The process to change someone’s eating is not an easy one. People have a tendency to take their eating beliefs and habits seriously. The way we eat is engrained into our culture and social lives. Maybe you grew up eating a certain way and no one is going to tell you that you can’t eat grandma’s classic spaghetti and famous cookies. But just like exercise and getting in the gym starts with small victories, so does eating. After all, you would’nt just throw your mom in the gym after years of being sedentary and say “Ok now go do Fran (21/15/9 reps of thrusters 65lb and Pull-Ups) Rx’d. No, you would scale her to an appropriate intensity, and the same is true with nutrition. So it will be a process of baby steps.The first step is very simple:Eat. Real. Food. Avoid highly processed food with additives that will kill you. Eat real food. Not fake food, that comes in a package or in the shape of a square. Eat real food. Shop at the perimeter of the grocery store, skip the bakery and buy things that are perishable without a shelf life. Eat real food. Real food has few ingredients and takes little preparation or treatment to be edible. If you look at the back of a rice crispy treat you will see a laundry list of chemicals, additives, and preservatives. If you look at the back of an apple it says: apple. And I bet you never saw someone chow down and enjoy a delicious bowl of flour! No, that takes all kinds of other ingredients and treatment even to be able to eat.Real food is packed with vital micronutrients. They have the essential vitamins and minerals to optimize your body’s metabolic processes. Processed fake food is often void and stripped of these micronutrients. Real food will not spike your blood sugar the way processed food does. You would have to eat a shit ton of spinach to match the same sugar content as a pop tart. Without the added sugars nature has a way of providing exactly what we need as humans to thrive, to help us eat as genetically designed, the way we ate for millions of years.The List isn’t long but there are many options within them. Real food items:
- Protein from Meat (things that have eyes, not soy or rice!)
- Carbohydrates from vegetables and Fruits (things that grow out of the ground)
- Fats from nuts, seeds, and oils
Every meal should have representation from each category to start. Pick a protein the size and width of your hand, a fat that can fit in your palm, and fill the rest of your plate up with green stuff. How easy is that for a jumping off point! It’s literally idiot proof. Even if you can only get someone to do this 70% of the time, they still get 70% of the benefit. But once they start seeing and feeling the aesthetic, internal, and performance benefits they will come running back for more. Once they get off their diabetes and blood pressure meds and like how they look naked, compliance will not be an issue.
