Healthy Eating Guide
Purpose
Healthy eating habits are, of course, essential for overall health. Not just what you eat - the timing and amount matters just as much, if not more!
How to Get Lean
Weight loss is governed by one major factor, and only one major factor: Calories in vs. calories out. With that in mind, the way to lose weight… is to eat less calories overall. This could mean eating less in general, or choosing food options with less calories while still helping you feel full.
I’d say the most important part of getting lean is actually your appetite, not your “diet plan”. If you can lower your appetite through methods like intermittent fasting, you’ll be able to get a calorie deficit without needing to use (and probably deplete) your willpower. As a bonus, that frees you up to focus on other important things!
Details
How To Get Lean & STAY Lean Forever (Using Science) - YouTube
- Fat loss occurs because of a caloric deficit. It’s literally just this: Eat less calories than you burn.
- Note that the number of calories you burn will go down as you lose weight. So to keep losing weight, you’ll need to lower your calories consumed to match.
- Use a calorie logger app to calculate the calories that you’ll want to eat (see below).
- Weight training and enough protein will help your muscles show on top of fat loss. See How to Stay Active for more info.
- Don’t think of this as dieting. There’s no need to limit what foods you eat, as long as the calorie math works out. In general, try to go slow so it feels as effortless as possible.
- The sustainable body fat range is around 10-20%.
- Build habits / long-term plans. Don’t rely on short bursts of motivation!
- Temptation bundling: Link an activity you don’t enjoy with one that you do.
- Proactive vs. reactive: It’s much easier to choose not to buy an unhealthy snack at the grocery store than it is to force yourself not to eat that snack if it’s on your shelf.
- Have a smart post-diet plan.
- Basically, don’t revert back to eating unhealthy foods all the time. If you didn’t think of this as dieting when you started out, then this shouldn’t be an issue.
Calorie & Nutrition Logging
If we just want to stay healthy, we probably don’t need to log calories and nutrition. However, if we’re trying to build muscle, we should definitely make logging foods a habit - just to make sure we’re aware of the ~120 grams of protein needed for (optimal) muscle growth, and to see how our normal diet compares to that. Also, calorie tracking is essential for losing weight - in fact, it’s pretty much the only thing that matters!
See A Comprehensive Health Tracking Guide for good calorie and nutrition logging apps. TLDR; Use Lose It!.
Specific Advice
Fiber
I’ve noticed that fiber is quite hard to get in a daily “American” diet. I’m also having trouble meeting daily fiber goals… so here are some foods with good amounts of fiber! Source: Top 10 High-Fiber Foods to Help Your Digestive Health (benefiber.com)
To give you an idea of which foods are high in fiber, the list from above contains: Beans, Broccoli, Berries, Avocados, Popcorn, Whole Grains, Apples, Dried Fruits, Potatoes, and Nuts. So basically, eat more veggies. Or some fruits and nuts. Seriously, you do need to be careful which fruits and nuts, some don’t have much fiber at all (see grapes below) :/
Fruits
Not all fruits are created equal! Some can be much healthier than others. Some could even be considered unhealthy!
For example: 1 cup of grapes provides 62 calories, 0.8g of fiber, and 15g of sugar. 1 cup of apples, on the other hand, provides 57 calories, 2.6g of fiber (!), and 11g of sugar (!). They both contain some other vitamins, but when looking at sugar and fiber content, one is clearly healthier than the other.
The takeaway is, don’t assume all fruits are healthy. Although fruits generally are healthier than other sugar choices due to their high fiber, low calories, and nutrients, some fruits might be artificially selected to have more sugar, making them less healthy for you.
Intermittent Fasting
Do it! Because intermittent fasting (restricting eating and only drinking water/milk during a 12-16 hour block of time) makes your body use fat as an energy store instead of sugar, it’s been proven to lower blood sugar levels, decrease your appetite, and help you lose weight! Even better, small fast times (such as 12 hours) don’t require much willpower to start or maintain - the only thing you need to do is fight the urge to eat a midnight snack. This is super important, as it makes fasting easier to stick to and gives you room to take other initiatives as well.
Here’s a good IF (intermittent fasting) plan to follow, assuming a sleep schedule of 12-9 AM each day:
- Start by fasting from 9 PM to 9 AM. No need to skip any of the 3 meals, but no more late-night snacks :(
- About a week after you’re used to this, extend the fast time so it’s 9 PM to 11 AM. In other words, skip breakfast D:
- If you really want to go the extra step and you’ve handled the previous one for about a week, extend the fast time so it’s 8 PM to 12 PM. You’ll need to eat lunch later-ish and dinner earlier-ish ;(
- I wouldn’t go any further then the above. If you want to (exchanging willpower / risk of deciding to abandon fasting for faster weight loss), you can keep increasing the fasting window, maybe eating 1 large meal per day instead :x
Details
How: Start easy with something like a 10 hour fast (basically don’t eat during sleep time), and gradually build that up over time. 12-hour fasts are fine for general health. Going up to 16 hours is good for weight loss. Consider condensing your 3 meals - breakfast, lunch, and dinner - into 2 (lunch and dinner). Whatever you do, avoid midnight snacks.
Note: “Eating breakfast is good for you” is a myth, suggested by studies that failed to consider people with more money and healthier lifestyles (sleep/wake times) would also be more likely to eat breakfast - not the other way around, and popularized by cereal brands. There are no health benefits that come directly from eating breakfast; the side effects (having to wake up earlier and getting practice sticking to routines) are what cause the benefits.
Fasting for longer periods of time (>16 hours) gives larger beneficial effects but is much harder to do consistently due to hunger, so I’d discourage it unless you’re sure you can stick to it without needing to use much willpower.
Research
Eating breakfast won’t help you lose weight, but skipping it might not either - Harvard Health
What Happens To Your Body When You Don’t Eat (Fast) - YouTube
- 12-16 hours: Glycogen (sugar) stores in liver get depleted, body switches to using fat as energy
- Called ketosis, brings changes in the body
- Fasting works (for most people) where diets have failed
Many people are too sedentary and eat too much sugary, processed foods. The solution is to stop constantly snacking, and eat more healthy foods (veggies, fruits, healthy proteins, whole grains)
- Eating a ton of food before sleep increases your risk of diabetes (due to processed food snacking and eating timing)
- 1 in 7 Americans have diabetes, and 95% of these cases are due to a poor diet and resulting obesity
- Fasting has been shown to help people with type 2 diabetes
Intermittent fasting study: Prediabetics who ate only from 7 AM to 3 PM (16 hour fast) showed a drop in insulin levels, a lower blood pressure, and got used to it / showed a decrease in appetite. Can also decrease weight (if done for long enough)
- It’s also important to keep a healthy diet and lifestyle
- Intermittent fasting is a good option if you want to lose weight without much timing and effort.
During intermittent fasting: Drink lots of liquids like milk or water, or exercise!
Fasting for a day or longer can help you lose weight but is also incredibly hard (you will feel very hungry during that time). Also, don’t fast if you’re pregnant, malnourished, or have a history of eating disorders.
What If You Don’t Eat (Day by Day) - YouTube
The key thing from this video is that your body is fine surviving a while without food (of course, it had to do that in cavemen days), but if you don’t gradually expose yourself to this fasting, it will have major consequences on your mood and energy levels.
- What if you fast… forever?
- The important thing to note here is that your body adapts to how much you eat. The below ONLY applies if you’re not used to fasting for extended amounts of time. If you ease up to a long fast, you’ll be able to handle it much better.
- Hunger is your body telling you that it needs more glucose. If you don’t answer it, you’ll get “hangry” due to hormones causing an irritable mood.
- 1 day after start of fast: Your body feels good at first, but slowly loses the remaining energy reserves it has.
- 2 days (ish): Glucose energy stores are gone, so you enter ketosis, in which you break down carbs and fats for energy instead. Your body might start feeding on itself, starting with fat stores like the abdominal area. You’ll lose weight and your BMI decreases. You’ll feel tired all the time though. These are actually good things (in a way).
- 3 days: Your body might start reducing the size of your organs too. Your blood pressure drops and your heart rate slows.
- 5 days: You start acting like a wild animal, driven only be the will to survive and get food. Your body starts shutting down non-essential systems.
- Anorexia is an eating disorder causing people to obsess about weight and what they eat. It can lead to multi-day fasts like this. If they go on for too long, starvation will become life threatening without medical intervention.