Just Eat Smart

I don’t mind discussing diets, but I absolutely abhor it when people talk to me about their diets as though one size fits all.

“You know I’m a diet. Today was asparagus, I ate asparagus for every meal.”

Or,

“I’m on the lemonade diet. I drank lemonade all day.”

Ridiculous yes, but I’m open minded and I will try anything once. Except that. Food is delicious, it is meant to be nutritious and enjoyable, especially when shared with first-class company. The Journal of Clinical Investigation states “ghrelin triggers the same neurons as delicious food, sexual experience, and many recreational drugs; that is, neurons that provide the sensation of pleasure and the expectation of reward.”

So forget dieting, because, like pencil arms, diets are so yesterday. It’s about moderation and just eating smart.

However, regardless of your situation, goals, and personality, there are a few things you can do to help eat this, and not that.

1. Add lots of vegetables to every meal, not the kind that is slathered in butter or other fats, but the green and leafy steamed kind is good. If you love rice like I do, add corn, carrot and peas to it so you are eating more veggies than rice. And don’t fry it up people, boil it.

2. Read labels on packaged foods. Know what they mean by serving size, how much sugar is added, and if they use chicken feet as an ingredient. Some people eat chicken feet by choice, just read the label to make sure you’re not, you know, inadvertently eating it.

3. Do not follow any long-term eating plan that requires you to feel hungry most of the time. By hungry I mean both physically (growling stomach, weak and dizzy) and emotionally (overwhelming sense of deprivation, feeling like you can ‘never’ have your favorite foods). Too much physical hunger is also called starving yourself like an idiot, or, I prefer the term anorexia, because isn’t that what starving yourself is? Too much emotional hunger and you’ll probably get into that crappy all-or-nothing cycle that involves monk-like abstinence broken by serious binges.

4. Cut out any foods that 1) you don’t care about (i.e. not among your favorites) and 2) are on the not-helpful side of the nutritional wall. My example is potato chips. I’m a sugar, not a salt person, and I want to spend every calorie I can on cookies and cakes and pies. Therefore I don’t eat chips, because why waste time with something that is not even in my top ten foods? Easy sacrifices, that’s what I’m all about.

5. Think ahead about your week when you make food choices. It’s much easier to forgo office doughnuts if you know you are going to eat out that evening at a place with killer cheesecake, or pie, or cake…See, I also like the idea of stripping as much guilt as possible away from eating, and I hate wasting time with mindless consumption when I could be savoring.

Lastly, check out this book by Michael Pollan. It’s about the rise of ‘nutrients’ instead of foods, and how the food lobbies have been instrumental in shaping that. This is a big part of why nobody knows what to eat anymore.

Recommended: Highly likely.

Tagged as: just eat smart, michael pollan