Essential Nutrition 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Healthy Eating

Don’t take my word on it.  Turst but verify.  I am not a doctor, a nutrionist, or otherwise a guru.  What I am is passionate and knowledgeable.  There are many points of views and differing opions.  I hope to inspire curiosity and to be a launch point in your own health journey.

In Simple(R) terms

• Everything in moderation is dangerous
  • I don’t think you need to cut out anything totally, but what you define as moderate amounts is critically important.
• Eat as much real, whole food as possible.
  • Stay away from most of the added chemicals.
  • Pesticides are bad.
• Seed and vegetable oils are bad.
• Natural fat is good, even saturated
• Natural sugar is not horrible.
• Most fake sugars are not good.
• If you need sugar alternatives, use natural like monk fruit or stevia
• Vegetables are not necessarily healthy.
• Protein is the most important macro
• Fat is next
• Low carb can be good, but it often times isn’t’ the best long term.

If you are overweight or unhealthy, you need to be extra strict.  Having something off plan once in a while, especially if it helps you not give up is ok.  But, without a plan, “moderation” can quickly spiral.  It might sound modersate to have fast food only once a week, but it you are also having candy or dessert once or twice a week, and having pasta with garlic bread, it quickly adds up. 

Your body was created (or evolved if you prefer – it does not change my point on this) to process food.  When something has a lot of extra crap in it, your body does not handle it as efficiently.

There is a lot of debate on what is healthier, low carb vs. low fat, and while I have my opinions on that, throughout history in different situations people have survived on different diets consisting of different amounts of macro nutrients.  What was not different was the fact it was real food.

Even “processed” foods that have been around forever, such as bread, can be fine when it is real ingredients.  I make my own sourdough bread and pizza crust.  It has flour, water, salt, and butter in it.  No chemical preservatives and I try to get organic to avoid pesticides.

Organic food should have less chemicals and pesticides if you can afford it, but don’t stress if you can’t.  Just do what you can.  Stress can cause issues as well.  Buying real vegetable or fruit, even not organic, will be a lot more than living off hot pockets.  Wash your fruit and veggies to get as many pesticides off as possible.

Seed oils are used in almost anything and most people do not realize they are a problem.  I did not for most of my life.  What’s wrong with them?  How they are processed and extracted to be in the correct quantities to be usable.

There is still a lot of opinions on this with doctors on both sides, but my view on this goes back to the previous section of natural real food.  The process to extract them wasn’t scientifically possible for most of history, so our bodies aren’t setup for them.

Further evidence seems to point to the time frame of greatly increased seed oil consumption as the same time health started to rapidly decline.

Read some of theses posts for more info:

• Seed Oils: Are They Actually Toxic?
• The Harms of Vegetable Oils with Dr. Catherine Shanahan
• Is Vegetable Oil Good Or Bad For You?

 What to have instead?

• Butter (also controversial, covered later)
• Olive Oil
• Avacodo oil

This is a controversial topic, especially when comparing the kind of fat.   You NEED dietary fat.  Most of your hormones are made from fat as well as our cell membranes.

Saturated fat is the most controversial so definitely don’t just take my word for it.  However, there are a lot of researchers and doctors that say it isn’t a problem.  A lot of old data was not taking into account the overall quality of the rest of the diet.  A diet high in saturated fat, but lower in processed carbs and seed oils, has not been shown to be a problem.  Read this article by Dr. Hyman where he says about it. Saturated Fat: Saturated fat is not linked to heart disease in the absence of refined (starchy) carbs and sugar, and in the presence of omega 3 fats. And review after review after independent review of the research shows that there seems to be no link between saturated fats and heart disease.

I do believe in moderation, meaning don’t eat butter sticks to get more fat if on keto, but you also don’t need to get low fat everything and avoid natural food that happens to be higher in saturated fat.

Just because something is zero calorie or otherwise diet, does not mean it is safe.  There is a lot of evidence that the fake sugar is linked to cancer or that it can mess with your gut health, which can cause weight problems even if it is zero calorie.

Safe sugar alternatives

Stevia and monk fruit are generally recommended as safe and natural.  I also use honey for a lot of stuff.  Since changing from stevia to honey in my coffee and yogurt, I have not gained any weight or noticed any other problems.  This goes back to the earlier point of eating real food first.

If you do have a lot of weight to lose, or have bad gut trouble, it might be a good idea to cut out all fruit and honey for a while, but that is a more extreme case.  If you can afford a good functional medicine doctor, they can help you with the more extreme cases. 

Veggies can be healthy.  They can also be unhealthy for some as many of them have defense chemicals that are there to discourage being eaten.  Most of the time, these do not cause any major trouble, but sometimes they can cause more issues with some people.  If you have a specific veggie that gives you crazy gas, that is a sign. 

Additionally, they aren’t the most healthy thing you can have, contrary to popular belief.  Even among mainstream websites you’ll see salmon, liver, and eggs on the list of most nutritious foods.   

Eat more good food and eat less bad food.  It is hard to do and with a lot of conflicting information, it can be hard to know what is good and what is bad.  For the most part, though, better to start simple(r) with possibly the wrong information than do nothing, which is definitely not working.

This stuff is complicated and I by no means think I know all the answers.  What I do know is, you need to start somewhere.  The “standard American diet” is not working.  Even if you disregard everything I say and go low fat vegetarian, you are likely better off than not having a plan at all.

Logically, things that have been working for thousands of years are likely to still work now.  That does not mean you have to live on a farm and raise your own food, though that might be good!  Just start small, make good choices, and never stop learning and adapting.