Simple Nutrition Principles for Success

Nutrition is a huge topic with endless amounts of opinions on different diets, strategies, and what foods you should and should not eat and when. It can be very confusing and contradicting at times.

How do you know what to believe?

The truth is most of this stuff is just over complicating things and only matters in extreme situations, like for a professional athlete where even an extra 1% improvement matters, but for most of us, it’s a lot of extra work and stress for very small and marginal improvements.

Here are the main things to focus on.

First, make sure you are eating the proper amount calories for your goals. Eating enough is the most basic priority of good nutrition. Food is where we get our energy from and all of our nutrients to promote good health. Severely restricting food intake is rarely a good nutritional approach, even if you are trying to lose weight.

Be mindful when you are eating. Mindless eating is one of the biggest reasons we struggle with nutrition. Just by making a habit of being mindful when you eat will go a long way. Put away the distractions when you eat and pay attention to how much you are eating, what you are eating, and how you feel. This is one of the biggest reasons that make most diets work. You go from not really paying attention to what you are eating to being very aware of what you are eating and how much.

When you eat, eat complete meals. This means having all 3 macronutrients at each meal. A protein, a carbohydrate and some healthy fats. So, a bagel with cream cheese is not a meal, same with a muffin and coffee. These are missing protein, an important nutrient we all need throughout the day. Build your meals around a protein source to make sure you are getting all the nutrients you need. This could also be considered mindful eating as well since you are actively thinking about how you are putting a complete meal together.

Try to eat mostly minimally processed, whole foods when you can, or just make the best possible choice you can in that moment. Again, being mindful of your choices.

Now, try to do these few things consistently. Not perfectly, consistently. Shoot for 80% of the time. This is much more realistic and accounts for life happening and reduces some of the stress of when it does, that you are still in control. Changes don’t happen in a single moment, they happen over time with consistency. The longer the time frame, the more improvements you will see. So set yourself up for success over the long term by not trying to be perfect, but good most of the time. And when you do encounter a set back, you accept it and get back on track without stressing about it.

For the most part, these are the principles that make most diets work. It’s not the specific diet that works, or the specific foods, it’s the fact that you are now mindfully eating, eating in the right amounts and making better overall choices because you are on a “diet”.

Adapt these nutrition principles into your lifestyle with 80% consistency and you will be well on your way to better nutrition and better health!