Diet is nutrition, not restriction

Disclaimer: This is not medical advice, and should not be used in the treatment of medical conditions, including disordered eating. This should be interpreted and used at your own discretion and is not a substitute for medical advice, personal health evaluation, or professional recommendation.

TLDR; all you need is Oreos.

Everyone who eats is on a diet. Everything you eat contains calories, also known as energy. Food fuels everything your body does, even sleeping. In some cases, changes in nutrition are necessary in response to medical diagnoses like diabetes or heart disease. In most cases, nutrition is simply a fuel source to meet your lifestyle needs. A marathon runner will (and should) have different dietary needs than someone who plays in a recreational pickleball league. Relationships with food are personal and unique, I want to help you focus on the cold hard facts of food and how to make choices that fuel your body simply and effectively.

What exactly is a “healthy” diet? To put it simply, a healthy diet consists of balanced consumption of essential nutrients (protein, carbohydrates, and fat), fluid (water), micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), and fiber. 

Generally speaking, sticking to “whole” foods (fresh, unprocessed foods that you prepare at home), is a great place to start. Whole foods are nutrient dense, meaning the calories they contain are used for energy and contribute to overall health, unlike excessive solid fats and added sugar which have little to no nutritional value because they lack the essential nutrients listed above.

You do not need to count calories or macros to make a positive change in your nutrition habits. Start by drinking water, and eating whole foods. Let’s explore what may be holding you back, and how to overcome those obstacles. This is not all-inclusive, and I encourage you to reach out with your personal experiences. We can all learn from each other!

Common obstacles to a healthy diet

1. It’s too expensive.

Thrifty grocery shopping is a skill. The most challenging part of it is that it takes a fair amount of planning. Grocery stores have weekly deals that you can access from store flyers, websites, and apps. Many stores now offer points when you input your phone number every time you make a purchase to apply cash back to future purchases.

It’s best to make a list based on the weekly deals before going into the store. Grocery stores are designed to be distracting and make certain items attractive based on which companies have paid for prime advertising layouts. You don’t need to buy that thing just because it’s “on sale.” Find something you like with a good deal and base the rest of your shopping around it. For example, if avocados are 69 cents each I can plan a few meals around that, like a crockpot chilli, chicken tacos, fish topped with guacamole, etc. Use the things that catch your eye to guide you and it will keep you excited about what you’ve purchased.

Save money and time by purchasing frozen fruits and vegetables, they’re just as fresh as the produce section and sometimes more so because they’re frozen immediately after harvesting in most cases. This way you don’t have to worry about them spoiling in the fridge if you can’t eat them fast enough. I like to get frozen staples, like a veggie mix and a berry mix that I can use in a pinch for quick meals, and just a few fresh items based on weekly deals.

2. I don’t know how to cook.

How are you going to chop an onion with those donkey hooves?

Cooking really does not have to be a complicated process. Keeping some staple items in your pantry and fridge can go a long way. Your food may not be interesting when you first give it a try, but it doesn’t have to look good in a photo to be nutritious. Here is a basic list of things that I always keep handy, and use in almost everything I cook.

Spices:

• Salt

• Pepper

• Garlic powder

• Refrigerated diced garlic

• Chili powder

• Paprika

• Basil

• Parsley

• Thyme

• Mustard powder

• Ranch seasoning

Sauces:

• Ranch

• BBQ

• Frank’s Red Hot

• Mustard

• Mayonnaise

• Greek yogurt

• Salsa

• Soy sauce

• Olive oil

• Apple cider vinegar

If you don’t know how to season food but you know that you like BBQ sauce and ranch, just use BBQ and ranch! You might be thinking... but I thought ranch and mayonnaise are unhealthy. Guess what, the tablespoon of ranch on your chicken is not going to affect your pants size or your sleep quality. What’s important is to make real food that didn’t come in a box or from a restaurant where you have no idea what they put in it.

Try to use a new spice every week and you’ll learn what suits your palate over time. A good standard for any meat is salt, pepper, garlic, regardless of if you put sauce on it afterward.

I have Greek yogurt listed as a sauce. It's a good staple by itself, and I use it as a sour cream substitute, add it to smoothies, mix it with spices to make a dip; it’s extremely versatile and very nutritious.

3. I don’t enjoy cooking.

Kitchen gadgets are a great investment if you don’t like cooking. I recommend a decent size slow cooker because you can set it and forget it for literal hours. Throw some chicken breast in there, fill it with water to the top, add spices, put the thing on low for 4-6 hours and you’ve got easy shredded chicken for soups, sandwiches, tacos, pasta, anything really. Plus, you can season whatever is in there little by little as it cooks. Easy peasy.

Some other popular gadgets are pressure cookers (e.g. Instapot), air fryers, rice cookers, and multi-function blenders. Arm yourself with an arsenal of machines that do the work for you! Again, your food doesn’t have to be pretty, your body doesn’t care what it looked like before it was used for energy.

4. I don’t have time to cook.

Admittedly, time is a difficult obstacle to overcome. Work and life obligations not only take up a lot of time in action, but also drain us of the energy required to do anything else when it’s over. My advice for this is to make food part of your essential daily routine.

Let’s use a hypothetical example of a person who works 12 hour shifts, rotating days and nights sporadically. You wake up, roll out of bed, do the absolute minimum to get out the door and on your way. Clothes, brush teeth, out you go. I get it, this was me for many years. It wasn’t until I started strength training that food became totally non negotiable. In reality, it should be framed this way in the mind of every person alive because you need food; you cannot sustain your life without it.

There are a few methods I can recommend, and it may take some trial and error to find what works best for you.

• Shark Method - I call it this because most sharks famously need to keep moving or they’ll die. When your other obligations for the day have ended, you propel yourself forward into the kitchen to make dinner for today, and prepare breakfast and lunch for the following day. You do this every day, it’s just part of your daily routine. Then, you relax with your dinner knowing that you took care of your future self.

• Meal Prep - Ah yes, the stacks of matching containers as far as the eye can see. If you don’t mind eating the same thing every day, just eat the same thing every day. Prepare food for the whole week, or any amount of days at a time, then just grab and go at meal times. A great hack for this is to prepare and divy up the foundational items (ex: meat and rice), and when you’re ready to take the container just dump some frozen vegetables on top. This keeps the meal cold if you don’t have a fridge, prevents mushy veggies, and you can just microwave the whole thing.
  

• Meal delivery services - There are many many options for meal deliveries and I have personally tried a few and enjoyed each one. They can be pricey, especially if you are feeding a whole family, but man are they useful. Most of the services are highly customizable in terms of goals, time restrictions, frequency of deliveries, etc. Most also offer new subscriber deals that are crazy good. One’s I’ve personally used are Factor, HelloFresh, Marley Spoon, and Blue Apron. No complaints, and they were all pretty different in terms of pricing and styles of food offered.
  

• No-cook/grab-n-go meals - Sometimes you can just throw some stuff in the fridge and it’s a ready meal with no need to heat it up or put anything else together. This will take some prep ahead of time, but not much. Just add this process to any one of the above methods. There are tons of recipes out there so I’ll just list some things that I like to prepare to grab quickly:

• Overnight oats

• Chia seed pudding

• Sandwich

• Boiled eggs

• Chicken salad

• Cheese chunks

Conclusion

I believe that you can learn to love health. Feeling good just feels good, ya know? Eating is self-care and it’s easy to treat it that way if you can think of nutrients as essential. It’s difficult to make that type of shift in thinking, and small steps will ensure that habits and mindset are transformed for the long-term. It doesn't matter if your goals are to lose weight, get stronger, run a marathon, or any combination of any variety of reasons. Start with the a good foundation and you'll be prepared to make incremental specifications to your goals. Health is forever.

When it doubt, just flip a table. It won't make you healthier, but damn it feels good.