Healthy recipes and reasons

Each meal is guaranteed to include 1 fist-sized portion of whole grain/potato staple food, 2 fist-sized portions of dark/light-colored vegetables, 1 palm-sized portion (excluding fingers) of high-quality high-protein ingredients, and cooking oil limited to the amount on the tip of one thumb. The rest can be flexibly adjusted according to your exercise intensity, underlying diseases, and dietary preferences.

This framework is not just a thought. It completely conforms to the core recommendations of the "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents 2022" and also adapts to the gastrointestinal foundation of Chinese people who have eaten cereals for thousands of years. The glycemic index (GI) of whole grains and assorted potatoes is generally more than 30% lower than that of polished rice and white noodles. They make you feel fuller, retain more B vitamins, and are more stable for blood sugar than eating white rice and steamed buns every day. ； 2 fists of vegetables, half of which should be dark green, reddish purple, and half of which should be light-colored, can cover most of the dietary fiber, vitamins and minerals needed. Dietary fiber can also help regulate intestinal flora. Many people's constipation problem will naturally be cured by eating enough vegetables. ； Needless to say, a palmful of high-quality protein has a thermal effect about three times higher than that of carbohydrates. It makes you less likely to be craving for snacks after you have eaten enough. It is also particularly important for maintaining muscle mass. People over 30 years old know that muscle loss is fast. Whether you can carry groceries upstairs by yourself depends on this reserve when you are old.

People always ask me before, are the ketogenic, Mediterranean, and light fasting products that are popular on the Internet unreliable? Not really. Different eating patterns are suitable for different groups of people, and there is no absolute good or bad. For example, the Mediterranean diet is indeed a health model certified by the WHO. I have a client who is engaged in foreign trade and has been following foreign bloggers all year round. He eats olive oil, deep-sea fish, and whole grains. Last year, his blood lipids were much lower than those of his peers in the physical examination, and his skin condition was also very good. However, the problem is that it is inconvenient to buy fresh deep-sea fish in many third- and fourth-tier cities. After one meal, the cost is almost as high as takeout. If you insist on copying it, you will not be able to persist for half a month. I don’t deny the value of the ketogenic diet. It is clinically used to assist in the treatment of refractory epilepsy. People with severe insulin resistance can also quickly improve their indicators with short-term use, but you should not follow the trend and try blindly. Last year, I met an Internet executive who sat in the office and could hardly move every day. In 3 months of ketosis, he lost 12 pounds, and his uric acid soared to 580. Not to mention a lot of hair loss, my aunt postponed it for half a month. It was completely worth the loss. There is also a vegan diet that has been promoted by many health bloggers. A yoga teacher I know has been vegan for 7 years. He regularly supplements B12 and lactoferrin, and his annual physical examination indicators are all normal. But if ordinary people just follow the trend without taking any supplements, they will most likely develop iron deficiency anemia within half a year, and they will feel dizzy even after taking two steps.

In fact, this framework is very flexible to use, and you don’t need to count calories at all. For example, if you rush to work in the morning, 1 medium corn is the staple food. Buy a tomato on the way and add half a handful of spinach blanched the night before to get 2 punches of vegetables. 1 boiled egg and 1 box of 200ml sugar-free pure milk are just enough for 1 palm of protein. If you like to spread some peanut butter to enhance the taste, just control the amount to 1 thumb. You can make a healthy breakfast in 5 minutes, which is much better than eating soy milk fried dough sticks with dozens of grams of sugar added. An emergency nurse came for consultation before and said that people on the Internet said that eating carbohydrates at night will make you fat. She ate a bowl of white rice before going to the night shift. She felt guilty for several days. I told her directly that it was completely unnecessary. You have to walk more than 10,000 steps in a night to patrol the ward. If you don't eat carbohydrates, you can faint at the nurse's station in the middle of the night. How can there be so many rigid rules? If you sit in the office for 8 hours a day and hardly move, just reduce your staple food to half a fistful in the evening. If you want to work overtime or exercise, there is no problem at all in eating one punch normally.

When I was working out to gain muscle last year, I increased the amount of protein to 1.5 punches, the staple food to 1.5 punches, and strength training 3 times a week. After 3 months, my body fat rate has not increased, and my deadlift weight has increased by 20 pounds. This year, my parents' fasting blood sugar level reached 6.2 during their physical examination. I replaced the white rice they had been eating for decades with half white rice and half oatmeal, and added an extra half plate of green leafy vegetables to each meal. After two months of follow-up checkups, the fasting blood sugar level was stable at around 5.7. Even my dad's 10-year-old constipation problem has improved a lot.

To put it bluntly, healthy recipes are never meant to make you count your calories on a calorie calculator, nor are they meant to make you completely give up on happy foods like milk tea hot pot. It’s perfectly fine to have a craving for a meal once in a while. As long as you eat according to this framework for a long time, don't feel bloated or sleepy after eating, have enough energy at ordinary times, and the blood sugar, blood lipids and weight in the physical examination are all within the normal range, then it is a perfect healthy diet that is exclusive to you and cannot be compared to other people's internet celebrity recipes.