3. Taking care of your gut is a top priority
Your GI tract is the control centre of the entire body. The bacteria in our gastrointestinal tracts affect brain function, thinking patterns, and how many calories our bodies absorb. Functioning correctly, your gut can keep you looking lean, stay healthy and help you avoid getting sick. In fact, one of the leading areas in helping fight obesity and curing chronic disease is by improving bacteria of the gut.
4. Avoid Processed foods
Unfortunately, no matter how many nourishing or healthful marketing slogans are used, processed foods contain chemical preservatives, artificial sweeteners, food dyes, man-made fats and sweeteners that the human body is not designed to metabolize in large quantities.
5. Don’t trust the media headlines, they’re just entertainment.
The media create a lot of the nonsensical habits we have with food. Media outlets are businesses and their goals are to sell ads and increase readership, not to analyze respected scientific journals for relevant food and health information that will actually keep you healthy.
Headlines do a great job at catching our attention and often find some bizarre half-truths that could apply to us and use evidence that has been taken out of context. Instead of keeping things extraordinarily simple, by following some of the basic strategies being outlined in this article, the media will find ways to confuse your thinking and try to pass it off as science.
6. Monitor your eating when stressed or sleep deprived
Lack of sleep has a profoundly negative effect on eating behaviour, leading us to eat high-fat, high sugar foods. Lack of sleep also leads us to eat significantly above our average norms and reduces our overall average caloric expenditure by moving less. Those who sleep less are shown to have a higher risk of obesity. It can also cause poor blood sugar and reduced insulin sensitivity, leading your body to favour fat storage.
To counter this, you need to make ideal food choices and try to stay active. When you’re sleep deprived, make the extra effort to get a lot of protein, water, and fibrous vegetables. Track your food intake, and put in the extra effort to make sure you are hitting your training sessions.
7. Eat animal products that provide key nutrients that can’t be obtained from plants
The mainstream view of nutrition is that meat and other animal products are unhealthy and should be avoided. This, however, isn’t supported by some of the largest and most rigorous studies. Overall, processed foods are going to be the biggest contributors to heart disease, diabetes, and cancers. It’s most likely that the overall composition of your diet plays the biggest role in dictating health outcomes.
For example, in Asian countries, where the diet is vastly different from the typical western diet, meat consumption, including red meat, has been found to be associated with a lower risk of mortality, and a lower risk of heart disease and cancer.
8. Have a set meal frequency
Recent studies show that time restricted eating in which you only eat within a 10 - 12 eating window is better for body composition and health than eating all hours of the day and night, which many people often do. This also improves our circadian rhythms and enhances our sensitivity to the satiety hormone, leptin.
Frequent meals every 4 hours during the eating window appear to yield the greatest satiety and the least hunger for the majority of people.
9. Have an eating ritual: chewing, thanking, being aware of what you’re eating...
Mindful eating may seem like a cliche, but the truth and reality is that it pays off. Studies have shown that people who take the time to be actively aware of the process of enjoying their food, have more satisfaction from their meals and eat less.
Along with the body taking a significant time to tell you that you’ve had enough to eat after swallowing your food, mindfulness practices have shown to improve the release of gut hormones that reduce hunger. Another practice that has shown to have a similar effect is to chew each bite thoroughly instead of swallowing your food in huge chunks. Proper chewing also has the added benefit of improving digestion and assimilation of nutrients.
