Close the Gap | Finding What Works for You | Nutrition | Nutrition Science | The Value of Good Nutrition
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Nutrition is messy
I want to bring a tiny bit of clarity to this messy mess called nutrition. Because the most common question I get is about what is a vegetable and what is not, today I'll share with you an easy way to classify plant foods nutritionally. No debates, no feuds, no tribes, no bull 💩.
Refreshing or weary? Diet sodas, ditch them, or drink them?
To diet soda or regular soda ... or not soda? I get the question regarding non-caloric sweetened drinks a lot. It is a good showcase of the standard nutritional problem we face nowadays. It has all the elements that make this kind of discussion entrenched and complicated: cultural beliefs of what we should or not consume, product marketing, incomplete science, and the fact that Coke is delicious. Like everything else, there is not one straightforward answer. However, in this video, I give you my view on the topic. You should come out of it with some ideas on how to decide for yourself.
Food and Flow
Let's talk food today! In my years of helping people change their eating habits, I have learned so much about human behavior. Nothing really comes close to it. Running and Olympic lifting are fantastic, don't get me wrong, but changing the way we eat is another beast. One of the most exciting things I have learned is that switching the attention to why and how to eat often solves the problem of what to eat. This is a very counter-culture concept, I know. We are always worried about meal-plans, macro-nutrients, keto, paleo, no diary, supplements, and whatnot. However, we never stop to consider our eating habits from a more significant and more meaningful perspective. I get it. Our lives are busy, thinking is hard --I am not being sarcastic, and having a critical approach to our behavioral habits, it is exhausting.
What we are up against - Part 1
Let’s start today with a grounding idea: we are fortunate enough to live in an age in which we can actually think about how to optimize our personal nutrition. When I was growing up, everyday I saw people in the streets who did not have enough food--I don’t mean they didn’t have high quality food, they didn’t have any kind of food. Luckily things have changed in most parts of the world. And to be sure, if you are reading this you are just trying to improve your health by tweaking your nutrition. This is a privilege of our times: the great access we have to food, to nutritional information, and to sophisticated metrics.
Breakfast on the Road
The road can be a tough spot when it comes to good nutrition. However there are always options. The road is an excellent opportunity to apply the principles: do what you can with what you have where you are.
Food is Dead
Let me start by saying something controversial: there is no such thing as a “healthy meal,” not really. I guess you could eat a very healthy live animal and that would be a healthy meal. But I don’t see that happening often. Food is not “healthy.” Food is more or less nutritious, food is more or less calorie-dense, and food is more or less tasty. But let’s be real: most of the food we eat is dead or dying. In the best case, the food you eat was alive moments ago, (oysters anyone?) however in most cases your food has passed through several industrial processes that stripped its original glorious biology -think Pop Tarts. This might seem like an annoying linguistic distinction that only a nerd cares about. And it most definitely is, but hey! hold on, there is a useful point to be made: the thing that is healthy or unhealthy is you, not your food. Your health is your responsibility, and yours alone. A snickers bar after lunch is not going to make you unhealthy. But a daily Snickers bar after lunch might. A Snickers bar on Monday and then a Coke on Tuesday, plus those delicious donuts Janice from accounting brought to the meeting on Wednesday (because she does not give a fuck), that bag of chips that somehow made its way down your gullet on Thursday afternoon while you were rushing to meet that deadline, and finally that half of a pizza Friday night, plus the tortilla chips and pork belly tacos you ate after you got drunk on Saturday--all this combined WILL make you unhealthy. Repeated actions are what makes you unhealthy; it is your habitual behaviors that improve or harm your health. But ice cream is not “unhealthy” or “healthy.” As matter of fact, that Saturday ice cream you always have with your kids might be the best habit you have. If that Saturday ice cream is what allows you to eat more nutritious and balanced meals consistently the rest of the week, if it allows you to avoid all that junk that Janice keeps bringing to Wednesday’s meetings and the Friday pizza and beer binge, and if it allows you to spend some quality time with your kids, that Saturday ice cream (despite being full of sugar) is totally making you better and healthier in the long term. Enjoy!
