Healthy Eating Tips

The core tip of a healthy diet is not to strictly limit foods and eat boiled vegetables every day, but to make minimal positive changes in your existing eating habits, giving priority to food diversity, and there is no need to sacrifice the pleasure of eating for the so-called "health standards".

Two years ago, I followed the trend and did a "healthy diet check-in". For three months in a row, I drank black coffee without additives in the morning, boiled chicken breast with brown rice at noon, and only ate a cucumber at night. In the end, I couldn't help but drink full-sugar bubble milk tea for three days, and also had fried chicken every meal. Not only did I gain back two pounds in weight, but even my aunt was delayed for half a month. Later, after talking to a friend who is a nutritionist, I realized that what I was doing was not called healthy eating at all, but self-torture.

Really, you don’t have to reinvent your eating habits all at once. For example, I usually buy white flour fried dough sticks with soy milk downstairs in the morning, but next time I switch to multi-grain pancakes, and ask the boss to add less sauce and an extra piece of lettuce. The calories are reduced by almost 100 calories, and the feeling of fullness is still strong, so I won't be hungry at noon. If you usually drink milk tea, you don’t need to hold it back until you quit. You can replace the whole sugar with three-thirds of sugar, and replace the pearls with coconut or oatmeal. The sugar content is reduced by two-thirds, and you still feel happy when you drink it. I do this now, and after half a year, I don’t feel that I have lost anything. On the contrary, my weight has stabilized by two pounds.

Oh, by the way, there are a lot of debates about carbs on the Internet right now. The ketogenic party says that you need to cut off carbs completely to lose weight. The traditional dietary guidelines also say that carbs should account for more than half of the total energy. In fact, there is really no need to take sides. If you have insulin resistance and high blood sugar, it’s okay to follow your doctor’s advice and appropriately reduce your refined carbohydrate intake. If you’re an ordinary office worker who has to sit for eight hours a day, there’s really no need to eat brown rice all the time. Adding a handful of corn grits or red beans to white rice can directly lower the glycemic index by several points, and the taste is much easier to swallow than pure brown rice. There is a girl next to me who followed the trend of ketosis for three months and lost one-third of her hair. My aunt postponed it for two months, and then gradually returned to eating rice. She really can't do it.

There are also many people who think that healthy eating requires buying expensive organic ingredients. My mother used to bring organic cabbage and organic strawberries to her home for tens of yuan per pound. Later, I showed her the agricultural product sampling report of the Municipal Supervision Bureau last year. The pesticide residue passing rate of ordinary fruits and vegetables was over 97%. After buying it, wash it with running water for half a minute, or soak it in light salt water for ten minutes. It is completely enough. There is really no need to spend several times more money. Oh, by the way, some people say you can’t eat fruits or drink milk on an empty stomach. In fact, it differs from person to person. If you don’t have stomach problems and drink milk without diarrhea, it’s absolutely fine to eat an apple and drink a glass of milk on an empty stomach. If you have reflux esophagitis, don’t eat oranges and lemons that are too sour on an empty stomach.

By the way, there is another trick that I personally tested and found to be particularly useful. When cooking, eat a bowl of vegetables first, then rice and meat. Unknowingly, you will eat a lot less refined carbohydrates and you won’t feel hungry. It is much more comfortable than if you deliberately diet. The Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents say that you should eat 12 kinds of food every day, 25 kinds per week. In fact, it is not difficult. In the morning, you can boil noodles, add an egg and a handful of green vegetables, order takeout and add a small portion of cold fungus at noon, and go home and cut an orange in the evening. By the end of the day, the variety is enough. There is no need to make a salad with more than ten kinds of ingredients. Not to mention the trouble, the taste is not good, and it is difficult to stick to it.

To put it bluntly, healthy eating is meant to make your life more comfortable, not to put shackles on you. If you really want to eat spicy hot pot today, then feel free to eat it. Take two more chopsticks of cabbage and cabbage, order two less portions of fat sheep, and switch to iced drinks with less sugar. Isn't this good? I really don’t need to feel so guilty after eating, it induces vomiting and fasting the next day, which is even worse for the body. After all, happiness is the most important thing when it comes to eating.