Many people unfortunately have a love/hate relationship with food as they try to control their weight through deprivation and/or elimination.  I believe you should enjoy your food as the fuel that allows you to chase your goals. Eating should be pleasurable. Fresh, healthy food is delicious.  I enjoy my meals more when I know that they are fueling me for the miles. When you eat well, you perform well. Below are a few simple guidelines to follow.

Eat food as close to the source as possible.  Whole, healthy foods will nourish your body and allow it to perform.  Processed foods are like foreign substances in your body, as we did not evolve to be able to metabolize them.  For example, our bodies do not know what to do with high fructose corn syrup, so it gets stored as fat. A general guideline is to look for items with few ingredients, which you understand and can pronounce.  Buy most of your food from the periphery of the grocery store and avoid the aisles.

Fat is not the enemy.  If God put fat in it, eat the fat. Drink whole milk, eat full fat yogurt and cheeses, use real butter, and cook with olive oil.  Fats are the carriers of nutrients and flavor. Many key nutrients found in vegetables are fat soluble and become more readily absorbed in the body when eaten with a fat.  Reduced fat or fat free foods have added sugars to improve the taste that was removed with the fat. Your body needs the healthy fats. Bring on the avocados!

Avoid sugar as much as possible.  Watch labels and look for added sugars in things like pasta sauce, cereals, and yogurt.  Sugars and artificial sweeteners come in many forms, so watch for ingredients that end in “-ose”.  Yogurt sweetened with a little honey and frozen fruit is plenty sweet and much healthier than flavored yogurts, for example.  You’ll find that you crave sugar a lot less the less you eat it. Once you’ve cut back on sugar you will find that the naturally sweet foods like fruit taste sweeter and satisfy that sweet tooth.

Try and balance your meals with a high quality protein source, a healthy carbohydrate source, and a healthy fat.  A common guideline as you look at your plate is that half should be covered with vegetables, a quarter with protein, and a quarter with a complex carbohydrate.

While I am menu planning I look at the overall week to try and get as much nutrition as possible.  Include one meal with red meat—for the iron and branched chain amino acids.  We eat salmon once a week for the omega fats, and then one other meat, usually chicken.  I try and eat as many vegetables as possible throughout the week. Try and make sure that I am using the ingredients in multiple meals so I don’t waste food.

Your mindset will be what helps you stay successful as you strive to eat a healthful diet.  If you are coming from a place of deprivation and longing for the hot pocket it will be harder to stick with it.  If you look at the fridge full of colorful, healthy foods, grateful to have access to such nutritious foods, you will be happier to invest the time and money that it takes to eat healthy meals.  White knuckling your “diet” won’t last for the long term. Really learning to love the healthier foods will allow you to make a healthful lifestyle. Researching the best way to prepare foods will pay off.  For example, kale is known to be a superfood but can get a bad rep as bitter, chewy, tasteless, etc.; however, it is delicious when prepared well. I also find that I am a lot more successful when I focus on including the healthful foods rather than excluding the “bad” stuff.  When I focus on getting in all my veggies, the sugar in my diet naturally tapers off.