One of the most important elements of a healthy lifestyle is our diet. In fact, some might say it is the only element.
Hippocrates, for example, who is often considered the father of medicine, is famous for saying “let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”.
In this article, we will discuss 7 tips on how to start eating healthy, emphasizing simple approaches geared towards those just beginning their health journey.
(Self) Knowledge Is Key
It’s difficult to start eating healthy until you’ve enlightened yourself about the various approaches to diet. Start by simply asking your friends and family what they think constitutes a healthy diet. Then, start your research from there. The internet is a great place, yes, but take everything you read with a grain of salt.
Here’s our general take: eating healthy is not just about eating healthy food. It’s about having a healthy relationship with your food. One element of this, of course, is the food you eat. It’s also how you eat, when you eat, where you eat, why you eat, and who you eat with. Perform a genuine self-examination of your dietary personality. Be thorough but kind to yourself.
Really, eating healthy is about self-awareness. You have to understand your innate desires and finetune your life to better serve those. For some of us, eating healthy might be the equivalent of eating unhealthy for someone else.
Figuring out how to start eating healthy is a complicated process that might take an entire lifetime.
Photo credit to Healthy for Good
Make a Plan and Stick to It
Most impulses towards healthy eating are stalled by a lack of mental organization. Make sure you know what your approach is. Create a calendar of meals if you have to. Create a budget.
You can never be overly prepared when it comes to food. Your cells die and are reborn every moment using the foods you eat as the basis. Food is sacred. It’s going in your body. It’s becoming your body. It’s becoming YOU. Your future self is just your current food. Suck on that for a while.
Photo credit to Reader’s Digest
Food is more than just food. It’s an idea.
The elusive health that you seek is not just in the food. It’s in you, too. It’s in your connection with your food. More specifically, it’s in your perception of the ideas underlying your food.
Make a simple list of all the ideas associated with the food you eat. How do they relate to your personality? How do they relate to your morality?
If you could eat an idea, what ideas would you want to consume? What ideas would be most digestible? You ask these questions as a basis for how to start eating healthy.
Homecooked Meals Are Best
Whenever you eat out or buy pre-made food, you lose control over the culinary process. You lose awareness of what you are actually eating.
When you make your own food, you can control every ingredient that goes into the meal. Once you’ve determined your approach to healthy eating, homecooked meals will allow you to execute this.
Homecooked meals are also tastier and allow you to form a unique palette. If you rely on other cooks, then you are just literally eating their ideas and artistry. The key to healthy eating is to empower yourself as the artist of your diet.
Simpler is Better
Focus initially on reducing ingredients, not adding them. Try eating meals of only 1 or 2 ingredients. If you can’t do that with your current diet, then you’re probably not eating the right food.
Health shouldn’t be complicated. It’s our birthright. It’s there for all of us to have. Sometimes removing the garbage can help us find the jewels. Clean eating, as some call it, should be our goal. Stop eating the garbage. Focus on the jewels.
Here’s a sobering idea: health doesn’t actually exist. All that exists is a disease. Health is just the futile attempt at removing disease. We can strive for perfection, but in the end, we still die.
Think about conscious, healthy eating habits as removing and minimizing, not adding or maximizing something.
Carbs or Fats – Pick one
This is probably the secret you’ve been searching for. Carbs and fats do not mix well when eaten together.
If you want to eat a lot of fatty foods, then fine. Do that. Find high-quality fats, and initiate ketosis. Just don’t eat a lot of carbohydrates.
If you want to eat a lot of carbohydrates, then fine. Do that. Just don’t eat a lot of fats. If you absolutely must eat fats, then eat them in isolation away from carbs.
Photo credit to Metabolic Effect
Engage in Intermittent Fasting
A healthy diet also consists of what you don’t eat, and when you don’t eat it.
Think about it this way: we eat so that we don’t have to eat. We eat to live. We don’t live to eat. If you find yourself approaching the latter, then take a step back and reexamine your priorities. Figuring out how to start eating healthy consists of honestly acknowledging our relationship to our food.
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