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I tend to think of health improvement in terms of 3 distinct pillars - nutrition, exercise/movement, and sleep/circadian rhythm - supported by 1 foundation - mindset. Out of those 3 pillars, the one that I most often start working on with people is nutrition.
There are a few reasons for this. For one thing, I know that people are already eating on a daily (sometimes hourly!) basis, so they’re not needing to build a brand new habit from scratch, as the case may be with exercise. And no matter what their current diet is like, I know that we can always make incremental changes to it in order to move it in a healthier direction.
Not only that, but I’ve found that nutrition is the where people get the most confused. They’re bombarded every day with contradictory messages about what they should be eating, to the point where they finally just throw up their hands and continue eating whatever they’ve always eaten, without any scrutiny. If you can't know what is true, why even try to find out?
This is a real shame, because changing the way we eat is one of the most powerful tools we have to affect the way we feel from day to day. And my mission is to help you understand exactly how to wield this powerful tool to do the most good and the least harm for as long as possible.
Incremental, sustainable changes
One thing that sets me apart from a lot of other health coaches is that very rarely will I attempt to overhaul someone’s diet overnight. Those “30-day challenge” approaches, where someone tries to completely overhaul their diet and follow some expert’s list of approved foods for a month, is not usually the best approach (at least in my opinion).
Of course, in some instances someone may be dealing with a health issue that requires a strict elimination diet. There are also distinct personality types that may be more suited to more drastic styles of changes with a list of black-and-white rules. But what I most often find is that the best way to make a way of eating sustainable is to make manageable, incremental changes and building on those over time.
The goal here is to “shrink the change.” We want to make the change so small that you can sustain it even on your worst days.
Here’s an example.
Let’s say that you’re my client, and we’ve decided that you need more protein in your diet (a very common realization).
If I were to tell you that starting tomorrow, you need to eat 120 grams of protein per day, every single day, you’d most likely feel pretty overwhelmed (for starters, you probably don’t even know what 120 grams of protein looks like!).
But if I simply told you that starting tomorrow, you’re just going to add a scrambled egg to your usual breakfast, you’d probably feel much better about that change. All you have to do is make sure you have eggs in your fridge and have 3 extra minutes in your morning to cook one. This is a change you can wrap your head around and most likely will be able to follow through with consistently.
Once that habit starts to feel more natural, we’ll find another area of your diet to tweak to get you closer to that long-term goal of eating 120 grams of protein per day. Before too long, those small changes will start to snowball, and you’ll hopefully be feeling much better on a daily basis as well…which just adds fuel to the motivational fire.
Principles over dogma
“Eating meat is evil — you should only eat plants if you care about the environment.”
“Sugar is demonic. Every teaspoon of sugar you eat leads you closer to diabetes.”
“All plants are toxic, and kale is bullsh- -.”
“If you want to lose weight, always skip breakfast…and never EVER eat after 8pm.”
These are just a few examples of the diet dogma that you could easily find thousands of social media influencers peddling on Instagram with a quick search.
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of seeing nutrition as a religion. I’m not interested in hard-and-fast rules handed down to me from the diet gods. I’m interested in learning how things work, what our bodies need at a fundamental level, and what nutrition I need to give my body in order to thrive.
When approached from this perspective, there are any number of diets that may be healthy for you at any given time. The healthiest and most sustainable diet for me may be much different from the ideal diet for you. Not only that, but your ideal diet can and probably will change over time.
At the same time, this doesn’t mean that all diets are equal. A diet consisting of 40% chocolate cake, 30% donuts, and 30% candy is not going to be healthy for anyone, no matter how unique you think you are. There are still basic principles that all human beings must follow in order to build a diet that is truly healthy for us.
In my research and experience, I’ve narrowed down 3 foundational principles of nutrition that any diet must adhere to in order to be truly healthy for the long term. These 3 foundational principles make up a framework that will help you evaluate a particular food or way of eating to see if it’s right for you.
Dieting for adults
While most diets treat you like a child who cannot think for himself, my approach treats you like an adult. The framework I’ve come up with incorporates nuance. Rather than treating nutrition as a set of black-and-white rules that must be perfectly adhered to, my framework makes room for shades of gray because it respects both universal biological needs AND underlying differences between individuals.
Rather than a rigid system that you must follow to the letter, my framework will give you a way of thinking about nutrition that will allow you to make educated decisions about whether or not to include a food or food group into your normal diet. It also allows you to experiment and find what works for you, without committing to a diet as if it’s a religion.
This means that no matter what your goal, your season of life, or your food preferences, you’ll always be able to make informed, smart decisions about what you’re putting in your mouth.
Learn more
So…what exactly ARE these 3 principles?
I’m glad you asked!
I wrote an article explaining each one. You can find them hyperlinked in the list below, or you can simply click the “NEXT” button to start reading the first in the series.
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