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:

1. 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.
2. Stay hydrated. Drink two glasses of water first thing each morning, a glass before any snack, and always have a water bottle at hand.
3. 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:

1. Identify the event or thought pattern that triggered this huge craving.
2. Invest some time to find the fundamental reason why this trigger had such a powerful negative emotional effect.
3. 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.