Nutritious dietary advice

There is no "perfect nutrition recipe" that is universally applicable. A diet that is truly suitable for you = conforms to basic nutrition logic + matches your physical condition, life rhythm, and dietary preferences. There is no need to forcefully eat foods you don't like because of the "health standards" on the Internet, and there is no need to worry about a mouthful of milk tea or a piece of cake for half a day.

I have been a family nutrition coach for 6 years, and I have seen too many people who turn healthy eating into torture. Last month, an Internet client came to me and said that he followed a blogger and ate boiled broccoli + oil-free fried chicken breasts for two weeks, and he did not lose much body fat. I changed the recipe for him: the broccoli was replaced with his favorite stir-fried kale, the chicken breast was roasted with a small amount of Orleans marinade for 15 minutes, and the braised dried beans he had loved growing up was added to the afternoon snack. After a month of adjustment, he lost 2 points of body fat. Last week, he told me that he no longer had to regard eating as a KPI.

In fact, many people regard nutritious eating as a math problem, counting calories and nutrients for every bite. It is really unnecessary. Your own hands are the best measuring tools. You only need to gather three parts for each meal: a fist-sized staple food, a palm-thick portion of protein, and two handfuls of leafy vegetables. It doesn’t matter if the ratio is slightly off, so you don’t need to carry a food scale with you to weigh the grams.

I have been exposed to all the food schools that are hotly debated on the Internet, and I really can’t say who is right and who is wrong. For example, the low-carb diet has been popular for several years. I have a client with polycystic cysts. I replaced the three meals of rice and noodles with half grains, and stopped drinking one cup of pearl milk tea every day. After 3 months, my aunt became regular and lost 12 pounds. However, there is also a customer who works on algorithms and follows the low-carbon learning. His brain can no longer move after two days. He even writes the wrong parentheses when writing code. He has four or five meetings a day, and his brain is completely powered by carbohydrates. He insists on not eating rice because he is struggling with himself. Later, he changed back to eating a bowl of white rice at noon every day, and his work efficiency actually improved. On the other hand, the same goes for the low-fat diet advocated by the older generation. If you are thin and have weak digestive function, adding two more spoons of olive oil to your cooking and grabbing two handfuls of almonds as snacks will make you less likely to lose hair than eating boiled vegetables every day.

Oh, by the way, there is also the issue of whether egg yolks can be eaten, which has been debated for more than ten years. Both sides can come up with authoritative papers to endorse it. In fact, they are right: people with high cholesterol and basic cardiovascular diseases should only eat less than three egg yolks a week. If you are young and have a normal metabolism, eating two egg yolks a day will not be a burden at all. The cholesterol will not cause as much damage to blood vessels as if you stayed up late. Many people believe that "drinking porridge to nourish the stomach" is the same. When you have just had gastric surgery or have an acute gastritis attack, drinking some warm porridge can indeed reduce the burden on the gastrointestinal tract. However, if you have a lot of stomach acid and have reflux esophagitis, drinking porridge every day will aggravate the acid reflux. Eating soft and rotten food for a long time will also degrade the digestive ability of the stomach. Eating a little hard food will make you uncomfortable.

When it comes to supplements, I generally advise people to buy less, unless you really have a gap: for example, office workers who sit in the office every day and don’t get much sunlight, a little vitamin D supplement can really relieve fatigue. People who usually eat takeout and rarely touch vegetables, there is nothing wrong with taking some multivitamins. But if you usually eat everything for your meals, including chicken, duck, fish, meat, vegetables, eggs, and milk, then a bottle of Internet celebrity health care products worth several hundred yuan is really not as cost-effective as eating two more oranges or one more boiled egg. I have seen too many people follow the trend and buy two barrels of protein powder. After eating it twice, they thought it smelled like beany and then let it expire. It was a waste of money.

Talking about my own habits, I usually don’t deliberately avoid food. In the summer, I can eat half of an iced watermelon at a time. I never go to friends for hot pot barbecues. I just pay attention to the ratio of staple food, protein, and vegetables when eating. Occasionally, I indulge in a meal without feeling guilty at all. Really, the impact of emotions on digestion is much greater than if you eat a hot pot meal. I have seen too many people become anxious to the point of insomnia after eating junk food. The damage caused by the fat and sugar is not even a fraction of the emotional exhaustion.

If you have old people and children at home, don’t be too serious. Don’t always force the old people with bad teeth to eat hard cereals. Add some chopped vegetables and minced meat to cooked rice and white noodles to make them softer. It is less likely to cause indigestion than stuffing corn and oatmeal. If children don’t like spinach, there’s no need to chase it. Instead, replace it with rapeseed or broccoli, or chop it up and mix it with eggs to make vegetable pancakes. As long as they can eat it, there’s no need to make the whole family’s meals feel like a war just for that little bit of nutrition.

To put it bluntly, a nutritious diet never puts a shackles on you, but makes you feel comfortable eating and physically comfortable. If you follow a certain "authoritative recipe" for half a month and either feel hungry or make you want to vomit, don't doubt it. There must be something wrong with the recipe, not you.