2.3 - Diet & Nutrition Archives - Happy Healthy Wealthy Productive Sustainable

Schalk May 6, 2022

2.3 - Diet & Nutrition diet, food, health, nutrition, personal development

A Hero’s Journey: Building Your Healthy Diet in a World Awash With Empty Calories

Ten levels to vanquishing the legions of unhealthy temptations that surround us every day

Building a healthy diet in today’s world is a true hero’s journey — an epic battle past legions of sugary, fatty, and salty temptations to the ultimate prize of a long life enjoyed in optimal health.

Sometimes, especially when life gets us down, resisting these temptations can feel impossible. There are setbacks, as there must be in any good adventure. But if we pick ourselves up and persevere, the experience will upgrade our physical environment and our habits, taking our diet to the next level.

Having been on this journey for over a decade now, it was interesting to look back through all the levels that shaped the near-perfect diet I enjoy today. Interestingly, I found a nice round total of ten.

But before we start this epic level-up journey, we need to understand the SAD place most folks will need to start from.

Level 0: Standard American Diet (SAD)

Every hero’s journey involves a powerful villain that pushes the hero to their limit. In this case, it’s the SAD (a.k.a. the Western diet).

The SAD is a prominent member of an incredibly destructive league of supervillains I like to call the Instant Pleasure Industry — a multi-trillion dollar behemoth whose business model relies on addicting us to carefully engineered dopamine hits with little or no regard for the associated health, productivity, and sustainability problems.

All the refined sugars, saturated fats, and excess salts inside the colorful packets of empty calories lining the prime real estate in your local supermarket work on this principle. They were purpose-built to send our primitive food cravings into overdrive with disastrous results:

Millions of deaths from obesity are just one of the serious consequences of the SAD | Our World in Data

Research finds that poor diet is linked to almost half of all deaths from heart disease, stroke, and diabetes in America. My estimate of the global damages caused by all these highly processed foods comes to $6.4 trillion. It’s truly one of the most harmful elements in our society.

Our mission is simple: “level up” and vanquish this villain.

Level 1: Fruit Bowl

The first level in any adventure should always be a bit of a gimme. This adventure is no different with the first level only requiring that you have a bowl of fruit in your house at all times (and eat it before it goes bad). Make it past level 1, and you’re already in a better place than 88% of Americans!

Ideally, you’d also convince your boss to sponsor a fruit basket at work. Any reasonable employer will understand that the savings from reduced absenteeism will far outweigh the cost of a regular basket of fruit.

Be careful of fruit juices though. Those with added sugar are an especially big no-no. Rather get your hands on some freshly squeezed juice (with pulp) and drink it with a fiber-rich meal so it doesn’t spike your blood sugar.

Level 2: Clean Home

The next level presents a substantially bigger challenge: Keep the SAD out of your home. Sometimes it feels impossible, but remember; it only takes a few seconds of intense bravery to resist the allure of the empty-calorie aisle at your local supermarket or the junk-food drive-through on your daily commute.

Human behavior is heavily influenced by the local environment. And your home is the one part of your environment over which you have genuine control. So, if you can be brave for a minute or two each week, your home will become SAD-free, giving you and your family a guaranteed health boost.

Level 3: Craving Busters

Once you manage to clear level 2 on a regular basis, you’ll likely experience the SAD’s dark mind-control magic dragging you to your car to buy some junk food to satisfy some irresistible craving. That’s what level 3 is about.

The best weapon against the SAD’s mind tricks is a good craving buster. These are healthy, high-volume-low-calorie foods/fluids you can indulge in with no adverse effects. In fact, I recommend setting a rule that you must eat a craving buster every time you find yourself on any kind of snack hunt.

Aside from the fruit in level 1, my premier craving buster is a bowl of peeled carrots in some water front-and-center in the fridge. Whenever I find myself mindlessly staring into the fridge, this bright orange display is the first thing I see. And since it’s zero effort to grab one of these ready-peeled snacks, it usually happens naturally.

Fluids are also very effective craving busters. My favorites are rooibos tea (if it’s cold) or water (if it’s hot) with either a slice of lemon or some chia seeds blended in. The green smoothy we’ll get to later also works well.

Much like level 2, level 3 plays out in just a few seconds at that moment when the craving hits. If you manage to wolf down your chosen craving buster right away, the craving will probably vanish soon. SAD cravings can be persistent though, so you might need to tough it out for a few reps.

Level 4: Home-Made Meals

The great escape from ultra-processed foods in levels 2 & 3 brings our adventure to level 4: replacing all this junk with healthier alternatives. This level is a tough one because the SAD is just as convenient as it is addictive.

Preparing whole-food meals at home is your best bet for passing this level, even if you think you hate cooking. If you do it right, homemade meals really take very little time and skill.

Breakfast is a great place to start. If you make sure you have some (unsweetened) yogurt, seeds, nuts, and berries at hand, mixing them into a healthy and tasty breakfast is a surprisingly quick and rewarding job.

Preparing a daily warm meal can be impractical, but if you cook in bulk and freeze your portions, the time spent per portion can drop below 10 minutes. Here are some ideas. You might also be able to find some local diners serving genuinely healthy food that could save you those 10 minutes at a fair price.

There are many other quick and healthy recipes out there (like my favorite salad). Finding the ones that work for you will take some time and effort, but once that effort is invested, your new healthy and practical diet will stay with you for the rest of your (considerably longer) life.

Level 5: Nutrient Density

Up to this point, we’ve been fending off the SAD with all our might. But level 5 marks the point where we transition from defense to attack.

This level is all about nutrient-dense superfoods. For example, leafy greens like kale and spinach are some of the most nutrient-dense things out there. They can be tough to swallow though, especially if all those SAD treats are still fresh in your memory. That’s where a green smoothie can help. It tastes quite OK and, like the warm meals from level 4, your green smoothie can also be made in bulk and frozen for maximum convenience.

The hilarious but highly effective solution that keeps my defrosted green drink fresh for a week in the fridge

You can also find various powders and teas that will shower you with a range of additional nutrients. Three of my favorites are amla powder (with breakfast), chlorella powder (with my green smoothie), and matcha tea with oat & almond milk (as a substitute for morning coffee).

Level 6: Little or No Meat

The world eats too much meat, leading to a host of health conditions, serious environmental problems, and some disturbing animal cruelty concerns. Level 6 is about addressing these issues.

Although vegetarianism will get you some serious bonus points on this level, reducing meat to a minimum also counts as a pass. For example, meat still makes up a little under 5% of my calories, and it plays a major role in helping me eat loads of veggies. This “meat as a vegetable dressing” philosophy is a great strategy for painlessly clearing level 6 (with a bonus health boost).

Level 7: Banishing Sugar

If level 6 wasn’t intimidating enough, let me introduce you to level 7: giving up everything with added sugar. Luckily, quitting sugar may well turn out to be easier than you expect (it was for me, at least).

Refined sugar is the SAD’s weapon of mass destruction. It works by warping our perception of sweetness so that nothing tastes good without loads of added sugar that destroys our health in a dizzying number of ways.

But the good news is that it doesn’t take very long to reset this broken system to its natural state. Do this, and you’ll discover that naturally sweet foods like fruits become truly delicious, while the occasional sweet treat on a special occasion turns into a magical experience.

Level 8: Time-Restricted Eating

Level 8 happens within an 8-hour eating window. It took me a long time to properly commit to time-restricted eating. But the evidence presented by well-known longevity expert, David Sinclair, finally got me to take the plunge.

Like the sugar cleanse in the previous level, this one also turned out to be significantly easier than feared. My body quickly adjusted to the new eating pattern of unlimited whole foods in the morning and fasting for the rest of the day (although you can also have your eating window in the evening).

Cravings outside my eating window are rare and usually easily handled with one of the fluid craving busters from level 3. In short, there’s no good reason to skip level 8.

Level 9: Home-Grown Meals

Our penultimate level is a fun one: growing some of your own food. Once you start looking, you’ll find some interesting options that require very little time and even less skill.

I got my start with sprouting broccoli seeds for my salad. This requires nothing but a simple little container with holes in the lid (available online) and a few seconds to rinse it with clean water every day.

Recently, I also started to play with hydroponics. It also takes almost no effort, although my lettuce did have a small aphid problem. Of course, you can also go the traditional gardening route if you have sufficiently green fingers.

Hydroponic lettuce and basil (back) and broccoli sprouts (front)

Overall, it’s fun to be able to harvest my own lettuce and sprouts for my salad. I’ll definitely be expanding my little hydroponic garden over the next couple of years to score some bonus points on this level.

Level 10: Holistic Wellbeing

The boss level must always be the most difficult, and this adventure is no exception. Level 10 requires such a degree of life mastery that emotional food cravings become a thing of the past. The key step is removing chronic frustrations and stressors from your life. And since these issues are normally deeply ingrained, this will most likely be a long-term project.

Next time you get a serious food craving, stop to think about where it’s coming from. Then invest a little more introspection to discover what you might do to remove that trigger. With some patience and bravery, this exercise could end up improving your life far beyond just a better diet.

Final Thoughts

Epic journeys always take time and never play out without setbacks. So, stay the course and don’t be disheartened when you fail to clear a level on the first (or the fifth) attempt. With the right mindset, every (good or bad) experience becomes a valuable guide for informing your next move.

Also, you can take genuine pride in your heroic quest for a lasting healthy diet. Not only does it involve overcoming great obstacles, but it also benefits those you love and society at large. Everyone who breaks their dependency on the SAD weakens its economic might, reducing its power to harm others.

The very best of luck on your healthy diet adventure, and I sincerely hope that you and everyone you care about manage to slay the SAD!

Schalk February 3, 2022

2.3 - Diet & Nutrition diet, food, health, healthy foods, nutrition, top 10

The Top 10 Healthiest Foods as Identified by 10 Nutritionists

A top 10 list distilled from the insight of highly-rated experts

The internet is full of top 10 healthy foods lists. So, what makes this one special? Well, it has a novel spin: paying ten highly-rated nutritionists and dietitians on Upwork for listing their top 10 healthiest foods. I also asked for good reasons and scientific references to back up their selections.

It turned out to be a fascinating exercise, bringing several new health-enhancing foods into my diet. I hope you learn as much from reading this article as I learned writing it!

So, without further ado, here are the top 10 healthiest foods identified by qualified nutritionists and dietitians.

1. Legumes (10 Votes)

My money was on berries or leafy greens to top the list, but legumes emerged as the surprise winner. Every one of the ten experts included it in their lists of healthy foods.

Benefits: There were a host of reasons behind legumes topping the list. Most nutritionists pointed out that legumes are an excellent source of plant protein and rich in soluble and insoluble fiber to regulate appetite. They’re also great prebiotics for a healthy gut and better immunity while containing very little saturated fat. Prevention of cardiovascular disease also got two mentions. One nutritionist even pointed out that legumes have good potential for making agriculture more sustainable.

Nutrients. Here are all the nutrients explicitly mentioned by the nutritionists in order of popularity: protein, fiber, iron, potassium, magnesium, folate, polyphenols and isoflavonoids (phytochemicals with antioxidant properties), B-vitamins, zinc, and calcium (especially chickpeas).

Recommendations. Lentils were the most commonly mentioned legume, followed by chickpeas, beans, and edamame/soy. Chickpeas proved to be especially easy to include in my diet. I found them surprisingly tasty just on their own, and they have become a staple in my evening salad. They get even better when roasted with some spices, but I’m admittedly too lazy for that. Also, it was easy to add large amounts of all the other legumes mentioned by the nutritionists to the chili con carne I often have for lunch.

Frequency: You can eat legumes as often as you feel like, although one nutritionist recommended once per day. Only soy came with a stricter recommendation of twice per week.

Science: Here are some scientific studies on legumes listed by the nutritionists, explaining how polyphenol-rich lentils promote health, chickpeas and hummus are packed with nutrients, legumes offer great phytochemical variety and excellent nutritional variety in general, lentils enhance colonic function, dried beans offer solid nutritional value, and legumes have good potential for more sustainable agriculture.

2. Berries (9 Votes)

Even though they did not take the expected top spot, berries came in a close second, with only one expert omitting them from their list.

Benefits: Almost every nutritionist mentioned the antioxidant properties of berries that serve to protect healthy cells from damage by free radicals. Phytonutrients and flavanoids got several mentions for their protection against degenerative diseases. Brain health (prevention of dementia and better cognitive function) and anti-inflammatory properties got two nods each, and four other benefits were mentioned once: heart health and blood pressure, slower aging, reductions in bad cholesterol, and easing of urinary tract infections.

Nutrients: Unsurprisingly, antioxidants topped the list, followed by vitamin C, fiber, vitamin K, potassium, calcium, and manganese.

Recommendations: Blueberries got the most votes, followed by strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, cherries, and cranberries. All these are very easy to eat, benefitting from the berry magic of being sweet while containing surprisingly little sugar. From my experience, berries are at their best at breakfast time, but nutritionists also recommend them for smoothies and general snacks.

Frequency: Like legumes, berries can be eaten at will, although one nutritionist recommended about 80 g per day.

Science: Here are some papers showing how blueberries are a nutritional powerhouse with many health benefits including improved blood pressure, reduced obesity, and slower cognitive decline with age. Strawberries also offer many benefits, counteracting a wide range of diseases, while various other berries also offer many healthy compounds with an impressive range of benefits,

2. Nuts (9 Votes)

In joint second place, we have another natural wonder offering a unique (and tasty) package of health benefits. Next to legumes and berries, nuts complete a top three of amazing nutritional diversity.

Benefits: The big selling point of nuts is their high content of healthy unsaturated fats complemented by plenty of plant protein. Half of the nutritionists also pointed out that nuts are a source of omega 3 fatty acids with a good balance relative to omega 6. These properties mean that nuts can help lower cholesterol, benefiting heart health. However, one nutritionist pointed out that the body absorbed a relatively low fraction of the omega 3 in nuts, so it should not be the sole source. Despite their high energy content, two nutritionists mentioned that nuts actually help with satiety and weight management. They can also reduce inflammation and lower cancer risk.

Nutrients: Omega 3 was the top nutrient pointed out by the nutritionists, followed by selenium, iron, fiber, vitamin E, antioxidants, calcium, potassium, and magnesium. One nutritionist also pointed out that the healthy fats in nuts help with the absorption of vitamins A, D, E, and K.

Recommendations: Walnuts got the most direct mentions, followed by almonds, brazil nuts, pine nuts, and cashews. The nutritionists recommended nuts for early in the morning, which was good news for me since they’ve been a staple in my breakfast for many years. Nuts are also recommended for a healthy snack, although one should practice moderation due to their high energy content.

Frequency: The nutritionists recommended daily intake of nuts, again stressing the importance of small portions. One mentioned 30 g per day, but I must admit to eating more than twice that amount.

Science: The nutritionists added some scientific papers showing that nuts reduce the risk of heart disease, walnuts offer better antioxidant properties than fatty fish that reduce oxidative stress, and other nuts offer similar benefits. Furthermore, pistachios can aid in weight loss and help manage diabetes, and adding more nuts to the Mediterranean diet reduces waist circumference.

4. Dark Leafy Greens (8 Votes)

Leafy greens were one of my pre-game favorites for the win, so I was a little surprised that they missed out on the podium. But fourth spot after legumes, berries, and nuts is nothing to be ashamed of.

Benefits: Antioxidant properties, heart health, healthy blood pressure, and benefits to red blood cells were the most popular benefits among nutritionists. The high nutrient density of leafy greens and the diverse micronutrient profile also got a couple of votes. Furthermore, the nutritionists mentioned the benefits of low calories and glycemic index and the proven reduction in risk of degenerative disease.

Nutrients: Here is the rundown in order of popularity: calcium, vitamin K (that works well with vitamin D and calcium for bone health), folate, antioxidants, magnesium, vitamin C, iron, vitamin A, vitamin E, fiber, and potassium.

Recommendations: Kale was the most popular leafy green, closely followed by spinach. Swiss chard, mangold, and arugula also got one vote each. Before I learned to love salad, I took my dark leafy greens more like medicine than food, mainly via my trusty green smoothy. If you’re still struggling with your leafy greens, green smoothies and adventurous salads are your tickets to success. One nutritionist also recommended plenty of vitamin C in a salad with spinach since it helps with iron absorption.

Frequency: The recommendation is to eat dark leafy greens twice a day.

Science: Here are some papers showing how leafy greens reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and slow the rate of cognitive decline with age, and how spinach prevents oxidative DNA damage again and again.

5. Fermented foods (7 Votes)

Rounding out the top five, we have another surprise (to me at least). I love my yogurt, but I didn’t expect seven out of ten nutritionists to recommend fermented foods.

Benefits: The superpower of fermented foods lies in their benefits to gut health, which is receiving plenty of attention nowadays via the gut-brain axis. They’re also good for bone health and a robust immune system for general disease prevention. It also helps that they’re highly versatile and delicious.

Nutrients: In order of popularity, nutrients mentioned around fermented foods include probiotics, calcium, protein, B-vitamins, and magnesium.

Recommendations: Unsurprisingly, Greek yogurt was the most popular in this category. However, something I had never even heard of before, kefir, came in second and soon became a staple in my diet. Kefir goes well with Greek yogurt in my breakfast, offering greater diversity in probiotic cultures. In addition, buttermilk, kimchi, Sauerkraut, and tempeh each got one mention. One nutritionist also recommended plenty of fiber with fermented foods to really make those gut bacteria jump for joy.

Frequency: Fermented foods can be consumed daily.

Science: The nutritionists recommending fermented foods were not so generous with scientific papers, but here are three resources they provided: a Harvard post on the role of probiotics in health, a paper on the general benefits of fermented foods, and a Harvard guide to yogurt.

6. Eggs (6 Votes)

After being falsely linked to high cholesterol and heart disease for decades, eggs are coming back in a big way. Their sixth place in this list confirms this resurgence.

Benefits: A complete protein profile was the first benefit pointed out by nutritionists. Even though eggs are of animal origin, the eggs from one laying hen provide about 10x more protein than the meat from one broiler chicken, making it substantially more efficient. Eggs are also good for bone, cell membrane, and brain health, and come with antioxidant properties, relatively few calories, and little saturated fats.

Nutrients: Here is the long list of egg nutrients in order of popularity: all essential amino acids (complete protein), vitamin D, B-vitamins, choline, HDL (good) cholesterol, calcium, selenium, potassium, lutein, zeaxanthin, omega 3, antioxidants, zinc, iron, magnesium, vitamin A, vitamin K, lycopene, and phospholipids.

Recommendations: The first important recommendation pointed out by the nutritionists is that the yolk contains most of the nutritional value in the egg, so don’t throw it away. Aside from that, eggs are commonly recommended as a good breakfast food, potentially aiding weight loss.

Frequency: Even though eggs are no longer seen as a dangerous food, the nutritionists still recommended a maximum of 2 per day, 3–4 days per week.

Science: Here are some egg-related papers: Eggs do not increase the risk of heart disease, increasing only good cholesterol. Furthermore, egg yolks are particularly nutritious, being an excellent source of choline which has multiple health benefits and lutein and zeaxanthin that help enhance eye function while also offering anti-inflammatory services.

6. Oats (6 Votes)

It’s amazing that something as seemingly bland as oats could grab a joint sixth place on this list. But as we’ll see in this section, there’s a lot going on behind that bland facade.

Benefits: The biggest benefit highlighted by the nutritionists is the ability of oats to stabilize blood sugar and improve satiety. This makes them well-suited for weight loss and lowering the risk of diabetes. Oats also come with plenty of gut-healthy fiber, and it lowers cholesterol for better heart health. Pure oats also gets the gluten-free label, although it could get contaminated with gluten during processing.

Nutrients: There is plenty of good stuff in oats, including fiber, antioxidants, B-vitamins, potassium, folate, manganese, phosphorous, magnesium, and zinc.

Recommendations: Generally considered a good breakfast food, oats play well with other healthy options like berries, fruit, nuts, and seeds. It’s important to select a minimally processed oat product since highly-processed instant oats lose the ability to regulate blood sugar. Nutritionists also recommend not heating oats to high temperatures, which reduces the nutritional value due to releases of the anti-nutrient, phytic acid. Rather soak for an hour or two. I soak my breakfast oats and seeds together overnight at virtually no inconvenience.

Frequency: Oats can be consumed daily, and some nutritionists even went as far as setting the minimum intake at 3x per week.

Science: Here are some papers showing how oats benefit patients with cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and lower LDL (bad) cholesterol. It also limits glucose spikes and offers several other potential health benefits.

8. Seeds (5 Votes)

As a big seed fan, I was a little disappointed that they only appeared in eighth position. Overall, seeds have much in common with nuts, but often come with more protein and fiber and less fat. If it were up to me, they would certainly be higher up on the list.

Benefits: Protein was the #1 reason nutritionists put seeds on their top 10 lists. Some, like chia and hemp, even offer the complete set of essential amino acids. Reason #2 came in the form of healthy unsaturated fats and omega 3 fatty acids. The nutritionists also pointed out that seeds come with antioxidant properties, help regulate blood sugar, lower cholesterol, control appetite for weight management, improve immunity, and help with the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins.

Nutrients: Although there are plenty more, the nutritionists pointed out complete proteins, healthy fats, omega 3, iron, calcium, fiber, and potassium as key nutrients from seeds.

Recommendations: Chia and flax seeds were the top recommendations, but I also like hemp, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds. I eat my seeds with breakfast, but the nutritionists also recommended them for smoothies, soups, salads, or added to water, milk, or protein shakes. Soaking for a couple of hours can aid in digestion, especially for flax seeds, while chia seeds give a very interesting texture to an oat breakfast when left to soak with the oats.

Frequency: Seeds can be consumed daily, although, like nuts, one should take care with portion sizes due to their high energy content.

Science: The nutritionists gave two papers on the wide range of health benefits of chia seeds that include high antioxidant capacity.

8. Fatty fish (5 Votes)

Next to eggs, fish offer another attractive source of animal protein. Fatty fish, rich in omega 3, is generally considered the pick of the bunch and deserves a spot on this list.

Benefits: The high-quality proteins and omega 3 fatty acids in these fish were the top benefits listed by nutritionists. Some of the mentioned benefits of omega 3 include better heart health, improved concentration and cognitive skills, improved nervous system health, and reduced arthritis symptoms. Two nutritionists also highlighted the high vitamin D content of these fish, which is particularly useful in regions will dark winters (vitamin D is mainly produced in the skin by exposure to sunlight). The healthy fats in fatty fish also assist in the absorption of vitamins A, D, E, and K.

Nutrients: Protein, omega 3, and vitamin D top the list, followed by selenium, vitamin A, calcium, niacin, potassium, and vitamin B12.

Recommendation: Salmon was recommended by every nutritionist that mentioned fatty fish. There is quite some debate about farmed vs. wild salmon. While wild salmon is healthier, farmed salmon is the only way to sustainably satisfy growing global demand. At least here in Norway, the salmon industry is very tightly regulated and produces fish that retain excellent health benefits. Sardines and mackerel also got a vote. Both offer similar health benefits to salmon at a considerably lower price point. I eat more mackerel than salmon nowadays, mainly because rising global demand has made salmon very expensive.

Frequency: Nutritionists recommend eating fatty fish 2–3 times per week.

Science: Here are some papers showing that omega 3 reduces inflammation, enhances metabolic health, and reduces depression, the selenium in fatty fish brings numerous benefits, salmon lowers the risk of heart disease, and eating fish can make you smarter.

10. Cruciferous veggies (4 Votes)

Kicking off a thrilling 4-way tie for tenth place, we have another famed sub-family of vegetables. It’s a little tricky because some of the leafy greens that took fourth spot are also part of the cruciferous family, so technically, this section is about cruciferous veggies that are not dark leafy greens.

Benefits: The high nutrient density of cruciferous veggies aid in immunity, bone health, eye health, cell communication, and blood sugar regulation. They also protect against degenerative disease and ensure better mental aging.

Nutrients: In order of popularity among nutritionists, the top nutrients in cruciferous veggies include vitamin C, calcium, vitamin K, phytonutrients and other antioxidants, folate, B vitamins, magnesium, potassium, vitamin A, soluble fiber, and something quite interesting called sulforaphane.

Recommendations: Broccoli is the obvious top pick in this category, followed by Brussels sprouts and something that was news to me: broccoli sprouts. Other popular examples are cabbage and cauliflower. Having never been a fan of broccoli, I had to get quite creative when I learned just how nutritious it is (unless it is overcooked). This mission led to the “meat as a vegetable dressing” philosophy that has served me well for many years. The sprouts are a much more recent addition to my diet, inspired by this top 10 exercise. I now sprout my broccoli seeds at home (which is surprisingly easy), mainly for use in salads.

Frequency: Cruciferous veggies can be eaten daily. One nutritionist recommended 80 g per day.

Science: Here are the papers showing how carotenoids in cruciferous veggies benefit eye health and how broccoli sprouts improve insulin resistance in diabetes patients and help prevent cancer through their high sulforaphane content.

10. Avocado (4 Votes)

The avo deserves a category of its own since it’s classified as a berry but boasts a totally different nutritional profile. It’s also one of my favorite foods, so I was relieved when it managed to squeak into the top 10.

Benefits: Aside from being delicious and highly versatile, the most popular benefits of avocados come from their healthy fats and cholesterol-lowering fiber content. They also boast antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-cancer properties. Another interesting benefit of avocados is that they assist in nutrient uptake, making the foods eaten with them more nutritious (especially the greens in salads).

Nutrients: Here is the nutrient rundown in order of popularity: monounsaturated fats, soluble and insoluble fiber, potassium, vitamin E, vitamin K, B-vitamins, folate and folic acid, carotenoids (antioxidants), vitamin D, and calcium.

Recommendations: Avocados can be used in a variety of dishes. I used to take a pure convenience route and eat almost all my avo crushed on some whole-wheat crackers, but since I learned about the benefits avos have on nutrient absorption, I now eat most of my avos in salads.

Frequency: Avocados can be eaten daily, but moderation should be applied due to their high energy content. The nutritionists recommended one avo per day only for very active people.

Science: Here are some studies showing that avos can increase HDL (good) cholesterol, are associated with an overall better diet and health outcomes, and enhance nutrient uptake from salads.

10. Tomato (4 Votes)

Another food that deserves a category of its own, the tomato is technically a fruit that commonly gets treated as a vegetable. It comes with unique nutritional advantages that got four nutritionists to include it on their lists.

Benefits: The main reason nutritionists like tomatoes is because of something called lycopene. This magic nutrient brings all sorts of benefits in terms of immunity, degenerative disease prevention, and even protection against UV damage. It’s also rich in potassium that helps offset the harmful effects of sodium that’s all too abundant in modern diets.

Nutrients: Although tomatoes contain many nutrients, the nutritionists only mentioned fiber, lycopene, and potassium.

Recommendations: Tomato is very versatile both in raw and cooked meals. I’ve long disliked raw tomatoes (mainly due to the texture), but cherry tomatoes in salads soon fixed that. Luckily, the nutritionists say that canned tomato is also healthy, so I use plenty of that in my cooked meals.

Frequency: Tomatoes can be eaten daily. One nutritionist recommended 80 g per day.

Science: Here are some studies showing how tomatoes and lycopene benefit heart health (possibly by platelet anti-aggregation), are important for preventing heart attacks, and inhibit prostate cancer and cancer in general.

10. Other veggies (4 Votes)

Rounding out the list, we have an array of vegetables other than dark leafy greens, cruciferous veggies, and tomatoes.

Benefits: The big over-arching benefits of vegetables are their high nutrient density and fiber content, making them essential for general health. There is solid evidence that vegetables, in general, prevent a range of diseases, improve immunity, and offer antioxidant services.

Nutrients: In order of popularity, the nutritionists listed fiber, vitamin C, iron, folate, beta-carotene converted to vitamin A, antioxidants, vitamin E, and potassium.

Recommendations: Two of the general vegetable votes went to sweet potatoes, which is a healthier alternative to regular potatoes. It’s a good idea to make this substitution (at least partly). Other veggies mentioned explicitly include pumpkin, carrots, capsicum, onion, beets, and red bell peppers. If you don’t like veggies, I strongly recommend dedicating some time to research and experimentation aimed solely at making them taste great. It is possible! For example, mastering the art of baked sweet potato and vegetable soup (in addition to the meat as a vegetable dressing idea mentioned earlier) significantly boosted my vegetable intake.

Frequency: Vegetables can be eaten daily.

Science: The veggie papers supplied by nutritionists say that beta-carotene in foods like carrots and sweet potatoes is an important source of vitamin A, purple-fleshed sweet potatoes may be effective against cancer, sweet potatoes offer a potential remedy for vitamin A deficiency in Sub-Saharan Africa, onion compounds can lower blood pressure, onions are rich in dietary flavonoids with good antioxidant properties, and allium vegetables like onion and garlic can reduce cancer risk.

Honorable Mentions

Several interesting foods just missed out on the extended top 10:

Quinoa (3 votes): Complete protein packing a wide range of nutrients
Sea veggies (2 votes): Rare source of iodine often lacking in our diets
Garlic (2 votes): Medicinal ingredient in naturopathic practices
Meat (2 votes): High-quality protein and source of B-vitamins
Fruit (2 votes): Tasty source of many essential vitamins
Olive oil (2 votes): Generally viewed as the healthiest oil option
Matcha (1 vote): An alternative to coffee with many health benefits
Whole grains (1 vote): Affordable and fiber-rich healthy staples
Dark chocolate (1 vote): An antioxidant-rich treat
Turmeric (1 vote): A highly concentrated antioxidant source

Final Thoughts

One of the most fundamental personal growth projects anyone can undertake is to seamlessly integrate a healthy diet into their life. This article gives a helpful list of ingredients, but the real mission is to combine them in a tasty, practical, and affordable manner (knowing that the ideal solution will differ from person to person and place to place).

You don’t need to be a dietitian to accomplish this mission. You just need to be motivated enough to keep trying different options until you find a system that clicks. Like many things in life, getting started is challenging, but once you get into it, experimenting with different culinary solutions becomes fun!

Lastly, if you think the Upwork nutritionists missed an important food or got the order completely wrong, do let me know in the comments. I’m always looking for new insights to improve my own diet.

Thanks for reading!

Schalk January 14, 2022

2.3 - Diet & Nutrition food, health, nutrition, personal development

I Paid Five Nutritionists to Critique My Diet

And it turned out to be a great investment!

How much would you pay to have an extra healthy year added to your life?

Thinking about it, I would happily drop tens of thousands of dollars for 365 days of extra quality time on Earth. And that makes me wonder: Why did it take me so long to hire experts to optimize my diet?

Well, it’s better late than never, I suppose. In this article, I’d like to share my recent experience from hiring five nutritionists and dieticians on Upwork to critique my diet and suggest improvements.

Overall, it was a positive experience that I can happily recommend. I plan to repeat this exercise once every two years for the foreseeable future.

Why Hire Five Nutritionists on Upwork?

There were two main reasons behind this move:

Many aspects of nutrition remain highly disputed today, which means it’s a good idea to get multiple expert opinions.
Everyone is unique, so it’s better to get experts to focus on your specific situation than to rely on generalized guidelines from the internet.

Upwork makes it easy to get multiple opinions from qualified experts at a reasonable price. I paid about $300 in total for my five nutritional recommendations, with prices ranging from $15 to $100. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the more costly experts gave the most valuable feedback (the two freelancers I would hire again are Michelle and Brenda).

But it’s important to also consider the time consumed by this exercise. I spent about 10 hours writing a document to describe my current diet, interacting with the experts, and deciding which changes to make based on their feedback. Putting a reasonable value on my time would bring the total cost to about $800 (still totally worth it).

The Process

Hiring on Upwork is quite convenient. You simply create a profile, post a job with a decent description of what you want, and wait for freelancers to apply. If you already know some good candidates (like the two experts I recommended earlier), you can invite them directly.

You will probably receive far more applications than you need, and selecting the right freelancers can feel intimidating. Luckily, if you go into the exercise knowing that you’ll make several hires, much of this pressure falls away.

I should also mention the importance of putting some effort into the job description. After all, if you don’t formulate the right question, you’ll never get the right answer. You can find my attempt at posing a good question in the appendix below this article.

How the Upwork Experts Improved My Diet

As you can see in the appendix, my diet was already quite healthy before my Upwork experiment — a wide variety of whole foods with almost no sugar or other empty calories. My biggest problem was the occasional emotional eating binge during stressful, frustrating, or overwhelming times (although I restrict the binging to relatively healthy foods).

After the five Upwork experts gave their feedback, I took several months to try different strategies. Eventually, I settled on the following changes:

1. Rebalancing Macronutrients

It turns out the nutritionists and dieticians I hired were not big fans of low-carb diets. Hence, the main recommendation was to replace some of my fat intake with complex carbs and a little more protein.

Legumes were mentioned several times, given that they are protein-rich complex carbs. Thus, the first major change I made was a big boost in my consumption of beans, lentils, and chickpeas. Beans and lentils now form the bulk of the chili con carne I often have for lunch, while chickpeas became a staple in my new evening salad and the occasional snack.

I also increased the amount of whole-grain carbs in my lunches (mainly rice, pasta, quinoa, and barley). My favorite whole-wheat crackers also got an expanded role, adding some crunch to my breakfast and evening salad.

In exchange for all these extra carbs, I reduced my intake of meat and nuts. The result is a more balanced mix of carbs and fat, resulting in about 45% of my calories from carbs, 35% from fats, and 20% from proteins.

2. Correcting Micronutrient Deficiencies

The experts found a deficiency in calcium and a mild vitamin B12 shortage. Cheese received several votes, although one expert pointed out that it should not be eaten with meat (like I was doing in my lasagne) because the calcium in cheese blocks the absorption of iron from meat.

In response to these recommendations, I now eat plenty of feta cheese with my evening salad and no more cheese on my lasagne. I also started using kefir in my breakfast, which is an excellent source of calcium.

For vitamin B12, I take a teaspoon of chlorella powder (which contains over 2000% of the recommended daily B12 per 100 g) with my daily green smoothie.

3. Tweaking Macronutrient Timing

Several experts recommended more protein at dinnertime. The feta cheese and chickpeas in my evening salad cater to this recommendation on four days of the week.

On the other evenings, I eat a rather strange omelet involving two eggs mixed with half a leek (chopped) with a filling of canned mackerel in tomato sauce (a healthy favorite here in Norway) and some cucumber on the side. This surprisingly tasty concoction has plenty of protein and also packs vitamin D, which helps with the dark Norwegian winters and calcium absorption.

4. Snacking and Calorie Cycling

To my great relief, the experts didn’t have a problem with my occasional healthy food binges. One even pointed out that this behavior has a name: calorie cycling. Usually, calorie cycling is a diet strategy where caloric intake is restricted on some days and unrestricted on others, but I seem to follow such a cycle without ever restricting calories.

Snacking was one area where there was little agreement. Some experts wanted me to stick to three meals, while others insisted that healthy snacking is perfectly fine. However, there was good agreement that high-protein snacks are best for curbing cravings.

After some experimentation, I came up with a snacking regimen that works quite well. My first craving of the day is quenched with a green smoothy, a teaspoon of chlorella, and an apple. Further cravings pull forward my main meals as required, and any remaining cravings are satisfied with high protein snacks, mainly chickpeas, walnuts, or eggs.

5. Cutting Out and Cutting Back

Although my diet contains very few unhealthy elements, some experts still suggested that I cut back on meat (especially the little bit of bacon in my lasagne) and avoid butter. These heavy sources of saturated fat are linked to a range of degenerative diseases.

Thus, I dutifully cut out the bacon and replaced half of my meat intake with more veggie mince and legumes. I also completely dropped butter in exchange for more olive oil.

6. General Health Guidelines

In addition to some solid nutritional recommendations, several experts also threw in a couple of broader health tips to help meet my longevity and craving management goals.

First, the good old idea of mindful eating made a few appearances. I always try to eat mindfully and gratefully, but it was good to get a reminder.

The importance of sleep also got several mentions. Chronic sleep deprivation or an irregular sleep pattern can induce overeating and create cravings for unhealthy foods.

Meditation also came up as a mode of stress management, motivating me to finally establish a fixed meditation regimen. (I can warmly recommend the Daily Calm and Daily Trip on the Calm meditation app.)

I also learned about the importance of the waist-to-hip ratio and blood pressure as measures of general health. I’m now the proud owner of a blood pressure kit and a dedicated ribbon for waist and hip measurements.

How I’ll Structure My Next Diet Evaluation

I’ve learned several useful things that promise to make my next diet evaluation simpler and more efficient.

Give more details about my general health. This includes age, gender, weight, height, activity level, blood pressure, waist-to-hip ratio, and any existing health complications. Several nutritionists asked for this information after accepting the job.

Go for quality over quantity. Next time, I’ll probably go for three or four more expensive experts, preferring qualified dieticians. As mentioned earlier, the time required to complete this exercise turned out to be more costly than the direct payments to the freelancers.

Properly analyze the results. Taking a few hours to compile the recommendations of different experts into an actionable plan was a very valuable exercise. I only managed to work myself up to do it several months after receiving the recommendations, so I’ll need to do better next time.

Ask questions after the analysis. The freelancers were happy to answer a few follow-up questions after delivering their reports. However, some important questions only came up after my belated analysis of the results. Next time, I’ll analyze right away and ask any questions that come up.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I’m very happy I went through this experiment. I rather arrogantly believed that my diet was already close to perfection, but the nutritionists I hired pointed out several important issues. After integrating their suggestions into my life, I’m confident that I got tens of thousands of dollars worth of healthy life years in exchange for my $300 in direct payments and 10 hours of productive time spent on this exercise.

So, why not hire your own nutritional team on Upwork? I’d be hard-pressed to name a better investment in your long-term health.

— Appendix —

Description Attached to My Upwork Job Posting

Goals

My diet is already in a good place. It helps me stay at a healthy weight with ~13% body fat and makes sure I never get sick. Still, I would like to get a professional opinion on how my diet can be made even better. With this in mind, please suggest improvements to the diet described in this document with the aim of reaching the following two goals:

Maximize my healthy lifespan (I’m currently 36)
Minimize any emotional food cravings and their effects on my health

The second point is sometimes applicable when my life gets a little stressful. It happens about five days per month on average, although it’s pretty irregular. In the past, stress used to drive me to the occasional ice cream or chocolate binge, but luckily I’ve managed to eliminate this behavior from my life. Nowadays, when I’m plagued by cravings, I just eat my healthy breakfast, lunch, and dinner in close succession and snack on healthy foods as required afterward. I never try to resist or suppress my emotional food cravings because doing so drains my willpower and distracts me from my work. When I overeat one day, it’s natural to eat less the next day, so I stay at a healthy weight.

Breakfast

I enjoy a big breakfast that provides almost half of my daily calories. It consists of the following ingredients:

200 g plain Greek yogurt
80 g seeds: hemp, flax, sunflower, pumpkin
100 g assorted nut mix: peanuts, almonds, cashew, hazelnuts, raisins, and a small amount of sweetened papaya
150 g frozen berries: blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, black- and red currents
50 g granola and 30 g All-Bran
10 g of amla powder

Sometimes, I’m not all that hungry in the morning (about twice per week). On those days, I eat two eggs scrambled with one chopped-up tomato seasoned with some salt and pepper.

Lunch

On weekdays, I eat frozen lunches cooked in bulk once per month. My three main lunch dishes combine to give me the following ingredients from a typical meal:

80 g pork mince
40 g veggie mince, mainly soy protein
10 g bacon
400 g of a wide range of vegetables: carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, onions (red and white), bell peppers (green and red), eggplant, baby corn, water chestnut, turnip, tomato (canned), beans (canned), lentils (canned), chili, garlic
50 g brown rice or whole wheat lasagne
20 g cheese
30 ml milk
5 g butter and olive oil
5 g seasoning: salt, pepper, curry, turmeric, cayenne pepper, brown vinegar, lemon juice
20 g raisins and apricot jam
100 g cucumber on the side

On weekends, I usually have fish for lunch. About half of the time, this is an omelet with two eggs and a 170 g can of mackerel in tomato sauce with 200 g of cucumber on the side. I use about 10 g of butter and olive oil in the pan for the omelet. The other half is either 1) 250 g salmon baked with 200 g canned beetroot and eaten with 100 g barley rice and mango chutney or 2) 250 g pollock fillets in a whole-wheat crust with 400 g mixed vegetables (carrots, broccoli, baby corn, water chestnut, turnip).

Dinner

My staple dinner is one medium-sized crushed avocado on some seed-sprinkled gluten-free crackers (40 g) with 20 g of cold-smoked salmon on top, seasoned with salt and pepper. This applies to most days of the week, but I occasionally make some baked sweet potato or just have some fresh fruit.

Snacks

On an average day, I would eat an apple, a banana, three carrots, and three cherry tomatoes as snacks. About three days a week, I need a little more, and I make one cup (250 ml) of something similar to my breakfast containing chia, flax, and hemp seeds, the same nut mix, granola and All-Bran, fresh blueberries, and almond milk.

I almost never eat any empty calories and don’t use sugar. The only time I eat something clearly unhealthy is when we have some cake or dessert on a special occasion. When I occasionally need to take snacks to a social event, I usually opt for chocolate- and yogurt-covered nuts.

Liquids

I drink plenty of water: two glasses directly after getting up, a glass before every snack, and some sips from the water bottle that’s always by my side throughout the day. In addition, I drink one or two cups of Rooibos tea with a slice of lemon each day.

Another healthy staple of mine is a green smoothie containing spinach, kale, cucumber, celery, apple, ginger, and orange juice. This is made once every three months and frozen in containers for convenient daily consumption. I drink about 100 ml per day with another 100 ml of orange juice. The orange juice is pressed (not from concentrate) with pulp and no added sugar.

Meal timing

Breakfast is my only meal with a fixed time: 7:30–2 hours after I get up. Before breakfast, I have two glasses of water and one cup of tea. The rest of the day, I eat as I get hungry. Lunch can be as early as 10:00 or as late as 13:00, with dinner spanning an even wider range. I try to avoid eating after 19:00, but I still snack after 19:00 about twice a week. This flexible meal timing ensures that I don’t spend any willpower on food and just eat whenever my body wants to.

If I have a stressful day that leads to food cravings, I would typically eat quite a lot in the first part of the day. Overeating late in the day disrupts my sleep, which I value very highly, so this rarely happens.

Schalk January 9, 2022

2.3 - Diet & Nutrition diet, food, health, recipe

The Salad That Did the Impossible

It got me to eat salad almost every day!

The miracle-working salad in my nicest chipped bowl.

I’ve been riding the healthy-eating train for years, but salads never quite made it on board. Sure, I enjoy a couple of cucumber slices on the side, but making a full salad always seemed like more effort than it’s worth.

Then, one fine day, a slew of nutritional advice from several experts got me to change my ways. I had to address a deficiency in calcium, add more complex carbs and protein to my dinners, and try out a new superfood in the form of home-grown broccoli sprouts.

The salad that emerged from these recommendations turned out to be a real treat, and I have no problems motivating myself to make it time and time again. Thus, I deemed it worthy of its very own article.

Ingredients

My miracle-working salad is a complete meal offering a balanced mix of macro and micronutrients. Here’s a list of everything it contains:

A big handful of shredded kale
Half a handful of broccoli sprouts
Five sliced cherry tomatoes
One medium-sized avocado
40 g of crushed whole-grain crackers
80 g of canned chickpeas
40 g of feta cheese (I use a local garlic-flavored brand)
A dash of seeds (I use a mix of chia, flax, and hemp)
Olive oil, salt, and pepper to taste

Instructions

It’s not much more complicated than just tossing everything into a bowl, but there are a couple of subtleties.

Put the shredded kale in a bowl and mix in the broccoli sprouts. Dispersing the sprouts evenly is a skill by itself and needs a bit of practice.
Slice the cherry tomatoes in quarters and add to the bowl.
Cube the avocado and add it on top.
Crush the crackers over the bowl for a bit of crunch. You could also use croutons, but I like my Scandinavian “knekkebrød.”
Add the chickpeas, feta cheese, and seeds.
Use some of the oil from the feta cheese and add olive oil if needed.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.

The whole process takes about ten minutes. Granted, this is more than nothing, but this salad is a meal by itself, so you don’t need to bother with making anything else.

Pro Tips

Three of the ingredients require some smart management to maximize convenience and taste. Let’s take a look.

Broccoli sprouts

It took me a while to work up the courage to get started in home sprouting. But once I got going, it was a breeze.

Broccoli seeds and sprouting kits are available cheaply from many online health food stores. Once your kit arrives, all you need to do is to put in the seeds and rinse with water every morning and evening. If you have a solid morning and evening routine, this is virtually no extra effort.

The sprouting cycle conveniently spans one week, and the sprouts can last long enough in the fridge (in an airtight plastic container) that you always have some available.

Avocado

Always having a ripe and unblemished avocado at hand is something of an art form. It all starts with buying your avocados when they are still rock hard to ensure you don’t get any of those nasty brown bruises. Then, let them ripen at room temperature. Once they become slightly soft, move them to the fridge where they will last for up to one full week.

If you’re a big avo fan like me, you’ll want to make sure you always have a solid supply of ripening avocadoes in the fruit bowl and ripe avocados in the fridge. Once you get into the avo-ripening rhythm, you’ll never be lacking a good avocado again.

Seeds

A container with premixed seeds is essential for maximum convenience. As explained in a previous breakfast article, I buy my seeds in bulk to make large-scale seed mixes, so my seed mix is always available.

But this only works for a large seed consumer. If you don’t use seeds in other meals, the best is to look for a packet of premixed seeds or buy some smaller packets of different seeds to mix in a convenient container.

Enjoy!

I’ll sure be enjoying this salad for years to come. Perhaps you’ll be too!

Schalk March 10, 2021

2.3 - Diet & Nutrition diet, food, freedom, health, wealth

How Mastering My Diet Gave Me a Life of Genuine Freedom

Today, my little corner of the world is free from empty calories, empty media, and empty work.

Diet and life are tightly interwoven. If your life is out of balance, chances are your diet will be too. There’s no fixing one without the other.

On the flip side, if you resolve to master your diet, your life may well decide to come along for the ride. That was certainly the case for me.

So, let’s take a look back at the messy journey to the ultra-clean, willpower-free diet I enjoy today. The story starts all the way back in 2009, where we find a rather intimidated 24-year-old South African starting his career in the middle of the frigid Norwegian winter.

1. Intelligent Micro-Environment Design (IMED)

The last two years in South Africa were good to me. I had finally discovered the world of personal development and consumed the classics by Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, and Napoleon Hill like an addict.

The timing couldn’t be better: I arrived in the world’s most developed country with only a suitcase, a reasonably well-paying job, and a mind bursting with ideas on how to build a great life. And the best of these ideas was “intelligent micro-environment design,” or IMED.

Having recently recovered from a mercifully mild case of cancer, health was my top priority. So, I applied IMED to improve my diet using a simple rule: Never buy empty calories on my weekly grocery run. As we’ll see in the next sections, my empty-calorie-free home did not magically heal my struggles with unhealthy food. But still, it played an important role by making unhealthy eating much less convenient.

It wasn’t long before IMED spilled over to the rest of my life. I started by setting up automatic monthly investments that left only half my salary for spending. With these savings, IMED soon gave me an ideal home for car-free living with nature in my backyard. This car-free life would eventually help me earn financial freedom at age 34, according to the 4% rule. It also teamed up with my beautiful surroundings to give me lifelong fitness.

Yes, if I had to choose the insight responsible for the most good in my life today, it would be IMED.

2. Zero-Compromise Foods

My diet improved beyond all recognition over the past decade. Every tiny upgrade played its part in boosting either health, enjoyment, practicality, affordability, or sustainability without compromising the others.

There’s no better example of this evolution than my breakfast:

2009: Whole-grain cereal with milk and plenty of sugar
2009: Fruit muesli with sweetened fruit yogurt replacing the cereal every other day
2011: Fresh blueberries in the cereal and raspberries in the muesli
2014: A luxurious sprinkle of expensive hemp seeds in both breakfasts
2018: 3x cheaper bulk seed purchases to increase variety and volume
2020: Dropped sugar and sweetened yogurt in favor of plain Green yogurt
2020: More variety with mixed nuts and mixed frozen berries
2020: The ideal breakfast described here
2021: Some amla powder for an additional health boost

I continue to keep an eye out for further improvements, but honestly, it’s hard to imagine anything better.

As my zero-compromise diet was developing, my zero-compromise life also started to take shape. Believe it or not, life can be happy, healthy, wealthy, productive, and sustainable all at the same time! In fact, this is the core principle behind my writing on Medium.

3. Smart Progress Tracking

My trusty body composition monitor arrived in 2014 and immediately gave me the bad news: Despite plenty of cross-country skiing and daily bicycle commutes, I was carrying around much more fat than I thought.

But then, something quite magical happened: Within six months, my body fat percentage dropped from 20% to 15% all by itself. It seems like my self-image simply refused to accept 20% fat and subconsciously changed my behavior to repair this disconnect. Sometimes the Ego can be useful!

Even earlier, in 2011, I started something called the Graph of Life — a daily morning habit to track my life trajectory. One of the first things I learned from this exercise was the enormous effect my eating habits had on the overall outcome of my day. It took me years to put this knowledge to good use, but this data eventually inspired several of the following steps.

Progress tracking also spilled over to other areas of my life. I’ve monitored my journey to financial freedom since 2014 and my monthly productive hours using RescueTime since 2016. Both these datasets provided a constant stream of insight and inspiration on this journey.

4. Healthy Indulgences

I’ve always been super-motivated to do the right things and unlock the compounding benefits of good choices made early in life. But there was a problem: Every so often, I would run out of willpower and succumb to a self-destructive weekend of binge-watching and binge-eating.

It took far too many of these multi-day binges to make me realize that I was not a robot. Like all other humans, I had to pace myself and look after my happiness, especially when life got tough.

So, three years ago, I did something strange: I splurged on a super-luxurious massage chair. Every time I got an unhealthy craving, I would treat myself to a massage. It wasn’t the magic bullet I was secretly hoping for, but that chair sure kept a lot of empty calories out of my body.

Soon afterward, I decided to make better use of my home’s great location by going on a daily walk in nature. Rediscovery of my badly neglected guitar and piano soon followed, with fresh discoveries of meditation and afternoon napping close behind. Thanks to these healthy pleasures, I’ve finally managed to sever all ties with the “empty pleasure industry” and its addictive junk food and media.

5. Food for a Better World

Outside of Medium, my job is to design new processes and systems for our clean energy future. When writing the introduction chapter to my Ph.D. on the topic, I soon became obsessed with the intricacies of climate change and the global energy transition. This passion has since led to more than 100 popular science articles on Energy Post and the Energy Collective.

More importantly, my climate and energy obsession ignited my passion for sustainable living.

A newfound determination to live lightly on the Earth triggered my pursuit of happiness through creation instead of consumption. This life philosophy simultaneously supercharged my productivity and accelerated my journey to financial freedom. Indeed, after IMED, I can confidently state that my sustainable ecological footprint has contributed most to my life.

When it comes to food, sustainable living presented a real challenge: meat. I (deeply) love meat, but I soon learned how bad it is for the environment and animal welfare. This was a big problem that eventually inspired the “meat as a vegetable dressing” principle that shapes my lunches today. I’m still amazed by how much culinary joy I can tap from the 5% meat in my diet today!

6. Damage Control

Despite all these ideas, I was still prone to the occasional binge-eating-binge-watching session. And there was no better trigger for such self-destruction than an EU research proposal.

Huge admin burdens, frustrating creative constraints, overly complex consortiums of headstrong partners, low success rates… Just thinking about it gives me a headache! But still, we had to get research funding, so EU proposals inflated my stress levels and upended my healthy eating habits at regular intervals for an entire decade.

There was only one way to protect my health during these trying times: Never start eating in front of the TV. Of course, this is much easier said than done, so I created a charitable donations contract that bound me to donate one hour of wages to charity every time I activated this binge-trigger.

Eventually, I also had to admit that I need some pleasure foods during tough times. So, I resolved to treat myself to more luxurious treats with at least some nutritional value — things like premium dark chocolate, yogurt-covered nuts, and quality ice cream with fresh berries. These luxuries made tough times rather expensive, but I realized that my health was worth it.

7. Cravings and Personal Growth

Even though I managed to ward off the worst effects, these job-related health impacts were still not acceptable. I tried my best to find a solution within the system, but there wasn’t one. Eventually, I realized that the liberty I so deeply desired can only be found outside the system and that my growing wealth could make that happen.

I must say, the idea of attaining complete creative freedom well before the peak of my career was truly intoxicating. It helped me further cut my expenses, and eventually, by age 34, my net worth surpassed 25 times my annual expenses, allowing me to claim my freedom.

Amazingly, all this was inspired by my desire to fix my self-destructive food cravings. And I’m happy to report that it worked! Without the worst job frustrations, my diet is flawless.

8. Escape the Matrix

A liberated mind is a wonderful thing. Mine is giving me effortless research focus and inspiration to take on the greatest challenges of our time. And it wasn’t long before this natural focus fell on empty calories. According to my rough estimation, empty calories cost the world more than $6 trillion — quadruple the cost of climate change.

Seeing this number was a real eye-opener. In fact, it was almost like being pulled out of the Matrix. Suddenly, the endless rows of colorful nutrient-free treats displayed on the most accessible shelves of the grocery store filled me with disappointment instead of desire. From that moment on, I no longer had to waste any willpower resisting their charm.

9. Deep Values

If you want to build the perfect diet (or accomplish any meaningful goal), you will need a reliable source of motivation and drive. I know of only one such bottomless source: a deep connection to your fundamental values.

For me, this connection happened with the realization that excellent health is essential to my ambitions to help solve the world’s greatest challenges. More energy each day + more days in my career = much greater impact. This deep value connection sealed the deal on my ultra-clean diet.

With this powerful source of motivation firmly locked into place, it was finally time to take on my nemesis in the tenth and final step.

10. Quit Sugar

I find it hard to imagine that anyone on this planet loves sugar more than me. For years, the dangers of sugar kept popping up in my research. And for years, my enormous sweet tooth got me to blatantly ignore every warning. But now, I finally had the motivation to quit sugar.

And to my great surprise, it turned out to be one of the easiest steps on my entire 12-year healthy eating journey. It was also one of the most rewarding. As soon as I removed the numbing effect of sugar on my ability to experience sweetness, the rest of my whole food diet suddenly tasted much better.

I should have done this years ago, but hey, better late than never!

Self-Mastery

Today, my life is completely free from empty calories and empty media. And, despite abandoning all these sources of instant pleasure, I’m happier than ever before! I also manage to work 3500 hours per year on projects I find truly meaningful. Stress is low, and there is no hint of burnout.

The one thing I learned for sure is that self-mastery is not about developing boundless willpower. It’s about designing your life such that actions consistent with a happy, healthy, wealthy, productive, and sustainable living happen automatically. This is far from easy. But it certainly is doable.

I wish everyone could experience this feeling, and I’ll do my very best to make it more accessible.

Schalk March 3, 2021

2.3 - Diet & Nutrition diet, food, health, healthy eating, nutrition

The Complete Guide to Building a Lifelong Healthy Diet

10 steps to natural and willpower-free enjoyment of healthy food

This is not your usual healthy-eating article. There will be no mention of any trendy diets, no detailed meal plans, and no prescriptions about the number of calories you should eat at different times of the day.

The internet is already overflowing with advice about what, when, and how much we should eat. We don’t need more dieting advice. What we need is the self-mastery required to follow this advice in a world filled with unhealthy temptations. That’s what you’ll find in this article.

Motivated by my own struggles with unhealthy food, I’ve poured a lot of thought and experimentation into this challenge over the past decade, with great results. Today’s article ties all this experience together into a complete practical guide to lifelong healthy eating.

Step 1: Identify Your True “Why”

So, why do you want to improve your diet?

Answering this question, and answering it well, is key to unlocking the motivation you’ll need to build a lifelong healthy diet.

OK, so what does a good answer look like? Simple: It makes a clear connection to one or more of your deepest values. Very often, this will come down to benefitting the lives of those around you.

For example, the most common reason for going on a diet — losing weight — is a terrible answer to this critical question. It simply doesn’t link to any meaningful values.

Luckily, it only takes a little bit of digging to fix this problem. So, let’s keep asking questions, starting with: “Why do you want to lose weight?”

“To improve my confidence and feel more energetic.”

“OK, why do you want these things?”

“So that I can give myself permission to go for that leadership position I’ve been dreaming about.”

“Ah, and what would that allow you to do?”

“I would build a more inclusive work culture and earn enough money to send my kids to college.”

And Voila! There we have a proper Why — a clear link between healthy eating and something you value very deeply. This strong connection to your values will give you much richer and more sustainable motivation than the shallow desire to be thin.

Step 2: Actively Pursue the Pleasures of Healthy Living

A deep connection with your values must be the starting point. That’s for sure. But there’s plenty more motivation (and joy) to be gained from shallower pursuits of life’s healthier pleasures.

Healthy living is still widely portrayed as some drudging sacrifice we need to make to fit in and avoid scary degenerative diseases. That’s just terribly wrong, criminal almost.

The truth is that healthy living is much more fun than unhealthy living. I wrote a whole article about this, but here’s the gist of it: Due to something called the hedonic treadmill, pleasures must be varied, intermittent, and earned to improve our happiness. And there’s no better way to do this than experiencing the world through a healthy body and mind.

Many of life’s greatest pleasures are reserved only for the healthy, ranging from the wide range of sports and adventure activities out there, through the delightful rediscovery of real food, to the joy of looking in the mirror and being proud of what you see.

So, as you get healthier, actively seek out these pleasures. Once you get used to having them in your life, you’ll never go back to the terrible self-denial of unhealthy living.

Step 3: Understand the Root of the Problem

Steps 1 and 2 are very effective motivators for healthy living. But why do we need such powerful motivation in the first place? It’s quite sad, but we need it because we’ve managed to surround ourselves with unhealthy temptations purpose-built for addiction.

Yep, the environment we live in today just begs us to binge on empty calories. Hyper-palatable nutrient-free treats practically jump into our trollies from the most accessible supermarket aisles, and fast-food outlets promise much-needed comfort on our stressful daily commutes.

These omnipresent temptations shamelessly exploit the most primitive parts of our brains. 200 millennia of evolution in environments of extreme scarcity has conditioned us to gorge on sugar, fat, and salt whenever we get the chance. And big business has long since learned how to manipulate these outdated instincts to maximize sales and boost profits.

The result? The typical American diet contains almost 60% ultra-processed food. Fewer than 1 in 4 adults are at a healthy weight, with obesity standing at 42%, and the costs are just staggering.

This is capitalism’s single greatest failure — the fundamental reason why healthy eating is so difficult.

Understanding the true nature of this ridiculous system is almost like being pulled out of the Matrix. Your eyes will finally open to see those isles of colorful nutrient-free treats for what they truly are. And when you do, they will suddenly lose much of their addictive appeal.

Step 4: Clean Your Home Environment

There’s not a lot in this crazy world that’s really within your control. But your home environment is one welcome exception. And it’s in this little corner of your world that your healthy diet must take root if it is to grow and blossom throughout your life.

The logic is simple: It’s much easier to avoid buying unhealthy food than to avoid eating unhealthy food that’s already in your home. Instead of constantly fighting to resist temptation, concentrate your efforts into an hour or two each week to make healthy choices in the grocery store.

So, here’s the crux of this pioneering step: Never, and I do mean never, buy any cheap empty calories.

Now don’t worry; you can still get deep joy from your food (including plenty of delicious treats). We’ll get to that in a minute, but let’s first ride out this train of thought.

A strict ban on these soft drugs works much better than other attempts to moderate your consumption. If the decision is firmly made beforehand, resisting that empty-calorie charm for a few seconds on your weekly trip to the supermarket gets much easier, especially after Step 3 above.

Here are a few typical examples of empty calories to banish from your home: soda, cheap chocolate and ice cream, candy, cake and cookies, potato chips, and any convenience food not specifically designed for health.

Instead, get your sugary/fatty/salty fixes from premium treats that contain at least some nutritional value. Examples include premium dark chocolate, quality ice cream with berries, chocolate/yogurt-covered nuts, gourmet cheeses and cured meats, and any home-made dessert you would confidently serve an esteemed guest.

The higher cost of these premium treats will naturally limit your consumption to healthier levels. More importantly, it will help you genuinely enjoy your culinary treats instead of just mindlessly munching through a bowl of generic empty calories in front of the TV.

So, don’t deprive yourself. Just get rid of the worst offenders. Then, as you discover the pleasure offered by the healthy, whole foods discussed in the next step, you might find your diet getting even cleaner all by itself.

Step 5: Discover Zero-Compromise Foods

It bears repeating: Healthy eating is not some painful sacrifice we need to make to be healthy.

In fact, it’s fully possible to put together a diet that manages to be healthy, tasty, practical, and affordable all at the same time! Such a zero-compromise diet will look different for different people, but here’s a brief outline of my own diet as an example.

Breakfast: Superfood Perfection

My breakfast is one of my favorite things on this Earth. It’s a pure joy to eat, is packed with recognized superfoods, takes almost no time to prepare, and works out surprisingly cheap.

The foundation is built on a wide variety of nuts, seeds, and berries. These are bound together by some plain Greek yogurt, with a bit of whole-wheat cereal added for extra crunch.

I cannot recommend it highly enough. Please check out your local nut, seed, and berry resources and play around with different combinations to design your own ideal morning meal.

Lunch: Practical Warm Meals

A warm lunch is a lovely luxury, but it’s not particularly practical. Another problem is that cooked meals often involve plenty of meat, leading to significant environmental and ethical concerns.

The solution to these issues is to cook your warm meals in bulk and slightly increase the vegetable/meat ratio every time.

Give it a try! Each grab-and-go weekday lunch frozen in a convenient container will cost you a mere 5 minutes of prep time. As a bonus, the “meat as a vegetable dressing” philosophy makes it easy to consume loads of super-healthy veggies and still enjoy your food without any meat-lover’s guilt. Here are some simple-but-delicious recipes you could try.

Dinner: Light, Simple, Tasty

For practical reasons, many people consume most of their calories in the evening. However, this is not the healthiest option, and it can hurt your sleep quality.

Luckily, super-convenient breakfasts and lunches like those mentioned earlier make it easy to stick to a light dinner. Crushed avocado topped with a bit of smoked salmon on healthy seed-sprinkled crackers is my all-time favorite evening meal—light, tasty, and beautifully simple.

Step 6: Kick Out Table Sugar and Other Sweeteners

This scary-sounding step gave me one of the best surprises on my decade-long healthy eating journey. I still can’t believe how easily I managed to rid myself of ordinary table sugar once I finally decided to commit!

Table sugar is a rather stealthy bugger. It’s all too easy to add a few teaspoons here and there and end up with a seriously unhealthy total, especially if the rest of your diet already contains plenty of added sugar.

However, if you’ve successfully implemented Step 5, sugar overload is not such a major problem. In this case, the main reason for quitting sugar is that it will give you your taste buds back.

Like any other drug, sugar directly stimulates the reward centers of the brain. The desire for stimulation grows larger with every dose until your nervous system becomes so blunted that natural sweetness doesn’t even register anymore.

This is a terrible place to be because it makes many healthy, whole foods seem tasteless. That’s why we don’t eat nearly enough fruits and vegetables. But there’s good news: If you reverse this pattern and practice some mindful eating, you’ll gain an awesome superpower: the ability to enjoy healthy food more than you enjoy unhealthy food today.

Take it from a former sugar addict: Life and eating both get much better without sugar.

Step 7: Protect Yourself Against Binging

Humans (and most other animals) have evolved strong binge instincts to help us survive in a world of scarcity. However, in today’s world of caloric abundance, this is a big problem. Although binging still makes us feel better in the moment, it’s terrible for our health.

That’s where the traditional Japanese phrase “hara hachi bu” (stop eating when 80% full) comes in. This simple philosophy is often cited as a key reason for the extraordinary longevity of certain Japanese communities, like the people of Okinawa.

Here are three great ways to make “hara hachi bu” part of your life:

Brush your teeth after any meal that brings you to 80% fullness. When your mouth is minty fresh, you’ll be much less inclined to eat more.
Stay hydrated. Drink two glasses of water first thing each morning, a glass before any snack, and always have a water bottle at hand.
Remove any binge-eating triggers. For me, eating in front of the TV completely short-circuits my body’s natural satiety response. If you have a trigger like this, eliminate it from your life.

If you follow these steps and still succumb to occasional unhealthy food binges, the next step will help you delve deeper.

Step 8: Use Your Irrepressible Cravings for Personal Growth

Refined sugars, saturated fats, and salt are so addictive because they trigger an instant release of feel-good hormones. It’s the pursuit of these fleeting endorphin highs that drives empty-calorie sales worldwide.

If you find that irrepressible cravings persist even after the above-mentioned steps, some deeper introspection is required. Mostly, such strong emotional cravings result from underlying issues that are too inconvenient or scary to face directly, causing us to reach for comfort food instead.

But the cold, hard truth is that avoiding these issues will only make them stronger and scarier. Even worse, if you get into the habit of turning to empty calories every time these issues resurface, your health and self-image will take some serious hits, compounding the problem.

So, next time you experience an irrepressible craving, it’s time for a little paradigm shift. Instead of trying to suppress it or helplessly succumbing to its power, see it as a valuable guide for personal growth. This can be done in three steps:

Identify the event or thought pattern that triggered this huge craving.
Invest some time to find the fundamental reason why this trigger had such a powerful negative emotional effect.
Figure out what it will take to remove that root cause from your life.

The challenge is that these underlying issues are often huge and hairy. They can easily seem insurmountable, almost making our occasional emotional eating seem worthwhile.

But treating the symptoms of an underlying disease with an even more harmful ointment is never a good idea. Instead, put together a plan to grow out of this unfortunate set of circumstances. Take small, manageable steps and accept that it will take time.

In my case, this process gave me the low-stress environment of complete creative and financial freedom I enjoy today. It’s highly recommended!

Step 9: Make the World a Better Place

If you want to improve the lives of the people around you and help build a better society, a lifelong healthy diet is your ticket.

There’s no need to try and impose your healthy diet on anyone. Simply stick to it and let others be inspired by how much happier and healthier you look and feel. If you have kids, know that an enjoyable, healthy diet that will last a lifetime is one of the best gifts you can ever give them.

Avoiding the huge social costs of cheap empty calories is also a tremendous service to society. In this article, I break down the incredible value your healthy diet creates for the world in terms of reducing social injustice, mitigating climate change and other environmental damages, improving animal welfare, and safeguarding our social welfare systems.

Step 10: Measure for Motivation, Not Pressure

Tracking your progress over time can be an excellent source of sustained motivation and direction. This article lists three great metrics for tracking your diet and its effects: empty calorie consumption, Smart BMI, and the number of sick days per year.

If you’ve been living your life on the standard American diet (SAD), you’re in for a real treat seeing how your new healthy diet steadily moves all these metrics in the right direction. But don’t fall into the trap of setting your expectations to the unrealistic standards portrayed in the media, especially when it comes to weight and body shape.

You can be rightfully proud of the weight and body shape that naturally arise from a healthy, whole-food diet. This is your natural body that you never need to apologize for.

Taking excellent care of your health is far more important than adhering to society’s constantly shifting beauty standards. When you take all that pressure off yourself, healthy living will happen more naturally.

A Fantastic Investment

Our modern world makes healthy living much harder than it should be. But even so, the benefits of a healthy life (a healthy diet in particular) far outweigh the costs.

Yes, banning cheap chocolate and sugar from your life is hard. Taming binge instincts and strong emotional cravings even more so. But it’s all temporary. Rest assured: Once your systems are successfully rewired, healthy eating becomes a joyful and deeply rewarding experience!

Getting your brain to this wonderful place must be one of the best one-time investments you can ever make.

Schalk February 25, 2021

2.3 - Diet & Nutrition diet, food, habits, health, hedonic treadmill, psychology

Effortless Health: The Power of Healing Your Brain’s Broken Reward System

How to deeply enjoy your healthy food (and your healthy life)

Did you know? You can train your brain to gain more pleasure from an apple than you currently get from chocolate. Image by Janet Cloete.

Modern life is a constant battle between our primitive desires and our common sense. And let’s be honest, our desires win all too often, making our common sense very sad indeed.

But it doesn’t need to be this way! In this article, we’ll discuss how to repair your brain’s reward system so that you get even greater pleasure from healthy things than you currently get from unhealthy ones. The main focus will be on food, but we’ll also touch on the broader implications.

Let’s start at the root of our troublesome attraction to unhealthy pleasures.

The Hedonic Treadmill

There’s a very particular aspect of human psychology that drives much of our self-destructive behavior. It’s called hedonic adaptation: our tendency to quickly return to prior happiness levels following any major positive or negative life change.

This hedonic treadmill causes any good feelings from our direct pursuits of happiness to evaporate far too soon. A bigger house, a faster car, greater chocolate consumption, or a bigger Netflix habit are all fun for a while, but they soon become the “new normal,” resetting our happiness to base levels.

Seems rather depressing, doesn’t it? Lasting happiness remains out of reach, regardless of how much comfort and pleasure we bring into our lives. Whenever we make life more enjoyable, our brains simply reset the goalposts, and we’re back on the treadmill in search of the next peak.

But there is good news: If we play it well, the hedonic treadmill can be a great ally in our quest for a healthy and fulfilling life.

For example, it can help you get as much pleasure from the natural sweetness in an apple as from the much more intense sweetness in chocolate.

Sugar Sensitivity

Sugar desensitization is one of the biggest health problems in modern society. Most of us have been on the sugary hedonic treadmill for so long that our brains’ idea of pleasant sweetness is actually total sugar overload.

Luckily, we can heal this dangerous distortion by reversing the hedonic treadmill and gradually cutting sugar from our lives. Sure, for the first couple of weeks, this will be no fun whatsoever. But if you give the reverse hedonic treadmill time to work its magic, you’re in for a delightful surprise!

Once your brain’s reward system is reset to natural levels, you’ll gain a brand new superpower: the ability to experience the same pleasure from the sweetness in raw foods that you get from dangerously over-sweetened ultra-processed foods today.

This, my friends, is where we find the holy grail of diet and nutrition: totally effortless healthy eating. No willpower required. 😊

About Apples and Chocolates

I never minded the occasional apple. They’re pleasant enough and, as we all know, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. My daily apple mostly originated from the free fruit available at the office. And, after a cancer-scare many years ago, my elevated health consciousness helped me utilize this perk a little too liberally.

But something unexpected happened when I finally managed to quit sugar: Apples went from something that keeps the doctor away to something that helps make my day.

Mind you; I’m quite particular about my not-so-guilty apple pleasure. Yellow and pink are both lovely colors. Red and green, not so much. Crispiness is another decisive factor. Every bite should send a satisfying crunch reverberating around the room.

And this brings me to the next point: If you really want to enjoy your healthy food, make sure you’re all there for the experience (a.k.a. mindful eating).

One of the great things about eating an apple is that it’s a truly multi-sensory experience. Aside from the taste, there’s the sound and the tactile experience from the crunchiness. The liberation of fresh apple juice with the first couple of chews after every bite offers another delightful taste-tactile combo. Aroma also plays some role, although the apple is not the most aromatic fruit out there. When you get to experience a first-class apple, even your sense of sight will be engaged.

The mindful apple experience becomes even better after a good polish! 😄 Created by Janet Cloete.

Reversing the hedonic treadmill can bring today’s apple on par with last month’s chocolate. But it’s full engagement in the multi-sensory eating experience that elevates it to the next level.

I should also clarify that I still enjoy quality chocolate more than even the pinkest and crispiest apple. Premium chocolate on a special occasion now floods my brain with endorphins, making the occasion all the more special.

This supercharged experience of quality confectionery is just another bonus offered by a well-functioning reward system.

Beyond Apples and Chocolates

This philosophy extends far beyond chocolates and apples. First off, our lives are filled with many ultra-processed foods other than chocolate, all laden with added sugars, saturated fats, and salts that send our primitive food cravings into overdrive. Years of running on our hedonic treadmills have numbed our sensitivity to these pleasures so severely that we need bucketloads of these slow poisons to stay satisfied.

Luckily, this process is fully reversible in surprisingly little time. A healthy, tasty, practical, and affordable whole-food diet will soon heal your brain’s broken reward system. Also, just like an apple, most whole foods create a delightful multi-sensory eating experience. And smartly crafted whole-food meals deliver yet another beautiful enhancement to the experience: sensory variation. This ideal breakfast composed of 16 healthy ingredients is the perfect example.

The same goes for any other area of life. TV, streaming, and other media offer the perfect example. Modern media consumption statistics are genuinely mind-boggling, making one wonder how we ever get anything done. Aside from stealing our innate human potential, excessive media consumption also harms our health by making us stagnate for hours on end.

The solution? You guessed it: Reverse the hedonic treadmill and fully engage in healthier alternatives. Meditation, napping, reading, crafting, socializing, active playing, and so many others can all become the apples to your Netflix chocolate.

Make the Leap!

It’s worth repeating: When you heal your nervous system and learn to engage fully in healthy experiences, you can get much more pleasure from healthy things than you currently get from your unhealthy indulgences.

It’s hard to find words to express how wonderful this is: You get more moments of real joy while adding many healthy years to your life for finding ever more of these moments. To make things even better, you’ll soon discover a whole world of pleasures reserved exclusively for the healthy!

Of course, the big challenge is that initial shock from putting the hedonic treadmill in reverse. Just like more intense sensory pleasures help us feel good for a while, turning down these sensory pleasures causes plenty of temporary discomfort. So, be prepared… There will be cravings.

The best strategy for getting through this trying period is to put your treadmill in a gradual reverse. This empty-calorie detox plan illustrates such a gradual turnaround. For example, its second step is to upgrade your treats for quality rather than quantity. Committing to premium treats will naturally cut your consumption and motivate you to be in the moment when enjoying your pricey delights.

Luckily, your brain’s reward centers need only a couple of months of gradual detoxing to repair themselves — nothing in exchange for decades of more intense, guilt-free pleasure.

Take the leap! Once you make this transition, you’ll never go back! 😊

Thanks to Alta Cloete

Schalk February 17, 2021

2.3 - Diet & Nutrition diet, food, health, nutrition

The 12 Foods That Gave Me 12 Consecutive Years of Perfect Health

Thanks to these natural immune-boosters, February 16th, 2009 might have been the last day I ever got sick.

My 12 special foods as photographed by Janet Cloete.

Remember the last time you got sick? It sucks, right? Lying around wishing away several highly uncomfortable and utterly useless days. What would you give to never have to experience that again?

The good news is that a nutrient-laden diet might be all that’s needed. After a cancer scare back in 2008, I got swept up in a wave of motivation for healthy living, with a healthy diet front and center. My intention was only to prevent more serious diseases in the long-term future, but after a couple of years, I noticed a rather peculiar side-effect: I wasn’t getting sick anymore.

Aside from healthy food, my new healthy lifestyle included plenty of exercise, and Norway’s pristine air and water played their part, too. But the other two pillars of health; sleep and low stress, remained far from ideal for most of my ongoing perfect-health streak.

This tells me that an excellent diet and regular exercise could ward off almost all common illnesses in otherwise healthy individuals. And a diet that supplies the body with every nutrient required to maintain a supercharged immune system must take most of the credit.

So, without further ado, here’s the story behind the 12 foods that kept me in perfect health for the past 12 years.

1. Avocado

When this journey started, all I knew about nutrition was that we should eat more fruit and vegetables. To put it mildly, I was no veggie-fan, so I decided to start with the fruits I like best. And crushed avo on crunchy bread/toast, seasoned with a bit of Aromat (later replaced by regular salt and pepper), was right at the top of that list.

Since then, I averaged about 5 medium-sized avos per week. Over 12 years, that means that I’ve devoured more than 3000 of these fatty fruits! I was mighty chuffed when I found out later that avocados are among the healthiest things on Earth, but pure enjoyment remains the chief driver of my avo habit.

2. Kiwi Fruit

My second big love from the world of fruit is the kiwi. These odd creations were always a pricey luxury growing up, but my career had just started, and I had some money for the first time. So, I decided to splurge on a big bag of kiwis every week.

This little story doesn’t have a completely happy ending though. Since I like my kiwis rather sour, all that acid eventually caused some damage to my teeth. Hence, I had to downgrade these delicious vitamin-C-bombs from a staple to an occasional indulgence a couple of years back.

But kiwis played a big role in keeping me healthy through those early years when I was still a nutrition noob. Nowadays, I can effortlessly max out on natural nutrients without having to OD on kiwis.

3. Free Fruit

Another big factor in kickstarting my perfect-health streak was the free fruit baskets we receive at work. My new health obsession joined forces with my great love of free stuff (a remnant from my student days) to help me exploit this privilege with shameless vigor.

Over the years, as I’ve learned more about the societal impacts of health, it became clear that this simple free fruit basket is one of the smartest things any employer can do. The amount of productivity the world loses due to absenteeism and presenteeism is just ridiculous, and a modest fruit basket can make a big dent in these astronomical costs.

4. Cucumber

My deep-seated fear of vegetables lasted for years into my 12-year streak, but cucumber was a rather unusual exception. I especially enjoyed the crunch it gave to a ham and cheese spread sandwich, which I indulged in a little too liberally back in the day. Self-help guru Tony Robbins’ spirited endorsement of the humble cucumber for its alkaline benefits also played its part.

Ham, cheese spread, and bread have long since departed from my diet, but cucumber remains a prominent feature, mainly as a bit of green next to my warm meals.

5. Salmon

Fish was another food group I expertly avoided in the years leading up to my great health journey. I grew up as an enthusiastic meat lover in South Africa, heavily influenced by our beautiful braai-culture. But life had decided to take me to Norway — a country that doesn’t exactly have the best BBQ weather and produces much of the world’s salmon.

So, it was not long before people started serving me various kinds of salmon. The first few times, I was mentally preparing myself to put on a brave smile and politely suffer through this fishy meal, but, to my great surprise, I genuinely liked it! Baked salmon soon became my weekend staple.

Recently, I cut back a little, based on the questionable environmental and health impacts and the high price of farmed salmon (shifting more to sustainably caught pollock and mackerel). But salmon still had a decisive role to play in getting my health journey started.

6. Yogurt

For many years, most of my days started with sweetened fruit yogurt (passion fruit and melon of all things) and fruit muesli. Yes, the added sugar was not so great, but yogurt still brings several health benefits to the table. And, above all, I really enjoyed it.

In the long-run this proved invaluable, forming the basis for the superfood breakfast I enjoy today — the single best combination of health, taste, and practicality I’ve ever come across. In the next sections, you’ll hear more about the list of ingredients that jazz up the much healthier plain Greek yogurt that binds that beautiful breakfast together.

7. Nuts

Peanuts were about the only nut I knew growing up. They were OK to eat when they ended up in front of me, but I would never buy them myself. However, by this time I was starting to become more informed about the wide variety of nutritious foods at our disposal. Nuts kept popping up in my research and it wasn’t long before a bag of mixed nuts became a regular on my shopping list.

I started with some fancy nut mixes containing a little-too-liberal helping of raisins and those delicious little sweetened papaya blocks. As a snack food, this turned out to be a bit dangerous. Nowadays, I buy a pack with a much lower concentration of sweet fruits and reserve it only for my super-breakfast and as a convenient energy booster on long ski trips.

8. Berries

Aside from fish, Norway also introduced me to another nutritious source of culinary enjoyment: berries. Even without knowing about all the phytonutrients and other fancy-sounding health-boosters, berries would still find a regular spot in my diet on taste alone.

It started out with the good old blueberry-breakfast combo. But after a while, the unreliable quality and wild price fluctuations of fresh blueberries drove me to the mixed packs of fresh-frozen berries that bring a lovely bit of sweetness and even more variety to my superfood breakfast.

9. Seeds

As I read more books on nutrition and health, one strange thing kept popping up: hemp seeds. These suspicious-sounding seeds were supposed to be the most nutritionally complete food on the planet so, naturally, I had to have them in my diet.

Initially, the crazy price of small packs of hemp seeds forced me to use it as a little luxurious sprinkle of perfect health on an early iteration of my ideal breakfast. But then, one fine day, I saw a 20 kg bag of hemp seed online that worked out more than 3x cheaper per kilo than the small packs I’d been buying up to that point.

It was still a sizable investment, but, per calorie, it was actually a little cheaper than my overall diet. Once I realized that I could include generous helpings of the world’s most nutritionally complete food in my diet and actually save money, it was a done deal. Bulk purchases of various other (much cheaper) seeds soon followed, creating the “seed bank” solution that underpins my breakfast today.

10. Spinach

I’d be hard-pressed to name something I like less than cooked spinach. So, when I read in The World’s Healthiest Foods that spinach is the most nutrient-dense thing on the planet, I was not very pleased with Mother Nature.

But where there’s a will, there’s a way. After several failed attempts at making spinach tasty, it eventually became the inspiration behind my decade-old green smoothie habit together with other scary green stuff like kale and celery. Indeed, with some apple, cucumber, ginger, and a generous helping of orange juice, these green health-bombs become downright tolerable.

11. Orange Juice

Good old OJ has had a tough time of late. You can even find claims online that fruit juice is just as bad as soda. While there might be some truth to that when talking about highly processed juices with lots of added sugar, pressed orange juice with pulp is pretty close to a whole orange (only much more convenient).

Orange juice regularly found its way into my fridge in those early years, simply because I liked it. But it became a staple when I committed to my green smoothie habit. Since then, I’ve consumed my weekly liter of this good old immune booster like clockwork.

12. Cooked Vegetables

Last but not least, we get to the most recent advance in my health journey: a major pivot towards higher concentrations of cooked vegetables in my warm meals. Given my historical aversion to vegetables, this counts as a major life achievement.

Like several other things on this list, I came away from the experience pleasantly surprised at how pain-free it was. In this case, I used the “meat as a vegetable dressing” philosophy to get maximum taste out of my cooked veggies, while simultaneously reducing my meat intake. It’s highly recommended, for health, environmental, and animal welfare reasons.

The Takeaway

This experience taught me that the human immune system can take care of almost any common bug if it’s kept in tip-top shape via a super-healthy diet (backed up by regular exercise). To make the deal even sweeter, I discovered that this super-diet can still be deeply enjoyable and highly practical.

Our world would be a much happier and more productive place without common illnesses in the short-term and serious degenerative diseases when we get older. So, how about it? Let’s build this world together — one healthy meal at a time.

Thanks to Alta Cloete.

Please note that this article only shares one guy’s positive experience with switching to a highly nutritious diet containing the above-mentioned foods. I am not claiming that regular consumption of these 12 foods guarantees that you never get sick again (some of the foods may even cause adverse reactions in certain individuals). The story is only meant as an inspiring tale of the good that can come from a super-healthy diet.

Schalk February 10, 2021

2.3 - Diet & Nutrition diet, fitness, health, lifestyle

The Hedonic Case for Healthy Living

Many of life’s greatest pleasures are reserved only for the healthy

It sucks that so many of the pleasurable things in life are bad for us, right? Wouldn’t it be great if we could sit in front of the TV eating chocolate and drinking wine all day long with no ill effects?

Actually, no.

Even if we could somehow eliminate all the health impacts of such behaviors, they would soon leave us unfulfilled and miserable. We would increasingly numb ourselves to life’s most intense sensory pleasures and, when there is no higher level left, life would become utterly meaningless.

It seems counterintuitive, but the health impact of mindless pursuits of instant pleasure is more of a blessing than a curse. It’s a valuable early warning that we’re pursuing happiness all wrong.

Hedonic Adaptation

The path to meaninglessness briefly outlined above results from something called hedonic adaptation.

The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. — Wikipedia

This phenomenon has been observed in many psychological studies. Our experience of happiness is highly subjective and, when we reach a higher level, the brain simply adjusts the goalposts.

Pretty depressing, isn’t it? Does that mean we can never be happy?

Luckily, no. Sure, we will never achieve happiness through mindless pursuits of instant pleasure, but there is a better path to happiness that applies particularly well to personal health.

Varied, Intermittent, Earned

If we want to beat the hedonic treadmill, we need to keep things fresh. The first way to do this is to vary our pleasurable experiences. Attempting to buy constantly varying pleasurable experiences can quickly become very expensive and time-consuming. But there’s another way: get healthy.

Experiencing life through a fit body opens up a world of pleasure. Every daily action gets easier and more rewarding and you gain access to a wide range of experiences reserved only for the healthy. Over here in Norway, the prime example is cross-country skiing. If you’re unfit, it’s a real pain. But once you’ve put in the work, exploring the endless trails through nature using this varied and efficient mode of locomotion becomes a joyous experience.

Taking a scenic break on yesterday’s cross-country skiing trip 😊

The second way to derive happiness from pleasure is to make sure different pleasures come intermittently. I experienced this intensely when I finally quit sugar some years ago. Now that my tastebuds are no longer numbed by a constant barrage of excessive sucrose, I’m able to savor the broad range of flavors in my varied whole-food diet much more deeply. Also, the occasional sweet treat on a special occasion now becomes true bliss!

Fitness holds similar benefits. Back to the cross-country skiing example: This pleasant hobby obviously only works during snowy winter months, typically in January-April. Before the snow comes (November-December), ice skating on frozen lakes is another genuine pleasure. Then, in the summer, those same mountains and lakes are good for hiking, cycling, and swimming. Any of these activities would be nice on their own, but it’s the natural combo of variety and intermittency that makes Norway a very easy place to stay fit.

Third, pleasure gets a whole lot sweeter when we feel that we genuinely deserve it. This aspect supercharges health-related pleasures like those mentioned above because they’re only made possible by resisting all the twisted, health-destroying incentives in our society. The occasional unhealthy treat on a special occasion also gets much better when you’ve earned the right to indulge guilt-free.

Thanks to this factor, building a body you can be proud of is another reliable source of happiness. For example, toweling off a fit body after each shower provides a lovely daily boost of happiness and confidence. Sadly, as we’ll discuss next, quite the opposite is true for most people.

Avoiding the Burden of Poor Health

On the flip side, we find another hedonic benefit of healthy living: avoiding pain and discomfort.

Obviously, recurring health problems, both small and large, sour the experience of life. Hedonic adaptation allows us to adjust to poor health and maintain decent happiness levels, but the much higher likelihood of intermittent and intense health shocks has a more severe impact.

This can range from small annoyances like occasional indigestion or acid reflux to moderate issues like always falling ill during flu season to big things like the need for chemotherapy or major heart surgery. A varied, intermittent, and earned influx of unpleasant health issues due to unhealthy lifestyle choices seriously harms our life experience.

Then there is the way our bodies look. Few of us like our bodies. Catching a glimpse of our naked (or even fully clothed) selves in the mirror can trigger intense negative feelings. If someone says something negative about our bodies (or just gives us a dismissive/judgmental look), it can hurt even more.

Bottom Line: Being Healthy is More Fun

All considered, a healthy lifestyle is simply more fun than an unhealthy one. Healthy living 1) opens up a much broader range of life’s pleasures, 2) intensifies the experience from these varied and well-earned pleasures, and 3) supercharges pleasure from the occasional unhealthy indulgence.

But even though the hedonic superiority of a healthy lifestyle is obvious, there’s an important caveat that catches all too many people out: Trying to force isolated healthy behaviors into an otherwise unhealthy lifestyle through sheer willpower will have the opposite effect. Fad diets and New Year’s gym resolutions rarely work and often just make things worse.

No, if you want all the hedonic benefits described above, you need to maintain a holistically healthy lifestyle. A varied and delicious whole-food diet, regular exercise deeply integrated into your daily routine, a high prioritization for sleep, and the ability (and willingness) to slow down to curb stress when needed are all crucial. If even one of these is badly out of alignment, it can drag the others down too, quickly draining our willpower and our pleasurable experiences.

Carving out such a holistic healthy lifestyle in our modern world with all its incentives to binge and stagnate is no easy task. But adding the promise of greater short-term pleasure to all the well-known long-term benefits of healthy living might just be enough motivation to push you through.

And once you experience the pleasures of a holistically healthy lifestyle, you’ll never go back! 😊

Thanks to Alta and Janet Cloete.

Schalk February 3, 2021

2.3 - Diet & Nutrition body image, diet, health, weight loss

You Never Need to Worry About Your Weight Again

Focus only on your health and trust nature to take care of the rest.

There’s plenty of space for your natural body between an unhealthy weight and the unrealistic beauty standards portrayed in the media.
Created by Janet Cloete using Wikimedia Commons images from Muffintopmaria and Cedward Brice.

Are you happy with your weight? If you are, congratulations! You’re part of an elite group. According to this survey, only 2 in 10 Americans are happy with their bodies.

But have you ever wondered why we experience such large social pressures to appear slim and athletic? After all, there are several periods in history where plump bodies were desired, especially for women. Why are these same well-rounded figures stigmatized today?

Keeping Each Other Accountable

My best theory about today’s obesity stigma is that it’s our instinctive attempt to keep each other accountable for contributing to a better society. The societal costs of obesity are enormous, and our world would undoubtedly be a better place if it could be controlled more effectively.

But this way of thinking creates severe problems. For starters, we’ve managed to push the social body standard all the way to the opposite extreme. This unrealistic expectation completely neglects the large space between fitness model standards and obesity that is both healthy and attainable.

We also need to acknowledge that genetics have plenty to say about the shape of our bodies. This article puts the genetic influence on obesity at about 25%, rising to as much as 70–80% for people who really struggle to lose weight.

But our genes have not changed over the past two generations when the obesity epidemic started running rampant. No, the primary driving force behind this epidemic is the ubiquitous availability of addictive empty calories — foods purpose-built to short-circuit the body’s natural satiety response and make us overeat. The omnipresence of these slow poisons is capitalism’s greatest failure and our costliest societal burden.

Hence, we’re stuck in a society that’s obsessed with athletic physiques but surrounds itself with foods designed for overeating. If there was ever a recipe for terrible body-image (and all the associated mental health problems), this is it.

A New Standard

It’s a good thing that we instinctively want to keep each other accountable for reducing the massive societal burden of obesity, but we’re focussing on the wrong issue. Instead of pressuring each other to be thin, we should be actively encouraging each other to maintain a lifelong healthy diet. Bodies should be shaped for health, not for social media.

In this article, I want to give you permission to feel at home in whatever body arises from a genuinely healthy diet. This is your natural weight that you never need to apologize for.

Fueling your body with all the right foods despite society’s constant attempts to addict you to empty calories is a great achievement that should be celebrated, regardless of the number on your scale.

How to Find Your Natural Weight

Your natural weight is the number that arises when you eat as much as you naturally feel like from a varied diet dominated by whole foods.

In other words, you allow your body’s natural satiety response to regulate your calorie intake by 1) removing toxic foods designed to make you overeat and 2) ensuring that all your nutritional needs are met (naturally).

There are three simple guidelines that define such a diet:

Consume more than 80% of your calories from whole foods. Regularly eat from each of these four categories: 1) nuts, seeds, and berries, 2) cooked and raw veggies, 3) avocado and other fruit, and 4) non-meat proteins (here, mildly processed foods are also OK).
Eat at least 30 different types of whole foods every day. This is much easier than it sounds.
Commit to always pay the true cost of the foods you buy. The best way is to use charitable donations for offsetting the societal damages caused by any empty calorie purchases. A good starting point is to give $7 for every 1000 calories of unhealthy food.

Regularly moving your body is important too, but diet comes first. As you approach your natural weight and start noticing much-improved vitality from your healthy, whole-food diet, exercise will follow naturally.

If you stick to these guidelines, you can eat as much as you feel like and be 100% comfortable with the result. Whatever the scale says, you would have given your body every chance to stay healthy and contribute to society.

But be prepared: Transitioning from the Standard American Diet (SAD) to a healthy, whole-food diet can be tough. Empty calories are drugs, and they can be just as hard to quit as smoking. This empty-calorie detox plan can help you through this challenging transition period, one step at a time.

What is Your Natural Weight?

The researcher in me is very curious about the variation in natural weight within the human population. I’m lucky enough that my natural weight is at the optimal point according to the Smart BMI calculator. That means I’m blessed with genes that align my natural weight with societal expectations.

Not everyone will be this lucky, but I would like to believe it’s impossible to become obese on a varied, whole-food diet. When you cut out almost all empty calories, it might even be difficult to become overweight. I could not find any studies that directly test this hypothesis, so I’m very curious to learn more about different people’s natural weights.

If you maintain the kind of diet described above, please share your Smart BMI in the comments below. Also, if you’re currently overweight and commit to a varied, whole-food diet with almost no empty calories, I would love to hear about your progress after a few months!

But whatever the result may be, know that society cannot expect you to change your genetic makeup. To be honest, it can’t even expect you to maintain a perfect diet when it constantly tries to addict you to empty-calorie drugs. Anyone who maintains a varied, whole-food diet under these circumstances is doing society a massive service, regardless of their bodyweight.

For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. 😊

Thanks to Alta Cloete.

1 2 3

2.3 – Diet & Nutrition

Ten levels to vanquishing the legions of unhealthy temptations that surround us every day

Level 0: Standard American Diet (SAD)

Level 1: Fruit Bowl

Level 2: Clean Home

Level 3: Craving Busters

Level 4: Home-Made Meals

Level 5: Nutrient Density

Level 6: Little or No Meat

Level 7: Banishing Sugar

Level 8: Time-Restricted Eating

Level 9: Home-Grown Meals

Level 10: Holistic Wellbeing

Final Thoughts

A top 10 list distilled from the insight of highly-rated experts

1. Legumes (10 Votes)

2. Berries (9 Votes)

2. Nuts (9 Votes)

4. Dark Leafy Greens (8 Votes)

5. Fermented foods (7 Votes)

6. Eggs (6 Votes)

6. Oats (6 Votes)

8. Seeds (5 Votes)

8. Fatty fish (5 Votes)

10. Cruciferous veggies (4 Votes)

10. Avocado (4 Votes)

10. Tomato (4 Votes)

10. Other veggies (4 Votes)

Honorable Mentions

Final Thoughts

And it turned out to be a great investment!

Why Hire Five Nutritionists on Upwork?

The Process

How the Upwork Experts Improved My Diet

1. Rebalancing Macronutrients

2. Correcting Micronutrient Deficiencies

3. Tweaking Macronutrient Timing

4. Snacking and Calorie Cycling

5. Cutting Out and Cutting Back

6. General Health Guidelines

How I’ll Structure My Next Diet Evaluation

Final Thoughts

— Appendix —

Description Attached to My Upwork Job Posting

Goals

Breakfast

Lunch

Dinner

Snacks

Liquids

Meal timing

It got me to eat salad almost every day!

Ingredients

Instructions

Pro Tips

Broccoli sprouts

Avocado

Seeds

Enjoy!

Today, my little corner of the world is free from empty calories, empty media, and empty work.

1. Intelligent Micro-Environment Design (IMED)

2. Zero-Compromise Foods

3. Smart Progress Tracking

4. Healthy Indulgences

5. Food for a Better World

6. Damage Control

7. Cravings and Personal Growth

8. Escape the Matrix

9. Deep Values

10. Quit Sugar

Self-Mastery

10 steps to natural and willpower-free enjoyment of healthy food

Step 1: Identify Your True “Why”

Step 2: Actively Pursue the Pleasures of Healthy Living

Step 3: Understand the Root of the Problem

Step 4: Clean Your Home Environment

Step 5: Discover Zero-Compromise Foods

Breakfast: Superfood Perfection

Lunch: Practical Warm Meals

Dinner: Light, Simple, Tasty