There are vast resources of what to eat, what not to eat, and what to do in order to stay healthy. Amid all this mess, it is extremely easy to get bogged down by the sheer amount of information. You simply want to figure out what to eat to get healthy - but every single website is suggesting different foods.
I propose a different method that is simple, effective, and efficient. It takes a little effort at the beginning, but it becomes an easy way to default into eating the foods you enjoy without many hardcore limitations and gates. This is what I use to enjoy the foods I love while staying healthy.
Step 1 - Find a Nutritional Website for Tracking Meals
This will be your home base. Nearly every nutritional website out there has its own perks. I personally use http://nutritiondata.self.com/ because I feel that it has the most comprehensive overview of nutrition, and its tools make it easy to plan in advance.
Step 2 - Play Around!
This can be the fun part, or the annoying part. Play around with the website and track a bunch of different proportions of daily meal totals. If you're deficient in a category, look up what foods are high in that micro/macronutrient. It is important to get your daily needs in everything, therefore continue playing around with different meals and daily totals until you're able to meet everything you need.
When going through this, I would throw all my desired meals that I knew I loved into the tracking. Omelette for Breakfast, Salad for Lunch, Meat for Dinner. Then, I ran through and added things to each meal that were high in nutrition that I could tolerate adding. An example of this, I added chicken liver to my omelette, substituted mozzarella for Gouda cheese. For Lunch, I substituted lettuce for kale and threw in an avocado. After a few minor adjustments elsewhere, I was set and happy, with all my nutritional nutrients totaling 90%+. Keep working with it until you are satisfied with your nutrient totals, but keep in mind that one nutrient is not more important than the others - treat them all as separate entities, but with equal consideration.
Step 3 - Stick Close to This Plan
Now, that's obvious; stick to it. But I know that life likes to throw a wrench in your plans. You woke up lake, can't prepare your lunch, and now need to eat out. That's fine - but remember to try to emulate your meals as close to what you know works for you.
So, if you're normally eating a salad for lunch, don't go out and make a habit of buying soup because it's "healthy". This is an empty term for you, as healthy can mean a whole manner of things. The soup may be high in a bunch of necessary minerals, but you get those minerals elsewhere - you need the salad for it's Vitamin A and C content. Unless you have a great understanding of the nutrient density of a bunch of different foods, don't go and try to MacGuyver your way into trying out a bunch of different foods.
Step 4 - Have Fun, and Eat Some Damn Dessert!
The final step moving forward is to have fun. Simply creating new plans is a great way to include variety in your life. Or you can stick to the same basic plan (it's what I do). Oh, and by the way. If you're satisfying all your needs, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be eating some dessert. Can always work it off after your next outing with a girl
.
I propose a different method that is simple, effective, and efficient. It takes a little effort at the beginning, but it becomes an easy way to default into eating the foods you enjoy without many hardcore limitations and gates. This is what I use to enjoy the foods I love while staying healthy.
Step 1 - Find a Nutritional Website for Tracking Meals
This will be your home base. Nearly every nutritional website out there has its own perks. I personally use http://nutritiondata.self.com/ because I feel that it has the most comprehensive overview of nutrition, and its tools make it easy to plan in advance.
Step 2 - Play Around!
This can be the fun part, or the annoying part. Play around with the website and track a bunch of different proportions of daily meal totals. If you're deficient in a category, look up what foods are high in that micro/macronutrient. It is important to get your daily needs in everything, therefore continue playing around with different meals and daily totals until you're able to meet everything you need.
When going through this, I would throw all my desired meals that I knew I loved into the tracking. Omelette for Breakfast, Salad for Lunch, Meat for Dinner. Then, I ran through and added things to each meal that were high in nutrition that I could tolerate adding. An example of this, I added chicken liver to my omelette, substituted mozzarella for Gouda cheese. For Lunch, I substituted lettuce for kale and threw in an avocado. After a few minor adjustments elsewhere, I was set and happy, with all my nutritional nutrients totaling 90%+. Keep working with it until you are satisfied with your nutrient totals, but keep in mind that one nutrient is not more important than the others - treat them all as separate entities, but with equal consideration.
Step 3 - Stick Close to This Plan
Now, that's obvious; stick to it. But I know that life likes to throw a wrench in your plans. You woke up lake, can't prepare your lunch, and now need to eat out. That's fine - but remember to try to emulate your meals as close to what you know works for you.
So, if you're normally eating a salad for lunch, don't go out and make a habit of buying soup because it's "healthy". This is an empty term for you, as healthy can mean a whole manner of things. The soup may be high in a bunch of necessary minerals, but you get those minerals elsewhere - you need the salad for it's Vitamin A and C content. Unless you have a great understanding of the nutrient density of a bunch of different foods, don't go and try to MacGuyver your way into trying out a bunch of different foods.
Step 4 - Have Fun, and Eat Some Damn Dessert!
The final step moving forward is to have fun. Simply creating new plans is a great way to include variety in your life. Or you can stick to the same basic plan (it's what I do). Oh, and by the way. If you're satisfying all your needs, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be eating some dessert. Can always work it off after your next outing with a girl
.