evolutionary : our internal organs are set up to break down (chew) and digest solid food so feeding it solely liquid food throws them off and they quite simply do not know what to do with it… so they store it.

Pragmatic/caloric: smoothies or orange juices where first invented to be used in extreme situations where patients could not chew their food, or extreme dehydration caused by attenuating circumstances (like heat)… it’s a means to deliver quick overdose of vitamins. If you where to eat, in one sitting, the same amount of oranges that go into a 500ml bottle of juice, you could not. You’ll probably eat it spread throughout a day or more. For smoothies, it’s worse. So, if you are in a special circumstance (finished a marathon or was exposed to extreme heat) it’s a perfectly acceptable source of vitamins that will help restore your levels quickly. Otherwise it’s just supra-saturation of vitamins and sugar that leads to sugar storage;

• If a vegetable or a fruit can be eaten raw, then that’s how I’ll eat it. By cooking you remove some of the vitamins so I don’t see the point. For examples carrots, tomatoes, peppers I always eat raw. Green beans cannot be eaten raw so I will eat them boiled or steamed, but always as al dente as possible.
• As I eat to nourish my body, I try to stay away from too much cooked food as it tends to be lower in vitamin intake.
• No dressings of any kind. The only things I use to season my food are: good quality extra virgin olive oil (cold pressed), good quality balsamic vinegar, lime/ lemon juice I squeeze myself, salt and pepper; in a restaurant situation, I'll simply ask the waiter for the sauce on the side.
• I do not try to limit my portions as, if I don’t feel full or satisfied at the end of a meal, I will snack on unhealthy stuff; so, I can eat as much as I want, but I try to have a 30 -70 ratio on my plate. 30 is normally cheese or meat or grain or pasta ... the 70 is vegetables/ salad;
• I don’t trust sauces or stews so I never order anything where I can’t see the ingredients clearly. Normally in stews people tend to mesh up lower quality foods for price per quantity reason and then compensate with a lot of spices. So, except if it is one of my favourite pastas , I do not eat things with stew sauce;
• Pasta- I love it. Apart from the obvious (look for homemade, whole wheat), I always eat it with a red sauce and very few other ingredients, for two main reasons:

1. Red sauce – as I stand a chance to have it made from a tomato base (opposed to the white one where you’ve got more heavy ingredients). Few ingredients – pasta is already the main thing so it should be complimented by a few, good quality ingredients. The less, the better – both in terms of digestively unfavourable ingredients and hidden low quality produce.
2. I sometimes do home-made pesto sauce that I love, but I never take pesto pasta at a restaurant as the ready-made pesto sauces that you can buy off the shelf have a lot of unhealthy ingredients (just try buying in any supermarket a pesto sauce that has only good quality ingredients … you can’t find such a thing); so, unless it specifically says home-made pesto sauce on the menu, I avoid it in any eating out experience;

• Pizza is the same thing – good quality, red sauce and 1-2 ingredients max; if possible shared …so I don’t end up eating a whole pizza by myself :)
• No snacking of any kind during the day. I eat a meal that will sustain and last me through to the next meal.
• Fruits – at least 20 mins before a meal and at least 2 hr after the previous meal; I prefer a clean piece of fruit as opposed to cut out, ready to eat piece of fruit, as they will most probably have been stored in a sugary water;
• I try to avoid ( as much as possible) my ‘destabiliser’ foods. They are healthy food in principle, but for me, every time I have them, they immediately create a craving of sugar. Or, when I am eating them, I like them so much, I will overeat just to keep eating them. So far, I have identified the following foods as destabilisers: garlic, red onions and hot peppers.
• Dairy and cheese – for me it’s full fat, good quality all the way. They are savoury, they provide important calcium and bacteria intake and good fats. If I try to eat half fat or less, I will not have the satisfaction of having eaten something good and I will overeat something that essentially has little or no nutritional qualities. Before buying I always read the label. You’d be amazed how many big names have powdered milk in it. I buy stuff that have the clear label listing, where I can understand that it comes from milk and it’s been pasteurised.
• While on this topic, always read the label. If you can’t understand what’s in the produce, don’t buy it. It can be frustrating to do and it takes a bit of time until you make the right choices, but once you’ve found the good things, shopping gets easier again. So, look for no Es, no concentrate of any kind (tomato is the most frequent one used in anything), no puree (unless it specifically says coming from real fruit… otherwise it’s just another word they use for concentrate), no emulsifiers… the list is long. Even a lot of top shelf brands, that are positioned as high end, good quality, have a lot of eyebrow-raising ingredients in their products.
• For me, meat is first and foremost no chicken. It’s the most susceptible to mass production and thus being raised on concentrated food and a mix of antibiotics. I personally have relatives that live in the countryside and even them, for themselves, toe the line in raising their chicken. Recently they have found cases of extreme chicken over farming and blatant disregards for rules and regulations even in Germany and France. So, I have a general distrust for the meat group as a whole and stopped eating it for about 4 years.

I am particularly terrified by the cases they found in US (where over-farming is really an industry) where sick children stopped responding to antibiotics. It’s been linked back to the antibiotics fed to animals, to make them more disease resistant. If sufficient quantities of such meat are eaten by humans, they will enter the blood stream and screw up our immune system.

I’ll have a nice piece of steak (veal or beef) from time to time, but I always look for quality;

• Potatoes and corn – they are very low in terms of vitamins as far as vegetables go so I stay away completely. Furthermore, until the great depression (when food got scarce), we only used them as a cheap way to supplement the livestock food. So, they are both on the No list.
• Bread – I think it’s healthy to eat bread, but never as a main act. If it’s small pieces, supporting your meal, it should be fine. You need to see what your body says to this before making a judgement (we’re back to daily weight watch). In essence it’s rich in fibre that we needs on a daily basis, but the amount that is good for you, without leading to weight gain, is something you need to figure out yourself.

I hope these tips helped. If you have any other ones, I'd appreciated it you'd left me a comment as I am always curious to learn about new things. below, you can find the link to the most recent relevant article I've read on this subject. It's amazingly well written and extensively researched.

Good luck!

https://www.1843magazine.com/features/death-of-the-calorie