How to eat more healthy food? Is this an all-or-nothing endeavor? What are the key components to building health with food? HOW can you get started? Let’s explore some key aspects of the Food Sass® Lifestyle and how you might take steps to reclaim your health and well-being, with FOOD.
Is healthy eating an all-or-nothing endeavor?
Learning how to eat more healthy food is not an all-or-nothing endeavor. In fact, if we create rigidity around food with no wiggle room for real life, we’re quite certain to—in the end—do nothing.
It’s important to keep the enjoyment in food. To allow variety and flexibility to support us in creating a long-term lifestyle around food. We’re not served by spinning into mental anguish and I-can’t-do-this and I’m-such-a-loser-because-I-had-cake self-talk. This is no way to live and certainly no way to encourage ourselves when we want to stick with something.
Instead, we embrace the Food Sass® Lifestyle and develop our own mojo around how to eat more healthy food. In a way that is real-life do-able and sustainable. Let’s go!
Build health with food: The key components
Food Sass® is whole, nutrient-dense foods, organic where it matters, that are as close to their original state as possible. The Food Sass® Lifestyle has five key components that are designed to be do-able for life.
The Food Sass® Lifestyle has 5 key components:
- Eat 80% (or more) Food Sass® and 20% (or less) cake, beer, bread, candy, etc
- Honor a nightly fast of 12 – 16+ hours.
- When you eat food in the 20%, enjoy it. (If you don’t enjoy it, don’t eat it.)
- Create food planning/prep time to make your week turnkey.
- Keep food flexible and enjoyable. And please be kind to yourself.
Number 5 is important. As mentioned earlier, giving yourself a hard time for falling off the wagon is unnecessary and unwarranted. It’s also counterproductive! Neuroscience research shows that when we berate ourselves for doing something “wrong,” we’re actually statistically more likely to do it again. While we learn how to eat more healthy food, we’re better served by cheering on our wins than mentally pummeling ourselves for our slip-ups.
How to eat more healthy food?
This is the planning part of the discussion. Whether we want to get more fit, sleep better, build a business or improve our golf swing, a bit of planning goes a long way.
Food planning has many aspects. For the purposes of this post, we’ll focus on two key aspects of food planning.
- Stock on-the-go Food Sass® items.
When food shopping, be sure to get some Food Sass® items that travel well. Some ideas are nuts, seeds, banana, clementine, orange, apple, cut up carrots/celery/cucumbers/peppers, KIND nut bars, Mary’s Gone Crackers seed crackers, healthy beef jerky, Marigold Bars, and Pork cracklings. This will help you avoid grabbing food on-the-go that increases weight and decreases health.
- Carve out time for food prep.
It can be helpful to allot a few hours a week to food prep, especially if you’re working 40+ hours a week and/or have a large family to feed. This creates a more turn-key and less stressful-feeling week. And better-nourished to boot.
Perhaps for two hours on Sunday you put on some good music, pour yourself a cup of tea or glass of wine, and enjoy some prep time. Or maybe you instead/also do some prep for a half-hour after dinner on a few nights.
As Benjamin Franklin quipped (Allegedly. I wasn’t there when he said it.): If you fail to plan, you planning to fail. If the dudes in white wigs around him had been social media aficionados, they would’ve all shouted, “#truthbomb!” We can’t expect our initiative on how to eat more healthy food to go well if we don’t set ourselves up for success.
Get started with a healthier food lifestyle
With a nod to simplicity, we’re going to focus on the top 5 ways to get started with a healthier food lifestyle. How to build health with food, using the baby step method instead of the all-or-nothing method.
- Reduce sugar intake
The average American consumes over 70 grams of added sugar per day. A good target is less than 36 g per day for men and less than 25 g per day for women and children. Therefore, most of us need to cut back. Get started by reading labels and eliminating or reducing high-sugar foods.
- Add more fiber
The goal is to boost your daily fiber intake to 35-45 grams of fiber a day. Most Americans eat less than 15 grams per day. A good list of high-fiber foods is HERE, minus the whole wheat pasta and rye crispbreads.
- Be fat savvy
Contrary to what the low-fat craze drilled into our psyches, healthy fats are needed for weight loss and overall health. Swap out the over-processed vegetable oils for stable, whole-food fats. Some excellent fat sources are coconut oil, pastured butter, extra virgin olive oil, avocado and its oil, nuts, seeds, and fish.
- Increase vegetable intake
Mom was right when she said, “Eat more vegetables.” Veggies are rich in vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients. As a bonus, veggies are rich in fiber so you’re also addressing #2 in our list when you boost your veggie intake.
- Mind the time
Many of us break our overnight fast first thing in the morning and then eat long into the evening. This can result in both a disrupted insulin system and an excessive caloric intake, leading to weight gain and type 2 diabetes. Try shortening your daily eating window, over time, to 8-10 hours. You can learn more HERE.
We build our body, every day, with food. We eliminate 300 million cells per minute and replace them with brand-spanky new ones. What an opportunity! How to eat more healthy food? You now know the basics. Start small and take the time to build habits as you go.
One small positive change, done every day, adds up to big returns over time!
Need help? Click HERE. I got you.
To your empowered well-being,
Laurie
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