A lot of us think about our diet in entirely the wrong way.
And unfortunately, this ‘wrong way’ of thinking about food often only gets worse once we start looking into all the different diets that people are trying to sell us.
Fad diets that involve starving ourselves or that involve eating only at certain times of day really warp our perception of food and cause a lot more harm than good in the long run.
The focus of most diets is all wrong. The way that most diets go about helping people lose weight is all wrong. And the practical aspect of diet is all wrong too.
In this short 5 minute guide, I’ll show you why the average diet is all wrong and why simply eating clean is the very best way to change your lifestyle and improve nearly every aspect of your health…
What is Food?
The first question you need to ask yourself is: what is food? What is a diet?
Most of us think of food as sustenance. It is what gives us energy. When we eat, it’s a little like topping up a car with fuel and in that regard, it’s a purely practical requirement and one that’s a bit of a nuisance in many cases.
At the same time, a lot of diet plans look at food as something that needs to be restricted and controlled. If you eat too much food, you get fat. Too little and you get thin. And the objective of most diets is simple: get thin. So what’s wrong with this?
Well… pretty much everything! Firstly, your diet is not just there to provide energy – far from it! Your diet does provide energy but what it also does is to provide you with the very building blocks of your body.
The amino acids in your diet for instance are used to build muscle, brain tissue, flesh and more. They help us heal from wounds, digest food and create hormones. These are crucial for our optimal performance. And some aspects of our diet go way beyond this.
If you know where to look, then you can find ingredients in your diet that will give you huge surges of energy, that will improve your IQ and that will give you extra strength. You’ll avoid illness, look sexier and feel happier, just by changing
what you eat.
Which all makes a lot of sense when your remember: this stuff is what you’re building yourself from!
On top of this, our diet is also not just a practical consideration. In fact, what we eat is hugely determined by social factors. We eat because we need energy, we eat because we want to but we also eat because we’re expected to, because this is the only chance to fit it in and because we want to be social.
If you ignore this aspect of your diet, then you will be destined to fail. And if all you’re interested in is cutting back, then you will probably get ill very quickly!
The Problem With Low Fat Diets
It’s not just diet books and fads that have diet all wrong. In fact, some of the biggest culprits are the world health organizations that simply haven’t gotten around to updating their official advice.
Take the NHS for instance: the UK health service that is still recommending a low fat diet as the best way to stay healthy and lose weight! This information is based on the now outdated assumption that saturated fat causes heart disease and weight gain. More recent studies however show us that this assumption is completely incorrect.
In fact, countries where they consume large amounts of fats (such as countries around the
Mediterranean) have some of the longest life expectancy and lowest likelihoods of heart disease in the world.
Studies show us that saturated fat increases HDL cholesterol (high density lipoprotein) but not LDL cholesterol (low density lipoprotein). This is exactly what you want in order to improve your heart health.
Meanwhile, fats also play a number of other keen roles in our diet. They help us to absorb nutrients for instance (many vitamins and minerals are fat soluble) and they allow us to produce more testosterone (leading to muscle mass and fat loss). The brain is made largely from fats and if you don’t get enough, cognitive performance can suffer.
On top of all this, fat sits in the stomach and gets absorbed slowly. This provides us with a slow and steady supply of energy and prevents us from getting hungry later on.
So what happens when you consume the ‘low fat’ food that is so often
recommended?
Simple: you absorb the sugars much more quickly than normal, while feeling completely unsatiated. You also get far less nutritional benefit and if that’s all you live on, you’ll fade away.
Surprise, surprise… eating cardboard is not good for us!
Sure, fat contains a lot of calories per gram (nine calories versus four for protein or carbs) but the answer isn’t to remove it. Just eat less of everything!
The Problem With Fad Diets
So calorie counting and completely avoiding fats isn’t the answer because you need to make sure you’re focused on nutrition and on getting a balanced and satisfying diet.
But there are a lot of other people who take this idea too far to the other extreme.
Take the no-carb dieters for instance, who try to avoid all sources of carbohydrates.
Not a great move seeing as these are still our principle source of energy, key for releasing the happiness-hormone serotonin and crucial for our testosterone production!
Likewise, there are people who will tell you that all your problems come from too much milk! And you don’t need to count calories, as long as you’re eating a Mediterranean Diet.
Sorry guys – it’s not that easy. There is no ‘quick fix’ for your diet and nor can any eating plan completely remove the possibility that you’ll gain weight.
The fact remains that if you are eating large numbers of calories and not burning them through exercise… you will gain a lot of weight!
Your diet is not there to be hacked. Like exercise, diets offer up their best benefits when you work at them hard and consistently for long periods of time. And that’s as it should be – you need to enjoy what you eat!
The Problem With Western Food
But one thing that a lot of diets like the Mediterranean Diet and the Paleo diet have right is that a lot of our Western Food isn’t much good for us.
This is why the full book is called ‘Clean Eating’. This isn’t clean eating because you’re trying to get lean foods low in fat. Rather, it’s clean eating because you’re avoiding junk foods and trash.
What constitutes trash? Processed foods. Processed foods that contain large amounts of sugar and simple carbs, that fill you with calories and that offer you no nutritional benefits in return. These are what are known as ‘empty calories’ and for all intents and purposes, they are enemy number one.
Let’s say you eat a Mars Bar. What happens to the body next? Well, the huge amount of sugar that hit your system will cause a spike in blood sugar, followed by a spike in insulin and a rush of serotonin to the brain. You feel good! For about ten minutes.
Then the blood sugar runs out (because of all that insulin) and you’re left feeling low and empty. At the same time, you just added 200+ calories to your diet without getting any nutrition that can improve your health. This means you’ll still crave good food and you won’t be improving your health at all. What’s worse is that these foods are actually addictive!
And it’s not just Mars Bars causing these kinds of problems. Just as guilty are things like ready meals. In some ways these are worse because they look healthy. In fact though, the meat is made up of blended miscellaneous meats and can’t offer you much in the way of useful, bio-available amino acids. Meanwhile, tons of fat (calories) are added on top and so is loads of sugar.
The result is that you once again find yourself feeling hungry immediately afterward and again not getting any benefit from it – just calories!
Now compare this with a proper homemade meal that contains lots of fruits and vegetables and that is packed with real protein and delicious vegetable oil. This will fill you up much more quickly with far fewer calories and sustain you much longer. Meanwhile, you’ll find that it helps you to avoid getting ill, to boost your energy levels and to build muscle.
This has a far different effect on your body and is much healthier. It can completely alter your hormones and more – and if you doubt the role of hormones in the way you feel and look, just ask someone with hypothyroidism or someone who has used steroids. That’s the difference that hormones make!
The Lifestyle
This is the point where you might be wondering how you’re going to fit all this into your lifestyle. You can’t cook bolognaise every night! Or make salads every lunchtime…
I cover all this in the e-book and discuss plenty of ways that you can save time in the kitchen or even get other people to make these healthy meals for you cheaply.
But that’s not really the point. The actually point is that eating this way is surprisingly much easier than eating in other ways! Why? Because you’re eating in a way that you enjoy and a way that’s much more social!
Remember: we don’t just eat because we have to. We eat because we want to and as a social act. And when you start cooking delicious meals, this becomes all the more obvious! Soon it will be your routine to enjoy healthy dinners with your friends and family. And soon you’ll look forward to your lunch. You can take great pride in creating colorful lunchboxes and when you start thinking about your food that way, it actually becomes a lot easier to stick to your right diet!
Counting Calories
But the final piece of the puzzle is still to keep track of your calorie intake. Even with the healthiest diet in the world, overindulging is still a problem unless you’re happy to gain weight.
The key is simply to track calories in a practical way, rather than getting anal about counting every single last calorie you consume.
One way to do this is just to be more functional about your breakfast and lunch and to keep them a little more consistent. Eat a similar breakfast or lunch every day and work out exactly how many calories are in there and how much nutrition you’re getting. These meals do tend to be eaten alone and in a rush, so it’s much easier to do that.
From there, you can make sure that you’re left with the freedom to consume a large amount of calories in the evening without damaging your health. If you can eat 400 calories for breakfast and lunch for instance, that will leave you with a good 1000+ to eat for dinner which should be easy enough to stick below.
Again, this is all covered in much more detail in the full e-book – as are MANY more strategies and concepts that will help you to not only lose weight, but also feel and look the best you have in a long time.
To find out more, check out Clean Eating. Otherwise, just start putting some of these ideas into practice. Start small and cut back on some of those empty calories, then try to seek out those key nutrients in your diet that will help you to improve your energy and your health across the board! The best bit? Your food is about to get even more enjoyable.
Good luck And Happy Eating!