Welcome to the DIY Nutritional Advice Salad Bar!
How it works:
If you want specific nutritional advice, tailored to your constitution, energetic balance, lifestyle and tastes, call me (054-9109532) and we’ll set up a counseling session. 😉
If you want general advice that would probably help 90% of your friends and family too, keep reading!
You probably know a lot of the following information, and some of it will not apply to you. The idea is to treat this post like a salad bar. Anything you want you can take with you, anything you know won’t work for you just leave on the table, anything you try and don’t like you can throw away.
Again, not everything here will suit everyone, but most of this advice will be helpful for most people. Take what you want and leave the rest.
(And obviously nothing here should be taken as actual medical instructions. Don’t eat foods you know you are allergic to, and consult a doctor if you have specific health issues you are worried about.)
On to the advice:
Make sure to eat foods you like. (Crazy, right?)
Eat a variety of real, minimally processed foods.
Try and eat at least 80% healthy foods in a week.
Eat 50% vegetables per meal (potatoes don’t count).
Include a good source of protein at least every other meal.
Even if you are vegetarian.
In fact ideally, you should probably be eating at least 1 gram of protein per kilo of body weight. 1.5-2 grams if you are over 60. Healthy aging requires protein.
No idea how much protein you are eating? or how much you are eating in general? Try tracking your food for one week, either with a diet app or writing in a notebook. It’s amazing what you can learn.
For extra credit, write down both what you ate every day and how you felt that day. See if you can spot any correlations.
(The last two suggestions may not be a good idea for anyone with a history of obsessive behavior around food.)
Remember that it takes your brain about 20 minutes to register the feeling of ‘fullness’. We were designed to eat slowly. If you eat too fast you may well start feeling too full before you have the chance to feel satisfied.
Good today is better than perfect tomorrow. Fresh vegetables might be better than frozen vegetables, but frozen vegetables are much, much better than no vegetables at all.
If you are going to eat unhealthy foods they should at least taste really good.
Try and eat while calm and quiet – when the body is experiencing stress, blood is diverted away from the digestive system to the heart, lungs, and muscles. The body will also try to retain more sugars to provide extra energy.
Chew food thoroughly – breaking down your food by chewing will improve digestion (especially of carbohydrates, which are broken down by enzymes in saliva) while giving you more time to notice when you are becoming full.
Eat at regular times of the day. When your digestive system knows when to expect food, it can prepare to digest the food better and more efficiently.
Eat 5-6 small meals a day if it makes you feel good and energized. Eat 2-3 big meals a day if it makes you feel good and energized. If you are not happy with your current meal schedule feel free to try new things, but don’t feel like you ‘have to’ eat in a way that doesn’t work for you.
Try Mindful Eating
Finally, want in on the fun? Share your favorite advice in the comments so we can learn from you!
Check back next week for a traditional Chinese recipe that will make your winter better and healthier (or make you say “Where the heck am I supposed to find dried licorice root!?”).
(FYI, health food stores).
Click here to get the recipe delivered straight to your magic pocket computer thingy like we’re living in the future or something!
If you were sent this post by a friend and have no clue what’s going on, Hi! I’m Havva Mahler, practitioner of Chinese medicine, acupuncture, herbs, tuina, reflexology, massage and stuff like that. You can normally find me at one of my clinics in Be’er Sheva or Sderot, or reading something about health and/or motivation. You can find out more about me here. Get in touch with me here. And see a cute kitten getting acupuncture here! (Not my kitten, I just think he’s really cute 🙂 )