Of course, I am gradually switching to a healthy diet, not buying any poison in the store at the level of all sorts of tasty things or beer, etc. Any advice on what food is worth buying and what is better to avoid? I just want to feel, so to speak, in good shape because I am tired of being a sluggish zombie.
I don’t really trust AI so I wanted to ask you. You can also recommend something else if you want.
The key to eating healthy is to find healthy foods that are reasonably inexpensive that you can eat as is, or cook simply and quickly with minimal chance of ruining it.
For drinks, water first and foremost, with maybe milk/juice occasionally.
For breakfast, toast/bagel and fruit, or maybe a granola, yogurt, and frozen berry parfait
For lunch, something like pretzels, mixed nuts/raisins (the hidden gem in any healthy diet), cheese and an apple/grapes.
Both of these meals are quick, healthy and require no cooking. The trick is dinner.
What I recommend is having a three piece meal, a carb so your not hungry, and then a vegetables and a protein for nutrition, all cooked separately.
For carb, pasta is fine, rice is better, but best would be an ancient grain like quinoa or farro, which nutritionally blow them out of the water.
For veggies, sweet potatoes and sauted spinach are nutrition kings, but anything is good.
Finally, steer clear of red meat for the most part for your protein. Beans, chicken, turkey and wild caught fish are your friends.
An absolutely killer meal is something like quinoa (boiled), sweet potato (sliced and boiled or baked whole), spinach (sautéd first), and turkey (sautéd second)
Nutritional, filling, two pots, one pan, about 20 minutes total, and the only thing you need to watch is the pan, and spinach/turkey don’t burn fast anyway.
But the most important thing is what you don’t buy. Most people, including me, have poor impulse control when we’re hungry. So go shopping full, and then don’t buy yourself anything unhealthy, because you will eat it later.
Healthy diet means something different to different people: some will say you need grains and carbs to feel in optimal health, some will say go 100% keto or full carnivore. Don’t blindly trust anyone because nutritional science is highly anecdotal and nobody really knows what we are doing here, aha.
BUT! The simple rules are: cut out sugar and processed stuff. Cook everything yourself and only eat sugar if it’s in a whole fruit package made by nature itself (like a whole apple, NOT JUICES. You need that fiber!). I encourage you to experiment with going low carb and with different amounts of protein/fat since that balance is possibly the most important. Fat will keep you full, protein will preserve your muscle, carbs should optimally be low and come only from whole fruits and vegetables, sometimes grains if you can tolerate it, but when you feel like it try cut it out to experience how your body feels.
Eggs, fatty fish (as look as you don’t over eat them since there is mercury in them - I love mackerel!), fatty meat, cruciferous vegetables will be your best friends. NUTS (almonds, hazelnuts, etc) and SEEDS are possibly the best snacks for portability and satiety feel. Beware of eating too much legumes (beans, peanuts) because they could potentially be inflammatory. Eat them, but IN MODERATION.
Use spices! Curcumin + black pepper is anti-inflammatory and well tolerated by virtually everyone. Start with that and then go a little crazy and experimental. Spiced veggies are the best! DRINK A LOT. Drink at the very least 2l of water a day.Now for the anecdotal part: I suffered from chronic inflammation with a wide range of symptoms for more than 2 decades, I went into “detox diet” (what a silly name)where I cut out sugar, diary and gluten for 30 years. I was kind of desperate for a solution and… it worked. After two weeks it resolved my chronic skin condition (eczema/psoriasis) and when I unintentionally entered ketosis (I had no idea what I was doing at the time) my constant brain fog lifted. My arthritic symptoms completely vanished overnight. I felt like a brand new human being.
Now, after 7 months from that experiment I mostly eat what I call a “lite keto diet”, meaning: unrestricted meat/fish with fatty parts left on, a lot of vegetables and some nuts as snacks. No grains/cereals, but sometimes I will have my mother’s risotto, but only a little, because I love it but after eating it I feel sluggish so I indulge only a little bit. I eat fruits when I feel like it, which is probably around twice/thrice a week. Once a month I will eat something with flour/gluten and diary. This month will be pastries for my birthday, next month I will have pizza or lasagna. My vice is chips and sometimes I eat a bag of chips in a sitting and feel like hell. BUT EH. It happens. I also do intermitting fasting (I only eat lunch and light a snack around 5pm) because I’m not that hungry anymore and the less time I spend cooking/eating the better, lol. My energy level are quite good nowadays, but sometimes I do feel light headed if I’ve had more carbs than usual or if I’m fasting for too long because I forgot to eat my snack. I’m still experimenting AND I’m losing weight. I lost around 15kg since February with minimum effort (from 87kg to 71kg). The first 10 days of the detox diet were hell, but now I’m used to eating like this and it’s going great.
Good luck, SugarCatDestroyer! Experiment a little bit and RECORD IT. For at least one month try to keep a food diary and write down your energy levels. It will help tremendously!
Learn to cook.
Find 3 or 4 meals that are healthy and get very good at them. That will make it easier to add new recipes and expand your repitoire.
i started on a quest like yours about 15ish years ago because of diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea, drowsiness, headaches, bloating, etc. and; if it could back and start all over again; i would start with the crockpot.
soups/stews in particular are super easy with almost always delicious results and dirt cheap; you just throw in a bunch of stuff that seems like would go good together into the pot and let time do the rest for you. my creations almost always involve garlic, onions, and some kind of lentil (usually black beans) and even those three by themselves are delicious. (if you add in salt the very beginning you’ll end up using less salt overall).
every few months/years insuppressible cravings for fast food usually make me fall off this wagon and that generally feeling of zombiness; like you’re feeling right now; is usually enough to push me back onto the wagon. this time around i’ve been off the wagon long enough for those health metrics to show a significant decline and that coupled with both the general shitty feeling and the tariffs are pushing me back onto the wagon. i wish someone had advice to share with me on this.
this time around i’ve been off the wagon long enough for those health metrics to show a significant decline and that coupled with both the general shitty feeling and the tariffs are pushing me back onto the wagon. i wish someone had advice to share with me on this.
Doing a ketogenic eating pattern allows for the soups and stews and provides the energy. Without the sugar triggers in the daily diet it is easier to stay on the wagon long term. I also find using a CGM to get back on the wagon super helpful, seeing immediate feedback about blood glucose keeps the diet on track.
i’ve had cgm’s for several years and they were effective at telling me which of the foods i made were good or bad and it lead me to using crock pots like i described.
the cravings overpower any sort of sensibility when it comes to my diet and invariably bump me off the wagon for months to years at a time and that’s the one thing i haven’t yet figured out. i’ve learned that that fast food is addicting and i think that explains the cravings.
Maybe a accountability buddy who can see your CGM data in real time can help?
Strategies I’ve found to get over cravings:
- Stuff my face with a safe food like cheese, eggs, butter (yes, really)
- Having my personal trainer get my CGM data
- Tell myself I can cheat but only if I eat a can of tuna and 100g of cheese first
- Set small multi-day goals, I’m just going to stay clean for 3 days in a row
- Removing all illegal food from my house
- Staying at a friends house where I don’t have the familiar triggers
- Only allowing myself to cheat if my blood glucose is <5.0 and I eat the cheese first.
What do you find helps you?
i was going to ask if you’re me because i’ve tried all of these except the accountability buddy and; given that fast food is addicting; i think it makes the most sense.
the first bullet point is the reason why i’m off the wagon for months at a time. my craving for a double whopper with bacon, onion rings, & extra cheese is VERY STRONG and i sublimate it by letting myself eat chicken breast, pork loin, fish, cheese, etc. for months at a time. these efforts help keep me away from the fast food chains, however it’s not fool proof because i still cave into the cravings, but at SIGNIFICANTLY reduced level compared to before i started wrestling with these demons.
i used to eat fast food at least once every day and the longer i stay off the wagon the more i slowly inch towards going back to this old habit over the ensuing months; until i have some sort of realization that pushes me back onto the wagon, like op. i’m on the wagon for roughly as long as i’m off it, so i stay on the wagon for months at a time as well; but i’ve been repeatedly going on/off this wagon for the last 15ish years. the crock pots let me jump back on very easily.
the cgm’s always let me fool myself into believing that i can go off the wagon responsibly and; before i realize it; i’m stuffing my face with whoppers again a few months later. an accountability buddy would need to have a 20ish month view of my cgm results to know that i’m backsliding.
i learned a few years ago that studies that used accountability buddies to treat drug addictions were effective because they kept track of drug addicts’ gps coordinates and; whenever the addict visited a place where they could obtain their drug of choice; the accountability buddy would pop up to help them. i need something like this that can track my proximity to fast food chains so i don’t have to bother with trying to sublimate my cravings because that’s always my first step to falling off this wagon again.
Is it possible to never go to a fast food chain?
We have the physical addiction to glucose, but you have overcome that before
We have the habitual triggers, something in your life makes you think of your old addiction, those you have to find a way to get past, maybe the snacking
We have the situational triggers, seeing a place, going past a place, triggers old addictive cravings, this is where having a buddy you can call and talk it out can be helpful.
If you are willing to wear a CGM all the time, you can have a buddy monitoring it and get alerts if it goes outside of a predefined range (say 6.5) so your buddy can help you deal with the recovery
When you fall off the wagon before, you mentioned fast food, but what is different the month before falling off and the day you fall off?
Just about anything can be made with or without questionable additives. What sorts of things do you want to eat?
You can buy bread with preservatives that stays ‘fresh’ for weeks, but bread made with just water, flour, yeast and salt generally starts getting hard the next day and moldy in around a week (depending on climate +/-). Whole grain bread is dense, more flavorful, and will not rise as much as white bread because the bran and the nutrient rich wheat germ break up the long-chain gluten structure.
So do you pick a bread that lasts or one that molds? Do you pick white bread because it is fluffy or whole wheat because it has more vitamins?
Maybe you don’t eat bread. Well, the same applies to rice. Most white rices are fortified to make up for the vitamins lost in milling, but whole-grain (brown) rice is tougher, has a stronger flavor, and is less fluffy. Which would you prefer?
Thank you very much, I just don’t understand all this very well, so your answer was extremely useful for me. By the way, is it better to bake bread yourself or buy it in a store? It’s just that store-bought bread is either so to speak airy, or some kind of empty, like sand, or something in between.
Whether you bake or buy, I’d suggest moving toward whole grain bread. Looking at the amount of fiber per serving is a good way to assess how ‘whole’ a bread from the store is.
I’m not sure how lazy you are, or how much you like to experiment, but someone on Lemmy mentioned Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. While it isn’t hyperbole, it will be a while before you reach this speed.
The big points for me are that most of the steps are, “do something else while stuff happens.” There is no kneading and no need for special tools, although a big container you can mostly seal and something that can withstand having water poured into it while being at oven temperatures are a big help. A mixer with a dough hook is also helpful if you don’t want to put in the effort to mix by hand, but a bowl, plastic wrap, a wooden spoon, and measuring spoons and cups are all you need.
I liked the results enough to buy their book, and everything I’ve made has turned out at worst alright (which isnt a whole lot because…lazy). Depending on the recipe, you can store the dough in the fridge for a couple weeks (do this regularly), or you can parbake and freeze loaves (never done this). Before doing this, I had only made bread in a bread machine, which never worked out too well for me, or helping my mom with kneading decades ago, which I hated.
Regular store bread has lots of preservatives. I do not think you want that. Many small bakeries make good basic breads without preservatives, but they are usually expensive. If you can afford that price, buy it! Making bread takes a lot of time, but it is cheap, If you can afford that time, make it! Personally, I like whole-grain flavors for almost everything from sandwich bread to fried rice … but not for the rice in sushi.
Personally, I think anyone who can should give at least one shot at home baked bread, if only to see whether or not it’s something they want to do. I think for most it’s going to come down to whether or not they have the time for it in their day to day, week to week, routines. If you’ve never tried, there’s a nice recipe on youtube, first (or top 5) result when you search ‘5 minute baguette’, by Voila. I found this to be pretty doable in a daily routine. The 5 minutes is only referring to final prep time once you got a handle on it; no matter what the dough in this recipe needs to set up for 8 hours.
Bro is that cobblestone? Man, haven’t seen that in a while
If you buy raw beef, chicken, and or pork, you can prepare it to your own liking. That’s the best way to avoid unhealthy foods: don’t eat them.
Eating healthy, starts with preparing your own food, and it continuous with making sure that you balance the things you eat to make a healthy diet.
Yes, I am gradually learning, although at first it was awkward, especially with meat, but it was worth it.
Hey, send me a DM, I’ll give you my recipe collection and you can ask for tips any time you like.
Everyone has different health goals, which can be achieved with different foods.
Foods that nobody requires for optimal health, which you can safely reduce or eliminate to your preference:
- sugar
- glucose
- fructose
- processed oils
- processed foods (anything from a box)
As far as lifestyle interventions to trend toward better living I’d say
- Easy: Avoid any foods containing sugar
- Medium: Avoid any processed foods, including oils
- Hard: Whole food diet (vegan/vegetarian/ketogenic/carnivore)
Personally I’ve chosen Carnivore This is why I choose it in detail
It’s important to have a clear idea of what your goals are - If not being sluggish is the only goal, removing sugar from your diet should help considerably - low carb may help alot.
Ideally avoid sugar as much as possible. This also includes simple carbohydrates like you would find in bread and other grain. Sugar acts like any drug, once your dependant on it you only feel normal when you have sugar in your system.
Fats are a really good sauce of long lasting energy which lasts throughout the day, pretty much all natural fats are healthy including saturated fats like butter, contrary to popular belief. Processed fats like what’s found in vegetable oils on the other hand are bad.
That is a ton of misinformation
Starting off with stating that bread and other grain are only simple carbohydrates when whole grains are an easy source of complex carbs. And while sugar can be addictive it’s literally a nutrient that our body needs and if we fail to eat it, our body will just break down protein to produce it
Then while fats may by a good source of energy (because they offer 9 calories per gram) they are also an easy way to over consume calories because they are so dense.
Saturated fats are still problematic and try and look for some articles published outside of the U.S.
Then you start talking about vegetable oils being bad when olive oil has been the gold standard for healthy oil. There has been a ton of misinformation going around about seed oils trying to make them into the devil but again look for some RFK free Studies
“Recent research studied the diet and health of over 200,000 people in the US for around 30 years. The researchers found that people who consumed more plant oils (including seed oils) were less likely to die from cardiovascular disease or cancer over the course of the study. On the other hand, those with a higher intake of butter were more likely to die during the same period.”
That is a ton of misinformation
Actually it’s really solid advice and lines up with my reading.
Starting off with stating that bread and other grain are only simple carbohydrates when whole grains are an easy source of complex carbs.
It really doesn’t matter, complex or simple all carbohydrates get turned into blood glucose, the only difference is a 15m onset delay. Blood glucose is blood glucose, if you want to fight cravings and low energy, you want to keep it low and even.
And while sugar can be addictive it’s literally a nutrient that our body needs and if we fail to eat it, our body will just break down protein to produce it
We absolutely do not need to eat sugar, the body will produce the tiny amount of glucose required via gluconeogenesis, when someone is fat adapted the vast majority of the body will run on fat, reducing the need for any glucose at all (only red blood cells, and 3-5% of the brain will still require glucose)
Then while fats may by a good source of energy (because they offer 9 calories per gram) they are also an easy way to over consume calories because they are so dense.
Fat is very satiating, it is VERY difficult to overeat fat in the absence of sugar. As a example think about eating a stick of butter by itself, that would be a difficult task if your not very hungry indeed.
Saturated fats are still problematic and try and look for some articles published outside of the U.S.
https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/saturated-fat#evidence-to-date
Saturated fat has been pilloried unfairly by the lipid heart hypothesis which is based on fabricated data. It’s vilification does not stand up to modern scrutiny. Basically fat is good for you.
Then you start talking about vegetable oils being bad when olive oil has been the gold standard for healthy oil. There has been a ton of misinformation going around about seed oils trying to make them into the devil but again look for some RFK free Studies
Industrial oils are examples of extremely processed foods which have many downsides, causing whole body inflammation, interfering with cholesterol rafts, artificially lowering lipoproteins (this is a bad thing). It’s true real authentic olive oil can be produced without heavy processing and avoids these issues, but it’s nearly impossible to source genuine olive oil, it is almost always adulterated with cheaper industrial oils (vegetable oils).
There is no nutritional requirement in human health for industrial oils, they provide nothing essential, it is more prudent to eat real animal fats instead of fats from a chemical factory.
Actually it’s really solid advice and lines up with my reading
Then read more.
Your information is on par with the fitness influencers who are at the peak of the dunning Kruger curve after reading a few research articles from a predatory journal.
Then read more.
I’ve actually read quite a lot so far.
Reading about nutrition and metabolic health is my hobby.
That said I’m always happy to read more, if you have any primary non-epidemiology publications you can recommend I’d be happy to read them.
