3 Easy Tips For Eating Healthy

It can be very hard to figure out how to eat healthily. There are just so many resources out there and so many contradicting videos on social media that you just end up confused and not being able to stick to anything.

Which diet is the best? The one you can stick to - or to be more accurate none of them. “Diet” infers that it is temporary.

Healthy eating is a lifestyle and until you make that mindset shift you will always be stuck in this loop of feeling like you are giving something up.

As I said in my last email, my goal is to simplify every part of self-improvement to make it super easy for you to apply to every part of your life, so here’s what I will be covering today:

• Keeping happy gut bacteria :)

• The importance of slower eating

• Why you should stay away from processed foods

Happy Gut Bacteria

Gut health and microbiome has been all the craze of recent research. Making headlines all around the world. From being linked to obesity and inflammatory bowel diseases all the way up to depression.

While these studies are very interesting and can lead you down a rabbit hole - the truth is we still know very little about our microbiome and how it ineracts with our biology.

Of course the billion dollar supplement industry has already taken advantage of this - you will see prebiotics and probiotics advertised everywhere.

There’s no proof that they work and you definitely don’t need them. As a matter of fact you don’t need any supplements (unless you have a diagnosed deficiency)

You can get everything you need from real food!

—> So our good gut bacteria is very important because it helps us digest food and get all the nutrients we need and it has also been found to secrete chemicals that make us full and serotonin that makes us feel good

—> The simplest way to cultivate a better microbiome is to eat real food high in prebiotics (food for the bacteria) and probiotics (food containing good bacteria)

—> Prebiotics = Green stuff - salads, veggies, fruits, nuts. It’s simple and you’ll also get most of the vitamins and minerals you need + nuts and legumes are also a great essential fats source and a boost in protein

—> Probiotics = Fermented stuff - yogurts/keffir, stuff like that. Just plain natural yogurt is great for this. I really enjoy the little Actimel yogurt drink.

The important part is also stopping eating the bad stuff. You want more good bacteria to grow and less bad bacteria.

For example I’m sure we’ve all been through a part of our lives where we eat a lot of chocolate, if you don’t eat chocolate you start craving it (that’s the bad bacteria throwing a tantrum because you are taking away it’s food) and after a few days you don’t crave it at all anymore (the bad bacteria died off)

Don’t worry I will summarise everything in the end in one tiny paragraph and that will be all you need to apply - I just want to give you an overly simplified form of the basics ;)

Eating Slower

This one is super simple. Eat slower and chew your food better, but people don’t talk about it enough.

The hormone that indicates that you are full, leptin, takes a around 20 min to send the signal to your brain that you are full. So simply eating slower can lead to you eating less.

As for chewing your food better - studies indicate 32 times is the best - seems a little excessive to me though, just chew a bit more than you’re used to. It will lead to better absorbtion of the food in the intestine. There’s only so much your stomach can help you out.

And then a very important reason to eat slower and chew better - acid reflux.

Overfilling and not chewing properly puts extra tension on the lower oesophageal sphincter (the muscle closing your shallowing tube after food enters your stomach)

After a while this muscle becomes damaged and stomach acid can go in the direction it should not which leads to major discomfort and in severe cases like obesity, exessive alcohol abuse and smoking bcan lead to GERD (gastro-esophogeal reflux disease), which in the western world is the number one cause of esophogeal cancer.

And trust me I’ve seen patients with that, it’s one of the worst ones to have.

Stop Eating Processed Foods

We hear this all the time but most people don’t even know what proccesed food is.

Food processing is a transformation of agricultural products into food or one type of food into another - now why is that so bad?

Well these foods often contain high levels of saturated fat, salt and sugar. And hopefully we all already know that’s bad for you.

All fast food is ultra processed and you should stay away from it as much as you can and especially shouldn’t regularly give it to your children - that being said I enjoy the occasional KFC or McDonalds.

The point is to build a healthy eating lifestyle that makes you feel good and full of energy not to completely become food obsessed.

One interesting processed food I recently learnt about in one of my medical classes is processed meats. I use to love salami and almost ate it every day until I found this out.

Processed meats (salami, hot dogs, ham, bacon) has recently been classified as a category 1 carcinogenic. That means cancer causing - in the same category as smoking. Colon cancer to be specific.

Now I don’t mean to scare you with cancer warning, I mean it doesn’t work for quitting smoking but I feel way less people are informed about what they eat.

If you have been eating a lot of these foods, don’t worry it doesn’t mean you will get cancer. Only 8% of all smokers get cancer and it’s the biggest cause of cancer - but would you really want to take that risk?

Plus the reasons to live healthy lifestyles is way more than simply not getting cancer, you want energy, you want to be happy, you want to be at your best so you can enjoy life fully.

Now obviously there’s a lot of complexity in how to eat and everyone is different but apply these 3 tips in your life and you will already feel much better and be hungry for more learning.

I hate cooking and I hate thinking about food so to summarise here is how I build my healthy eating lifestyle:

Eat a greater variety of foods, particularly fruits, olive oils, nuts and vegetables. Avoid highly processed foods - anything that claims to be a special low-fat or light product or has too many ingredients. Eat traditional cheese and full fat yogurt. And cut back on liquid calories, such as sugar in juices and other drinks and avoid artificial sweetners.

For protein intake, I found the 1.5x grams of protein per kilogram of body weight method perfect for maintaining and building muscle. I weigh 90kg so it’s around 135g of protein a day for me.

I prefer getting majority of my protein from chicken. 100g of chicken breast contains 31g of protein. So I’'ll have around 250g of chicken a day and get the rest of the protein from my other foods like nuts, oats and yogurt and the occasional egg.

I also do not weigh and count calories as I don’t want to be obsessive. I eat slowly until I am full and I listen to my bodie’s natural signals.

Self-improvement is as easy as you make it and I hope this simplified eating a bit for you - because for peak performance we need to be fuelled properly.

See you in the next mail :)

Ps. I am working on an all in one self improvement hub inside of my book club and I have my chef friend creating easy healthy meals for everyone in there. It will be up soon a long with a bunch of other resources, you can check it out by clicking here