Healthy eating should be easy, but it’s become ridiculously complicated. What if I told you that healthy eating is much easier than you think…?
We live in the age of information, but due to the fact that the information we access each day can be written by anyone with an opinion, we have all this information but no actual knowledge (let alone the ability to put it into practice).
It doesn’t have to be this hard.
What if I told you that healthy eating is much easier than you think? What if I told you that healthy eating is a wide and generous path, with lots of room for different food choices and that you could enjoy your food, without feeling stressed or worried? You can believe me. I’ve spent my entire adult life studying this stuff.
This is what healthy eating looks like:
Take a look at the picture below. Here’s what a healthy day’s worth of food could look like. For breakfast, Baked beans with eggs & haloumi; Lunch, Tuna pasta salad; Dinner, Chicken & vegetable stir fry; and fruit snacks: kiwi & yoghurt layers and watermelon salsa (full recipes in our mobile app).
Here are the key principles that form the foundation of this healthy day:
Principle No. 1: It contains more than five serves of vegetables.
Nutrient rich, low energy, high fibre, beautiful vegetables. You can’t eat well without them. The very fact that vegetables are one of the factors that makes a dietary pattern healthy is why I developed this primary belief about good nutrition: “Healthy eating is more about what you include in your diet, not what you don’t include.” Vegetables need to be eaten every single day.
Principle No. 2: It contains two serves of fruit.
A little higher in energy than vegetables, just as rich in nutrition and fibre. I think fruit is great to snack on or add interest and flavour to a meal.
Principle No. 3: Lots of food variety.
You’ll see that I don’t discriminate. This day includes food from all the groups. This day contains seafood, eggs, chicken, wheat, rice, legumes, dairy, fruit, nuts and vegetables.
Lot’s of people are cutting out a few of these food groups for no good reason. Like dairy and grains — there is nothing wrong with eating dairy if you can tolerate it. Don’t build your whole diet out of dairy, but it’s fine to include and is a great source of a range of nutrients.
This day includes grains. It even includes pasta! But as you can see, the whole day isn’t full of grains, it just contains a small amount. Grain foods, especially ones that include the bran, are a great way to meet your fibre requirements and get long lasting energy throughout the day as well as being a good source of vitamins and minerals.
Principle No. 4: This day is offers an appropriate amount of energy while also being satisfying.
Many people are grossly under-eating due to the pressure they feel to lose weight. This frequently backfires on them leading to overeating, especially of lower nutritional quality foods. If you’re truly following a healthy diet you should be feeling nourished and satisfied!
Principle No. 5: It contains primarily whole foods.
It doesn’t contain 100% whole foods. Why? Because it’s just not necessary. If you try and eat 100% unprocessed foods, you’ll never be able to socialise or engage in popular culture ever again. And social interaction and culture is part of what makes us who we are! Don’t sweat the small stuff. If you get the basics right, a small portion of pasta with your tuna salad is grand, or some oyster sauce on your stir fried vegetables is delicious and a few cubes of haloumi scattered throughout your baked beans and eggs is just divine. Build your diet out of whole foods and use other foods to flavour and bring enjoyment to your meals.
Principle No. 6: It’s yummy.
Flavours like herbs, spices, mustard, lemon juice, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, mint and others are what makes this healthy day of food a delicious day of food. Healthy eating only benefits you if you do it every day. Doing it for six weeks and then not for another six weeks doesn’t actually do you any good. If your new healthy eating plan is boring, bland and restrictive, how do you plan on doing it long term?
In closing: This is ONE day of a possible thousands of healthy days.
Don’t get caught in the details. Just because a food isn’t listed, it doesn’t mean it’s good or bad. This is just an example of what one day could look like for someone.
Don’t put healthy eating in a box. What does healthy eating look like for you? Think about what you need your diet to do for you and then set your diet up using the principles above, around those goals.
Do you want to feel great in your skin?
Are your blood sugar levels under control?
Do you just want to have better energy levels and feel healthy?
All these scenarios require the principles above, yet a day’s worth of food would look different from each other. You’ve got to find what works for you.
To help you learn these principles AND put them into action in your own life, we created a unique mobile app that’s all about helping you build long term healthy eating habits!
