How To Start Eating Healthy Foods
Nov 5th, 2010 | By Todd Bowman | Category: Diet And Nutrition, Motivation, Training How To
You’ll notice the title of this article is How To Start Eating Healthy Foods, not How To Stop Eating Junk Food.
It doesn’t really matter if you’re working out hard like a bodybuilder or just an average person who exercises moderately, eating healthy foods is going to account for up to 80% of your success.
How I Used To Eat
I’m sure you can relate. I used to be addicted to carbohydrates, polyunsaturated oils and grains. I had the worst diet in the world. Since I have always had a very fast metabolism, my diet was see it and eat it. I didn’t care if it was starchy, loaded with cholesterol, meaty or anything else. If I was starving and hungry, I’d consume it.
My typical breakfast would be 3-4 bowls of sugary cereal, with antibiotic laced milk from sick cows, along with whole wheat toast filled with gluten and undigestible peanut butter. And if I was still hungry I would have some waffles and pancakes along with that just to wash everything down. I used to eat plenty of breads, muffins, cookies, crackers, pizza, pasta anything that was a carb. The food pyramid to me didn’t exist. It doesn’t now either but for different reasons.
I can relate to your situation.
You might eat bigger portions that I did but the food addictions and cravings were still the same. Now I eat just about 100% of my food raw (including meat, cheese, butter, milk and eggs). You can read more about my diet on that page. I don’t only eat animal foods I eat a very high proportion of vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds as well.
So how did I do it? How did I start eating healthy foods and stay on this new type of diet since 2003?
Change In Philosophy
This is the meat and foundation of my entire dietary program. This is what changed my life and eating habits. I set for myself a goal of completely changing my diet over a 5 year period. I’m not a person to get on a healthy eating diet for 5 weeks and then go back to eating junk food and overly processed foods. My goal was to change my diet over the course of 5 years and do it slowly. If your current diet isn’t sustainable, what’s the point? I wanted to be kind and gentle, soft and allowing. I was trying to change decades of habits and cravings so I knew I couldn’t do that over the course of 4 weeks.
So what was this life changing philosophy?
I focused on ADDING FOODS IN rather than focusing on REMOVING FOODS from my current diet.
Why does this work so well? Well it only works because our stomachs are only designed to be able to hold a finite amount of food. There are so many amazing foods to start adding in, so by the time you get them all into your diet in a day, you’ll be too full for the bad stuff.
The way to approach changing your eating program and start eating healthy foods is to choose a handful of healthy nutritious foods that you like and discipline yourself to eat them everyday BEFORE you eat a meal that you know is unhealthy for you.
If you are going to go eat pizza and beer one evening and one of the healthy foods you set as a goal to eat once each day happens to be a salad. Then when you order the pizza, order the salad as well and ask the waiter to bring that before the main course, which they’ll do most of the time any way.
When we are hungry, our bodies and cells are craving minerals.
The more minerals we eat the more the hypothalamus is able to receive the signal that there was enough leptin created. Leptin is secreted by fat cells in the white adipose tissue which tells your body that you are satiated and full. Our food cravings are diminished to a very significant degree.
I didn’t’ care or put much attention on how much sugar, saturated fats, refined carbohydrates, I ate. All I cared about was whether or not I DID eat the healthy foods I had decided to add in. Over time your cravings will change and your nutritional needs will too. You will start feeling how food is affecting you and you’ll know how bad certain foods are and you won’t even crave them anymore because you know how they make you feel both emotionally and physically.
Pretty soon you’ll be eating healthy foods to lose weight just because you’re actually craving them, not because you’re disciplining yourself to do it. That’s when the fun begins.
Foods To Start Adding Into Your Diet
- Salads
- Freshly made vegetable juices (green apples, cucumber, celery)
- Raw fruits
- Fermented foods (sauerkraut, kefir)
- Green smoothies (leafy greens, avocados, fruits & berries)
- Super foods (cacao, coconut oil, hemp seeds, goji berries)
Dietary Strategies For Eating Healthy Foods
Eating healthy foods is 100% in your ability, you just have to adopt the strategy and plan to reach that health goal. Sometimes how you eat and when you eat are more important than what you eat. The great thing about eating healthy foods and adding these foods into your diet, is that you can eat whatever you want, it’s just your principles have changed. This dietary approach can be used if you’re a vegan, vegetarian, carnivore, diabetic or anything you happen to be. Personally I’m a bodybuilder and I’m very much into weight lifting and these principles still apply very nicely into my workout program.
Supplements –
Enzymes – Taking enzymes before your meals can be a great strategy to use your whole life to help digest food more efficiently.
HCL – Hydrochloric acid is what many people are lacking these days. Stomach acid is critical for helping to ward off flu and sickness as well as breaking down foods.
Apple Cider Vinegar – Take this before meals as it helps to create more stomach acid.
Food Combining –
Here are some basic food combining principles. If you need more information the book I read was Fit For Life and it changed my entire life.
The basics of food combining are:
- Don’t eat starches and proteins together (that means no meat with French fries)
- Eat fruit only on an empty stomach
- Eat salads with each meal
Click Here For High Protein Meal Plans That Are Delicious.
When To Eat –
Depending on what your body uses for fuel (fat, protein, carbohydrates) you should modify your meals accordingly.
Some general principles to follow would be:
- Not eating after 8pm (or sunset).
- Making lunch your heaviest meal of the day
Eating healthy foods is something you can do and something that should be done over time. It’s not easy to change a lifetime of eating habits. The older you are when you decide to change your diet, the more time you should allow yourself to add more healthy foods in. Over time you will be able to radically change your diet to just about any diet program you want to follow.
Select a few of the healthy foods above and make a point to discipline yourself to eat them every single day before your main meals or as healthy snacks. You’ll be surprised at how much this will change your dietary approach. Focus on adding foods into your diet instead of lamenting what bad foods you ate. This is the long term solution to health and weight loss.
After you start eating healthy foods your body will crave them instead of junk foods. The transformation can be incredible. At least it has for me.
What types of healthy foods will you start eating on a regular basis?
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