Almost all diets have one particular strategy in common, which is to increase the amount of real food that people are eating while simultaneously decreasing the amount of manufactured calories, including both stripped carbohydrates and the ultraprocessed oils invented in the 20th century.
Stripped carbohydrates are processed to remove the most nourishing parts, including the bran and germ. Other stripped carbohydrates include white rice, corn starch, corn syrup, and sugar.
It is not a coincidence that white flour, corn starch and powdered sugar look exactly the same. We’ve removed the original identities of these products, so that all that is left is a pile of white powder.
Real food comes in eleven categories. These include fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds, dairy, eggs, meat, fish, and poultry. This is food, and food is what nourishes us.
That does not mean that everyone will eat absolutely everything on the list. Some people have allergies (to nuts or dairy, for example), or particular intolerances (such as lactose or gluten). Then there are those who simply do not eat certain foods, whether for religious reasons, or because they identify as vegetarians (who eat neither meat nor fish) and vegans (who avoid not only all forms of flesh, but also eggs, dairy, and even, sometimes, honey).
So I am not saying you must eat everything from the list of eleven categories. What I am saying is that if you want to nourish yourself, these are your choices. Everything else is entertainment. It’s not that you can’t eat entertaining items; I just you to be aware that they don’t nourish you. They don’t go in the plus category. They’re just for fun. Fun is fine; it’s just not food.
Please don’t think for a minute that I always say no to treats. If I go somewhere and there’s a plate of brownies, for example, there’s a very good chance that I’m going to eat one. Oatmeal-raisin cookies, too, and my husband’s famous banana-chocolate-chip cake.
This entire paradigm is really about personal choice. There are a couple of important questions to ask yourself here:
1. How much entertainment does it require for you not to feel deprived? Know that this will change with time. What you need on the weekends may be less (or more) than what you feel you need to keep yourself charged up during the week. And what you need in 2025 may be very different from what’s on your 2030 list. I’ve been doing this for a very long time, and I can promise you that the way I eat now is very different from the way I ate when I first began this journey. That’s partly because I have come to understand more as time has gone by. And it’s also because I am not the same person I was 25 years ago. And so on.
2. How well do you want or need to be nourished? Would you consider yourself in good health? Do you have enough energy to be as active as you would like to be? Or have you been struggling with gut trouble, joint issues, chronic low energy or other nonspecific symptoms that you suspect may be related to something you’re eating?
If you are aiming to improve the nutritional value of your food, I do not recommend making a complete switch all at once. That’s like throwing out the baby with the bath water. Not to mention that it’s probably unsustainable. And any time you set yourself up for failure, you’re setting yourself up for even more failure. The more things you do that make you feel bad, the harder it is to garner the energy to try again.
Instead, pay attention to how much ultraprocessed items you eat for a couple of weeks, and then think about what it would be like to lower it a little bit. Maybe by changing your breakfast from a bowl of “Frosted Crunchies” to leftovers, or a sweet potato with peanut butter (my favorite). Maybe by skipping your afternoon trip to the vending machine for chips, and packing a good portion of almonds and dark chocolate instead.
Don’t focus on calories and portion sizes. Your brain can tell the difference between real food and entertainment. When you eat food that nourishes you, you don’t feel as hungry. Trust how you feel. When your body is telling you something, try to listen. Remember, too, that if, like most Americans, you’ve been eating a diet consisting of a large proportion of ultraprocessed foods, you may need to eat large portions of nourishing food for a long while, perhaps a year or more, to make up for having been under-nourished for years. So to start with, keep your focus on food.
People make all kinds of assumptions about my own diet, so here’s a sample of what I might eat in one day.
Breakfast: black coffee maybe followed by a bowl of soup and fresh fruit, like berries or citrus. Sometimes leftover salmon and green beans, or whatever else I find in the fridge.
Lunch: I often eat leftovers from the previous night’s dinner, like stew or vegetables. It usually contains some beans, tofu, or fish. Or an avocado, sprinkled with salt, or a bowl of homemade soup and a couple of pieces of fruit. Afternoon snack consists of nuts (any and all kinds), a piece of fruit and a piece of dark chocolate. Before I retired, I used to keep a small knife and cutting board at work for tomatoes and cucumbers, which always taste much better if eaten immediately after slicing.
Dinner: salmon, cod, bean soup, eggs poached in tomato sauce (shakshuka), turkey meatballs, canned tuna. There is always green salad plus one or more vegetables, one of which is always green. Salad can be as simple as lettuce dressed with olive oil and salt, or with sufficient ingredients to constitute an entire meal. There might also be sweet potato, quinoa, kasha, or brown rice.