1.3a – Nutrition

One tremendous gift of our modern world is that we can get all the nutrients our bodies need from the local supermarket. In this subsection of the Health chapter of Supermorning, we will strive to make use of this rare privilege.

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Recap: Making the Classic “Healthy Living” New Year’s Resolution Work

It’s hard to believe there’s only five days left of this decade! Such a major milestone often brings with it some very useful motivation for driving positive change. This week’s posts were all about channeling this motivation into creating permanent healthy eating habits. 

So, let’s wrap this up with the traditional checklist…

The checklist

Here’s the 1-2-3 to a nutritional New Year’s resolution that might actually work 🙂

  1. Understand why diets have such a high failure rate.
  2. Intelligently shape your environment.
  3. Intelligently shape your habits.

So, if the classic health and weight loss resolutions are running through your head as we approach the new decade, why not give this a try?

As a reward, you’ll get to enjoy the next decade (and many more after that) in optimal health at your ideal weight 🙂

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New Year’s Resolution: Optimize Meal Timing

After optimizing our calorie intake and personalizing our healthy eating regimen, we just need to put the cherry on top: eating the right amounts at the right times. 

The amount and type of food you put in your body is much more important for long-term health and longevity than the timing. But getting the timing right can help to manage energy levels, control appetite and promote good sleep. 

Let’s take a look…

The ranking

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper. This little bit of wisdom has been around for decades, yet many people still do it the other way round. 

Yes, you can find articles swearing by a vast array of alternative eating patterns online. But most professionals recommend this old bit of wisdom. 

A big breakfast high in protein and healthy fats will supply your body with plenty of gradually releasing energy over the course of the day. 

A moderate top-up of slow-releasing energy around lunch can keep you going throughout the afternoon. Moderation is key though: drowsiness from a heavy lunch can really hurt your productivity. 

Dinner should be something small but filling. It’s aim is to keep away any distracting hunger before bedtime without putting any extra stress on the body when it enters recovery mode in sleep. 

Doing it the other way round can easily leave you listless in the morning (typically the most productive time of the day) and heavy and uncomfortable in the evening (hurting your sleep quality). Poor meal timing can also drive you to graze on unhealthy snacks throughout the day, really hurting your long-term health.

The timing

Intermittent fasting has become quite a buzzword in recent years. It’s often touted as a good weight loss strategy because it regularly puts the body in a state where it needs to draw on fat reserves for fuel. Or perhaps it just works because you have less time to consume calories. 

Most serious scientists agree that intermittent fasting can have some benefits, but simply eating healthy foods in moderation is much more important (1, 2, 3).  

Personally, I just use the principle for maximizing my sleep quality. On a typical day, I’d have a small dinner about 3-5 hours before bed, leaving me just comfortable at bedtime – not hungry and not bloated. 

Then I sleep soundly for about 8 hours, wake up and go through my morning routine that includes a large breakfast 1-2 hours after waking up. This results in 12-15 hours of intermittent fasting.

Given the importance of sleep, this is an important benefit.  

Fasting after feasting

During the holiday time, you’re likely to have one or two very large dinners. This is all well and good, but it could seriously disrupt your healthy eating pattern. 

Luckily, fasting can help to quickly restore your overall energy balance after a feast. Indeed, if you cancel the calorie imbalance with a day of fasting, you can get back to your normal healthy eating regimen the very next day.

Such a quick recovery is very important to keep your healthy eating habits strong enough to last a lifetime. 

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New Year’s Resolution: Personalized Eating Regimen

Merry Christmas! I hope you have a good one! Over here, we at least got a somewhat white Christmas. Here’s some evidence of the partial whiteness from Monday’s ski trip 🙂 

I’ll keep it short today to not occupy your Christmas time. So, let’s continue where yesterday left off: implementing permanent lifestyle changes to reach your ideal weight and stay there forever.

Our focus today is on maximizing the amount (and variety) of nutrients from a reduced calorie budget. Luckily, this is easy if you manage to cut down on empty calories, convenience-first foods and filler carbs. 

Our job then becomes simple: optimize variety, taste and practicality. 

Take ownership

The eating regimen that combines these elements in the best way will look different from person to person. For this reason, it’s important to come up with a combination that works best for you. 

The more invested you become in creating your own healthy eating regimen, the greater the chance that it will last a lifetime. Developing such a personalized nutritional regimen is one of the best investments you can ever hope to make! 

Be sure to keep in mind that this does not need to happen overnight. You can patiently explore different options, keeping the good and chucking the bad. We’re building an eating regime for the rest of your life, so it’s all well and good if the process takes time. 

One basic framework, endless possibilities

One month ago, we covered five different classes of superfoods: nuts, seeds and berries; raw green veggies; cooked veggies, mushrooms and beans; fish and eggs; avocado (and other fruit). Some practical tips for making these superfoods a permanent part of your life are given here. 

My only suggestion is to make sure you eat a good helping from each of these categories at least once every two days. The amount of variation possible within this framework is endless, leaving lots of freedom to find the solution that works best for you.

I really hope you make this little investment of time! It will pay you back 1000-fold over the rest of your life 🙂 

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New Year’s Resolution: Automate Lower Calorie Consumption

The first part of our nutritional New Year’s resolution is the simplest and simultaneously the most difficult of them all: simply consuming fewer calories. 

If your Smart BMI is already in the 34-35 band, there’s no need to read any further today. Unfortunately, the majority of people lucky enough to be born into material affluence are well above this range.

The reasons for lower calorie intake are obvious. Everyone wants to look and feel better, live longer, save money, promote social justice and save the planet all at the same time. 

Our real challenge is actually doing it…

How to permanently reduce calorie intake

As discussed in yesterday’s post, the key is to gradually implement changes to your environment that will cement a new lifestyle. In this case, we simply need to remove all the triggers to overeating and keep them out forever.

The first step is to simply buy fewer calories. Yes, this sounds too obvious, but it genuinely works! My permanent 8 kg drop to my ideal weight (below) is largely due to this simple idea. 

Luckily, buying fewer calories does not necessarily mean eating less food. It just means more filling foods instead of the addictive empty calories lining the shelves at your local supermarket. 

So, empty calorie carbs and fats should be scrapped from the shopping list. Simply refuse to pay for self-destruction. And for those few occasions when culinary treats are genuinely beneficial, splurge on healthier alternatives. 

Next, gradually commit to home-cooked meals where you design your own unique blend of nutrition, taste and convenience. This personal touch is an excellent way to ensure permanent change and eradicate all those convenience-first designed-for-overeating foods from your life. 

Another smart move is to reduce the amount of filler carbs (bread, rice, pasta) in your diet to about 5% of your total calorie consumption. This action will open up plenty of space in your calorie budget to fill with the great foods we’ll get to tomorrow. 

Lastly, commit to tracking your progress. Record your weight once or twice a month with no option to stop when you don’t like the numbers. For the best results, insert your ideal range like in the graph above. 

Summary 

In short, change your eating habits by changing your shopping habits. Simply buy fewer calories by cutting out empty calories and convenience-first foods. Instead, commit to home-made food, finding your personalized optimal mix of nutrition, taste and convenience. 

Not buying something is a whole lot easier than not eating something that’s already in your house. Gradually create this healthy nutritional environment in your home, and lower daily calorie consumption will automatically become a permanent part of your life 🙂 

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Permanent Healthy Eating Habits: The Perfect New Year’s Resolution

Yes, we’ve made it to the last full week of the decade! It’s certainly been an interesting one, and the next one promises to be even more so 🙂

It’s usually around this time of the year that people start coming up with some grandiose New Year’s resolutions. Mostly, these resolutions are linked to diet and/or exercise. And sadly, they rarely make it past January. 

This week, we’ll talk about three great resolutions for the new decade, paying particularly close attention to one key detail: actually making it happen. 

The key to a successful New Year’s resolution

If you promise yourself you’ll go on a diet from the 1st of January, let me save you the trouble. It ain’t gonna happen, at least not for the long run. 

The one and only way to successfully achieve a New Year’s resolution is to change your environment so that actions consistent with your goal happen automatically. It’s well worth reading this long sentence a couple of times. 

If you commit yourself to the latest fad diet inspired by access to a fresh new decade, you’ll soon end up relying on willpower alone. And, over time, willpower always runs out. 

Diet vs. lifestyle change

The weight loss industry is one of the most fascinating constructs of our affluent modern society. In the United States, for example, this industry is worth $72 billion, significantly more than the clean energy industry. 

Yet, the long-term success rate of diets and other weight loss schemes hovers around 5%. This means that almost all of those 72 billion dollars might as well have been burned. 

The rather obvious reason for this great failure has been discussed earlier: the powerful cravings that kept us alive through millennia of extreme scarcity are still just as strong in today’s world of great affluence.

We’ve evolved to eat for our very survival and, in today’s world with hyper-palatable nutrient-free treats around every corner, an obesity epidemic is a pretty obvious result. 

Fad diets and exercise gizmos are powerless against millennia of evolution. Indeed, the only way to victory is to gradually implement permanent lifestyle changes that automatically control our primitive cravings. 

This is what we’ll be doing over the next three days. So, stay tuned… These strategies could help create a New Year’s resolution that actually happens, making the 2020’s your best decade ever 🙂

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Recap: Building Permanent Healthy Eating Habits

We all have a pretty good idea of what we should and shouldn’t eat. The real challenge is actually implementing this common sense, consistently. 

That’s why the last two weeks were dedicated to strategies for building permanent healthy eating habits, allowing optimal nutrition to happen naturally. Let’s summarize how this can be done.

The checklist

There are five categories of foods that should be an integral part of healthy living. To automate our consumption of these foods, we need to maximize taste, practicality and affordability. Here’s how this can be done:

  • Nuts, seeds and berries: Here we focused on maximizing the practicality and affordability of this surprisingly tasty superfood combo, particularly through bulk purchases of seeds. 
  • Raw green veggies: These green nutrient bombs taste rather bland, but things like a green drink and smart combinations with other tasty foods can make them regulars in your diet.
  • Cooked veggies, mushrooms and beans: This strategy revolves around the use of meat and other flavors to include surprisingly large quantities of these colorful bits of health into cooked meals. 
  • Fish and eggs: The convenience of smoked and canned omega-3 fish and scrambled eggs or omelettes make these high quality protein sources easy to include. 
  • Avocado (and other fruit): Here we discussed the fine art of avocado ripeness management together with several ways to make fruit consumption even easier. 

Next, we need to keep self-destruct foods out of our lives. A strong defense against the world’s worst foods that lurk around every corner in your local supermarket looks like this: 

  • Refuse to pay for self-destruction: Trading time, effort, vitality and life expectancy for fleeting endorphin highs is a truly terrible deal. Realizing this on a deep level is a great first layer of defense.  
  • Healthier snacking: Sometimes really tasty treats can actually have some longer-term benefits. For these rare occasions, choosing healthier alternatives makes all the sense in the world. 
  • Home-made meals: Taking care of your health becomes a lot easier when you take direct control of what goes into your body. Home-made food also makes overeating much less likely. 
  • Whole foods: Buying more whole produce is a great way to keep self-destruct foods out of your life. Getting into the habit of reading food labels can also add many good years to your life. 

So there you have it. These strategies combine very nicely to build healthy nutritional habits that last a (considerably longer) lifetime 🙂

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Keep It Fresh and Whole

Committing to buying whole and fresh produce is a great way to protect yourself against self-destruct foods. As a simple rule, the less processing a food has to undergo before ending up in your stomach, the better.

But first we need a proper understanding of what the terms “whole” and “processed” actually mean. 

The wholeness scale

Broadly speaking, there are four levels of food wholeness:

Right at the top, we have whole foods that have not been processed at all. These are things like fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, fish, eggs, milk and meat. They are generally good and healthy. 

One level down, we find mildly processed food. These foods remain healthy because they have been processed using methods and ingredients you could conceivably replicate at home. Whole foods that have been frozen, dried, smoked, baked or juiced fall in this category. However, any added sugar downgrades the food another level. 

The next step down is processed food. This is where we need to start exercising some caution. Processed foods are still based mostly on whole foods, but must be made in a factory and often involves some added sugar. Common examples include whole wheat cereals, sweetened fruit juices, canned food, yogurt, processed meats, cheese, chocolate and beer.  

Right at the bottom, we find ultra-processed foods. These should be avoided outright. Any food that is based on refined carbohydrates or trans fats or includes any ingredient you cannot instinctively identify will fall in this category. Examples include candy, soft drinks, white bread, packaged pastries, as well as most chips, breakfast cereals and biscuits.  

In general, any food that comes in colorful packaging or clearly does not look like it comes from nature should be viewed with skepticism. Develop the habit of reading food labels. It really is quite enlightening! 

Go whole or go home

As a general rule, try to get over 80% of your calories from whole or mildly processed foods. Processed foods can be added in moderation after careful study of the food label to make sure it is not ultra-processed. Ultra-processed foods should be avoided as much as possible. 

These days, eating whole is not so hard anymore. It just needs a little bit of awareness. Give it a go! I think you’ll like it 🙂

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Tell Your Body You Care with Home-Made Food

Two weeks ago this time, I was ranting about everything that’s wrong with convenience-first foods: how easy they make overeating, how low they prioritize health, and how much additives they contain. 

Well, the antithesis of convenience-first food is home-made food. There are few things that that say “I care” quite as well a home cooked meal. So, why not let your body know you care every day?

Why home-made?

Convenience foods generally put taste first because they must sell in large volumes to a broad client base to be profitable. Making healthy convenience food is much harder because it is more complex and will appeal to a smaller segment of the market. 

That’s why home-made is so important. Each one of us needs to find their own zero-compromise healthy meal plan. This will look different for different people, and the only way to cater for this diversity is to make most of your food at home. 

Home-made food naturally has a little bit of resistance built into it, making overeating much less likely. It will also generally use fresher ingredients, avoiding the intensive processing and additives typical of convenience-first foods. 

Home-made does not mean hours in the kitchen

A home-made meal does not need to take more than a couple of minutes to prepare. As some examples, take a look at these breakfasts and potential dinners using avocado or egg.

Even cooked meals do not need to be that much effort. If you cook easily freezable meals in bulk, it can work out to as little as 5 minutes of active prep-time per meal. 

Anyone has time to spend 3 minutes on a delicious and nutritious breakfast, 7 minutes on a nice warm lunch, and 5 minutes on a small and simple dinner. 

Take stock

So, what percentage of your meals are home-made? Anything where you combine three or more whole and nutritious ingredients can count.

If you’re below 90%, it may be time to do a little bit of thinking. Don’t worry, not much thinking is required, just enough to do a little search and start trying some new things. Once you get started, this interesting challenge and it’s great rewards will keep you going. 

Your body is the most important possession you have. Show it that you care with regular home-made meals 🙂 

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The Case for Healthier Snacking

Yesterday’s post discussed just how bad of a deal purchasing empty calories actually is. But if these treats occasionally come to you for free at a fun social event, they’re not so bad.  

There are also some times when buying sugary or buttery treats can actually be useful. Maybe you’ve had a truly terrible day and really need something to lift your mood to a more productive state. Or maybe you just need to take a tasty snack to a social gathering. 

For these cases, it’s very useful to do a little bit of thinking about upgrading the health value of the treats we buy. 

Healthier but still pleasurable 

The whole point of culinary treats is the instant pleasure (endorphin release) they deliver. Sometimes, this burst of instant pleasure can break a sour and unproductive mood or contribute to a joyful social experience, bringing genuine longer-term value. 

Empty calorie carbs and fats are hard to beat when it comes to delivering this endorphin boost. But luckily, there are healthier instant pleasure snacks out there. You just need to look.   

My personal favorite is a combination of yogurt nuts and sweet chili nuts. Nuts covered in chocolate are not far behind. Dark chocolate is another good option. 

Fresh strawberries, raspberries and/or blueberries also work well as healthy treats. Some molten chocolate on top can really get those endorphins flowing 🙂 

But there really are tons of other options out there. Just Google “healthy snacks” and you’ll discover a whole new world. 

Priorities

The challenge with healthier culinary treats is that they are often more expensive than the endless assortment of empty calories lining the shelves at your local supermarket. 

Here, the best advice is to simply make a rule: it’s either healthier snacking or no snacking. The logic behind this rule is simple:

  1. Snacking is supposed to deliver instant pleasure, which can be genuinely useful under certain circumstances.
  2. There are plenty of reasonably healthy snacks that can deliver this instant pleasure just as well as empty calorie carbs and fats. 
  3. Any money or effort saved by choosing cheap empty calories instead will need to be payed back 10-fold in lost vitality and life expectancy.
  4. If you can’t get yourself to pay for healthier snacks, you clearly don’t need instant pleasure badly enough for snacking to be useful.  

Also keep in mind that, when you choose healthier snacks for a social event, you’re not only boosting your own vitality and life expectancy, but also that of your friends. 

This logic needs to sink in pretty deep to really start influencing real day-to-day actions. But once it gets internalized, you can finally put the days of spending your hard-earned money on self-destructive empty calories behind you 🙂 

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Refuse to Pay for Self-Destruction

Over the coming week, we’ll be building our defenses against the world’s worst foods. And given the dizzying array of endorphin-releasing treats offered by today’s vast instant pleasure industry, these defense had better be super strong. 

It all starts with a simple realization: Every time we purchase these unhealthy treats, we’re exchanging the time and effort we put in at work together with our vitality and life expectancy for a couple of minutes of instant pleasure. 

Just let that sink in for a couple of seconds…

Yep, whichever way you look at it, this is a horrible deal. Yet, it’s made billions of times per day across the world. Today’s post discusses the simple and obvious solution.

Refuse to purchase empty calories

Empty calorie carbs and fats taste great, but they load the body with a whole lot of calories with no nutrients. As discussed earlier, this is like running an engine on low-grade fuel and never servicing it. 

The simplest solution is to refuse to enter into the terrible deal described above. And this takes nothing more than a couple of seconds of discipline when you’re at the shops. 

Recall the crux moments we discussed earlier. If you give in and purchase some empty calories, you’re locking in unhealthy eating habits for the near-term future. But if you can resist this urge for just a few seconds until you’re out of that environment, the craving will often vanish before you know it. 

Not all bad

But what about the times when you’re in a fun social situation where you’re offered some empty calories for free? In this case, you don’t lose any money and build some relationships, sweetening this sour empty calorie deal. 

Sure, the deal is still not great, but it’s at least tolerable. This is what I like to call the 2-out-of-3 rule. It means that any food you eat should be at least 2 out of the following 3 things: healthy, tasty and free. 

Of course, if you’re in the deceptively dangerous position of getting empty calories for free all the time, this is not a good idea. But for most people, adhering to this simple rule will strike a good balance between health and social ease. 

Indeed, if you nurture your body with lots of nutrient-rich foods for 20 of the 21 meals in the week, it can handle one or two fun and unhealthy excursions. 

So, in conclusion, there’s no need to be a health prune and refuse some tasty snacks at a social event. But there’s even less need to spend your hard-earned money on your own self-destruction. 

As is often the case though, there are one or two exceptions. We’ll get to those tomorrow. 

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