Eat to be lean
“Every human being is the author of his health or disease.” -Buddha
Nothing keeps us more focused on food than having to count calories, measure portions or stick to a diet plan that someone else wrote. It isn’t the way we were intended to eat and it isn’t much fun. We can eat well and put the joy back into food. Just pay attention to these simple rules:
Eat real often. We are designed to eat. In fact our lizard brain works very hard to get us to eat. And if we are very hungry it will work very hard to get us to eat whatever simple carbohydrate that will get our blood sugars up fast. This is not helpful in our modern world where we are very unlikely to starve to death and there is plethora of simple carbs everywhere. In this way we haven’t evolved very much and so it is better to work with it than it is to fight it. It is interesting to me that whether a person is trying to gain weight or lose it the solution is essentially the same: Eat and eat often. Eat every 2 1/2 – 3 hours. Always.
Eat real food. A carrot, an apple, a chicken breast and almonds are all real food. You know where they came from and there are no ingredients you can’t pronounce, but do you know how a PowerBar is made? How do they make I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter? No one knows! Can you pronounce all the ingredients in that meal replacement shake? If it sounds like a chemical maybe you shouldn’t eat it! Scientists keep coming up with replacements for real food but coming up short. They just can’t compete with nature. When we eat things our body and brain do not recognize as food it will be forced to do something with it which can end up as fat and/or disease.
Eat your macros. There are only three macro nutrients: protein, carbs and fats. We need all three macros every day and preferably in every meal. Too often when we hear carbohydrate we think grains and grain based foods like pasta, cereal, and bread. These should be avoided like the plague they are. Instead think of carbs as fruit, vegetable, and dairy. Carbs and fat pretty much just find their way into our diet but most of us do not get enough protein. Aim for .07 – 1.0 grams of protein for every pound of body weight. For most people this will look like somewhere between 25 – 40 grams per meal. You can only absorb so much protein from any one meal so this is another reason to eat five or six meals a day. Get your protein and aim for 800 grams of produce divided throughout the day and you will get enough nutrients to feed your body, you will never be hungry and cravings and late night eating will be reduced or disappear completely. Another easy method for portion control is to use Bill Phillips guide: The protein should be the size of your palm, a carbohydrate the size of your fist and make sure you get some fat. Isn’t that simple? Now you can throw that food scale and calorie guide away.
Eat the WHOLE thing. Eat food as whole as possible. Eat the skin of the apple and potato and don’t throw away the yolk of your egg. Eliminate added sugar. Sugar is a chemical and responsible for nearly all the extra pounds walking around America. Artificial sweeteners are not good either. Obviously if something is artificial it isn’t real food, and it may even cause weight gain. They perpetuate the desire for “sweet” and disrupt intestinal flora.
Plan ahead. If you don’t plan those meals in advance you will be reaching for the ever present junk food that is so ubiquitous in our society. Always know today what you will eat tomorrow. Or at least make sure you have enough protein and produce that you can make it through tomorrow.
The commercials for fast food restaurants and companies that sell processed food have confused us about what eating looks like. We eat what they offer and we gain weight. We become addicted to these non-food foods and gain more weight. Then purveyors of books, diets, pills, shakes, and products that offer to solve our problem have muddied the waters even further. When I finally came to the truth after decades of trying this and that I thought, “this is so simple why has it been made so difficult?” This is why: There isn’t much money or fame to be gained by teaching the this simple truth: Eat real food real often.