With my thousands of hours of research and six years of personal experimentation, I'm ready to bring you some watered down lessons that are so obvious to me it's not funny.
1 Timing of Meals
Are you a snacker? Or are you 3 meals a day regular joe? OK it's your prerogative.
But if you have 3 meals and ALSO snack, STOP IT!
You're just a glutton at that point. In fact it defies the laws of nature. Feasts were celebrations for a reason. It was a rare occasion of indulging. As Jim Gaffigan says in response to big Thanksgiving Meals 'Overeat on Thanksgiving? Americans overeat every day!'
So please be responsible and choose one of the other. Your digestive system needs a break, in fact, a break longer than we get with just 3 meals per day separated by 5 hours or so each may do us more good than harm. So move on to Habit #2 to for that
2 Breakfast
Oh, what was long taught as the most important meal of the day. Common knowledge is now regarding breakfast as the most important meal to SKIP for your health! As I said in #1, your digestive system needs a break. That’s when the body does the heavy cleaning and detoxing all kinds of radical shiz from our crappy western lifestyle, diet and environment (full of pollutants and carcinogens).
Breakfast literally means “breaking the fast” you know, the one you barely noticed you had stopped eating since you had dinner, went to bed, got up and already thought of ‘breaking your fast’. Techies are now skipping meals and even not eating for a day or 2 on end. I have done this as well and felt great (once you get used to it). Now the smartest people in the world starting a new health trend don’t you think there’s probalby some hard evidence behind it?
“The first day I felt so hungry I was going to die. The second day I was starving. But I woke up on the third day feeling better than I had in 20 years,” he said.
3 Eating Until You're Full
The longest living culture on the planet, the Okinawans and (probably traditional Japanese culture itself) teach to eat till you feel only 80% full. Though common for Americans and Austrailians,filling up completely until you can’t put any more without being sick, in no way is that healthy; you are bogging down your system and literally causing constipation. In fact I call being so full you don’t have room for more as plain old constipating your own damn self.
Now if you’re not eating solely raw fruit and veg you’re probably definitely also dehydrating yourself. But if you are making sure to stay hydrated, you’ll either love me or hate me for habit #4 coming up.
4 Drinking 8 Glasses of Water a Day
Now Adam already ruined the "everybody knows you have to drink 8 glasses of water a day" - But I'm going to ruin it in a different way.
First off, when did this mantra start? Who cares. We just know that it's nonsense. Likely it was a marketing company for sports drinks like Gatorade in 1985 which Adam mentioned. According to theweek.com who dug deeper, it seemed it was first published in 1945.
Second: why 8? I’ll be the first to tell you, 8 glasses a day is bullcrap. There’s days where I’ve barely sipped water and I was perfectly fine. Then there’s days I’ve drank 16 cups and that was still not enough. Why? Because you can’t generalize a statement of how much to intake over an entire population of people regardless of what they’re intaking. What each person eats and does in their daily routine is at incredibly varying levels. Of course 8 is just a base number to blanket the public with to make sure for safety people won't get dehydrated while drinking this much under almost all circumstances. But what if this could harm us? Science doesn't know.
If you’re on a fast you can basically drink as much or as little water as you want. If you’re starting out dehydrated maybe you want to consume more. But if you’re at a mineral deficiency and drinking pure filtered water with no minerals maybe you’re contributing to your body stripping them! This is the kind of science that is not solidified in this day and age.
5 Brushing your Teeth after Every Meal
This one would be my personal pet peeve. To eat and then immediately brush your teeth like you’re afraid your food will give you herpes or something is ridiculous. If you think the food is SO bad for you that you have to clean it with chemicals immediately after, you are very ill informed indeed.
Real healthy food (if you’re TRYING to eat that way) should be fine in your mouth and your body should naturally balance the pH and rebuild any degraded bones (teeth). When I eat watermelon as an example my teeth feel VERY clean and I definitely do NOT want to brush them because I feel that would be counter to the wonderful minerals the watermelon just provided. Apples are probably good for cleaning teeth as well. Now fairly common knowledge is after drinking orange juice or eating citrus you definitely do not want to brush because the acid eats your enamel and you'll simply degrade more of your enamel if you do not wait until your saliva rebalances out your mouth pH. In fact I think saliva's main purpose is to balance out your mouth pH and keep your teeth mineralized (as opposed to the main 'mainstream' taught objective of beginning the digestive process).
If you’re eating candy or junk food though, yeah maybe you want to brush; you’ll likely have sugary, salty or starchy bits stuck to the teeth that you don’t want there. At least use your tongue to make sure the gaps in teeth are not filled with decaying junk from your junky diet; now I hope you’ll clean up your diet first! Stop hurting yourself!