Nutrition can be confusing AF. With a thousand different diets out there and conflicting reports every other week on the news, it’s no wonder a ton of people just say, “f*** it” when it comes to trying to eat healthy. I’m not going to go into how many grams of protein you need or what the hell ketosis is, but I will give you a couple things to look at to get started into a more healthy diet – My two basic nutrition rules: The 500 Year Rule, & the 85/15 Rule.
The 500 Year Rule:
If the food wasn’t on the earth 500 years ago, it’s probably not real food.
Mango, asparagus, almonds, beans, fish, tea leaves, coffee beans? Yes, they’ve been here. They’re real.
Cheetos, Slimfast, Snickers (sadly), coffee shop drinks with syrup, Mountain Dew? Nope. Goodness knows what’s actually in them.
The more real food/drinks you consume, the better your body does processing them, the better you sleep, the more energy you have, the better you feel.
Start by looking at everything in your fridge or pantry. How much of it was here 500 years ago and how much was invented?
which brings me to my next point:
The 85/15 Rule
It’s unrealistic for most of us to eat 100% healthy all the time. I don’t expect any of my clients to immediately switch over to a perfect diet. Dr. John Berardi of Precision Nutrition talks about the psychology this all the time. He first mentioned his 90/10 rule at a conference I was attending years ago and I loved it: 90% real food, 10% other. I just swooshed it over a little bit to give myself some leeway. ; )If you consume good-for-you (real) food and drink 85% of the time, you can probably get away with non-food and drinks 15% of the time.
If you wrote down everything you ate yesterday, how much of it would fall into each category? I know we often hear about “balance,” but this not a category where you want things to be an even 50/50 split… At least not if you want to feel great and be leaner. You want to be closer to 85/15.
You have to think a little more responsibly about when to let yourself indulge and when not to.
If I go have a couple donuts this morning, there’s my indulge portion of the day, so I’m going to be eating veggies and fish and other real food for the rest of the day. If I plan on having a bourbon & ginger ale (or 2) tonight, I’m going to be drinking water all day leading up to that.
We can’t expect to eat junk for breakfast, junk for lunch and maybe a vegetable at dinner and think we’re gonna be super ripped and have tons of energy.
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Is there way more to nutrition than this? Oh yes, but this is a good place to start if you’ve been overwhelmed in the past. Focus on these 2 rules for the next month.
Take photos of yourself today (from the front, side, and back) and again in 3 or 4 weeks & see if you notice a difference.
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