God it’s hard to know what’s healthy and what’s not isn’t it?
Everywhere you look, whether it’s Instagram, YouTube, TV adverts, supermarket shelves, magazines, you’ve got conflicting messages about what you should and shouldn’t be eating. One bunch are telling you to eat nothing but meat and eggs, another lot are saying animal products are super bad for you, and you need to go plant-based, others are telling you that carbs are the devil incarnate. And there’s always the next great weight loss fad, whether it’s red days and green days, the 5:2, super low fat, Atkins, hell who remembers the cabbage soup diet??
I’ll admit I’ve tried a few of these over the years. I lost a load of weight on a super low fat diet. And then put it back on again. I did the same on the Atkins diet many years ago. I remember having such bad heartburn on the train home after eating an entire Boursin for lunch that I thought I was having a heart attack (I was a bit more dramatic in my 30s).
Let’s be honest here, they’re all either a wee bit extremist, or frankly they’ve got something to sell.
It really doesn’t need to be that hard. Whilst I used to be a bit of a yo-yo dieter in my 30s and most of my 40s, part of my personal health journey was finding a more sustainable way of eating well, eating delicious food that I enjoy, and absolutely not ever feeling deprived, but still managing to maintain a really healthy weight that barely fluctuates, and having really nice steady energy levels.
Everybody is a bit different, we are all unique individuals. For example, we all process sugars and fats slightly differently, so there are no absolute hard & fast rules, and you should listen to your body’s cues.
Here’s a few guidelines to work to though –
1 First and foremost, eat real food.
Buy as much of your food as you can as single ingredient food and either cook it or chop it up and eat it in a salad. Then you know EXACTLY what’s in the food on your plate. Bonus – real food tastes better too!
2 If there’s an ingredient in a processed food that you don’t recognise as a kitchen ingredient, put it back on the shelf.
There are exceptions to this, e.g. ascorbic acid that is sometimes listed as an acidity regulator is literally just vitamin C in powder form and is not going to do you any harm at all, but until you know the difference between these additives, just avoid them all and you can’t go wrong.
3 Avoid processed foods that contain vegetable or seed oils.
There’s a list of the worst offenders, called ‘the hateful 8’ but the main ones to avoid in the UK are sunflower oil, rapeseed oil and vegetable oil. These oils are in most processed and ultra processed foods. There’s lots of information online about these oils so I won’t go into great detail here, but partly their nutritional properties, and partly the way they are processed both promote inflammation in the body, and a lot of research suggests that they also promote addictive eating behaviours. If you’re interested in reading more, here’s Dr Cate Shanahan laying it out for you but a quick Google search will take you to plenty of other sources.
4 Cook with saturated or mono unsaturated fats, such as coconut oil, avocado oil, ghee and olive oil, which are more stable at higher temperatures and less likely to oxidise and cause issues in your gut.
5 Start the day right to regulate your blood sugar, so that you’re not getting energy slumps and carb cravings between meals.
Eat a good energy dense meal when you break your fast, whether that’s first thing or later in the day (we can get into intermittent fasting another time!). This means a good balance of protein, good fats and fibre, with or without carbs.
6 Eat plenty of good quality proteins.
Whether you enjoy protein from meat, fish, eggs, cheese, beans or tofu, buy the best quality that you can. So ideally that’s grass-fed beef, it’s organic free range eggs, it’s non GMO tofu. It makes a difference to the nutrient density and the quality of the protein. Remember that most plant-based proteins are not complete proteins i.e. they don’t contain all 9 of the essential amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, that the body needs to obtain from food. The other 11 we can make ourselves. So make sure that you’re combining your plant-based proteins properly to fill your amino acid bingo card.
7 As we get older, most women tend to need more protein and good quality fats, and less carbohydrate.
We tend to process carbs less well as we get older and we need the protein and good fats, amongst other things, to help us to maintain decent levels of lean muscle mass and synthesise hormones, as our natural growth hormone oestrogen declines. So focus your meals on the protein, good fats, and fibre, and let any carbohydrate you have with it take a much smaller supporting role.
8 If you’re going to eat something sweet, do it at the end of a meal and not on an empty stomach.
Not only will you eat less of it, as you’re largely full from your meal, but it will have a much smaller impact on your blood sugar level and therefore your snacky cravings 2 hours later.
9 Support your digestion by starting with some bitter green salad.
It will kickstart your digestive juices so that they’re all primed to digest your meal properly, and it will give your gut some fibre to tackle, before it get stuck into something more carby, which again, helps to regulate your blood sugar.
10 And finally, sit down to eat your meal, preferably at a table, and without distractions other than chatting to whoever you’re sharing a meal with.
Take your time and chew your food properly. You will digest it better, so no ‘bolt & bloat’, and you are more likely to stop when you’ve eaten enough.
I’ve tried to make this short and easy to digest (sorry…) but there’s plenty more where that came from, so if your current eating habits are not making you happy or well, please get in touch and perhaps we can work together to get you back on track.
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