You’d like to make some changes to your eating habits. What should you focus on first?
You’d like to make some changes to your eating habits. What should you focus on first?
Nutrition Diva is hosted by Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN. Transcripts are available at Simplecast.
Have a nutrition question? Send an email to nutrition@quickanddirtytips.com or leave a voicemail at 443-961-6206.
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Hello I’m Monica Reinagel and you are listening to the Nutrition Diva podcast. Welcome!
Today’s topic was prompted by an email from Stephanie, who wrote:
“If you need to overhaul your diet, are there some things that are more of a priority than others? What’s the best order to tackle the changes needed to rebuild a healthy diet?”
I love this question because it shows that—even if her diet needs a total overhaul—Stephanie understands three very important things: 1) building a healthy diet is an ongoing process, not just a single decision or resolution; 2) trying to change everything at once is likely to backfire, and 3) some things are more important than others. So this is a great topic for us to explore.
Of course, it’s a little hard to know what sorts of changes Stephanie should make first without knowing what her current diet is like. But if it looks anything like the typical American diet, the very first thing I’d suggest would be to eliminate (or drastically reduce) sodas, flavored waters, juice and sports drinks. Why? You know I try to avoid focusing on individual foods, food groups, or nutrients as The Problem or The Solution. On the other hand,this one just feels like low hanging fruit.
Most Americans are consuming about twice the maximum recommended amount of added sugars--and half of that is coming from sweetened beverages. In other words, eliminate this one category of foods and we’d take care of our sugar problem in a single swipe!
Moreover, you lose nothing by eliminating them. They don’t make you feel any fuller than you do drinking just water and they offer no nutritional benefit whatsoever. (And yes, I’m including the ones with vitamins in them. Please.)
I will make an exception for sports drinks but only for folks who are engaging in intense exercise for more than 60 minutes at a time or exercising in extremely hot or dry conditions. These guys really can benefit from the sugar and sodium in sports drinks. But most sports drinks are consumed recreationally, and in that setting they are the same as any other sugar-sweetened beverage: just empty calories.
My second priority for your dietary overhaul would be to eat more fruits and vegetables. Why? Fresh fruits and vegetables are the most nutrient-dense foods in the diet, providing more nutrition for the calories than any other kind of food—plus valuable compounds that you just can’t get from other food groups. Even better, they tend to displace other, less healthy foods from the diet. If you were to eat at least 5 servings of vegetables and a couple of servings of fruit every day, you might be surprised how much less room there is in your life (or your stomach) for other snacks and junk food.
Besides, when you’re trying to make lasting changes to your diet, I think it’s a lot more effective (not to mention more fun) to focus your attention on the things you should be eating more of, rather than on the things you’re trying to avoid or reduce.
If you need some practical tips on how to get more vegetables into your diet, check out episode #65. It’s an oldie but a goodie.
The next thing I’d suggest you tackle is eating fewer processed snack foods. I want to avoid painting all processed foods with the same brush. First of all, some forms of food processing are actually valuable, serving to make healthy foods safer, more convenient, and more nutritious. And let’s be honest: Not everyone has the time, space, and other resources required to prepare all of our food from scratch.
However, I think we could all benefit from limiting our consumption of highly-processed and hyper-palatable snack foods. They don’t add much nutrition to the diet and they are notoriously easy to over-consume. That’s because they are literally engineered to override our better judgment.
So, if you want to reduce the amount of processed foods in your diet, I would suggest focusing on the snack category. Instead of chips and cookies, try snacking on whole fruit, raw vegetables (maybe with some hummus or guacamole), a handful of nuts, a schmear of nut butter, perhaps some string cheese or whole grain crackers.
Remember that healthy snacks still need to fit into your daily budget for calories, sodium, sugar, and so on. So, don’t increase the quantity just because it’s healthy.
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If you are eating a typical American diet, these three simple changes would be nothing short of transformational. If you’ve already got these covered, the next two steps I’d suggest would be:
4. Limit your consumption of deep-fried foods. Not only are the likely to be very high in calories, but most deep-fried foods – especially those from restaurants and fast-food places—also contain a harmful compound (called HNE), which forms when vegetable oils are heated. HNE ends up in the foods that are cooked in the oil and is taken up in the body, where it can have damaging effects.
The longer or more frequently you heat up oil, the more HNE it will contain, which is why it’s really not a good idea to reuse cooking or frying oil. And most restaurants not only fry foods in vegetable oil but they reuse the oil over and over again.
But to be honest, the reason that deep-fried foods makes my short list has less to do with the toxic compounds it contains. Your body has an impressive capacity to defend itself against harmful compounds. It’s really because consumption of fried foods tend to be linked to overall poor diet quality. Making an effort limit your consumption of french fries and other deep fried foods may influence where you go to eat or what you order when you get there–in ways that are likely to have a positive effect on the overall healthfulness of your choices. Try it and see what happens.
And, by the way, if you want to minimize the formation of harmful compounds when cooking at home, the easiest thing is to make olive oil your primary cooking oil. Contrary to popular belief, olive oil is safe to use even at high temperatures.
For more on that, check out episode #528.
And, finally, a great way to round out your dietary overall would be to limit refined grains–but also to eat all grains in moderation.
We hear a lot about the benefits of whole grains. We’re told that people who eat more whole grains have lower rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and many other diseases. But this isn’t quite true.
People who eat whole grain products—such as whole wheat bread—instead of refined grain products—such as white bread—do appear to be healthier. But most of the benefit comes from the fact that they have reduced their consumption of refined grains. When people simply eat more whole grains without reducing refined grains, they don’t necessarily get the same benefits.
For more on that, please check out episode #155
I want to be clear: I’m not suggesting that everyone needs to follow a low-carb or grain-free diet. But limiting your consumption of refined grains and eating all grains in moderation is a good way to upgrade the nutritional quality of your diet. If you’re typically eating 6-8 servings of grains or grain-based foods a day, see what happens if you limit it to 3-4. If that prompts you to eat more vegetables or legumes, I think that’s probably a win.
So to sum up, here are my five diet overhaul suggestions:
But what about pesticides and hormones and plastics and acrylamide and high fructose corn syrup and phytates and all the hundreds of other things that might be standing between you and dietary perfection? Hey, if you’ve got the big stuff taken care of and you still have energy to tackle the little stuff, be my guest. You’ll find episodes on all of these topics and more in our archives. But if you haven’t taken care of the big stuff yet, I think focusing on the little stuff is sort of a waste of energy.
Thanks to Stephanie for her question. If you have a question you'd like me to answer, you can email me at nutrition@quickanddirtytips.com You can also leave me a message at 443-961-6206
I’d also like to invite you to check out my other podcast. It’s called the Change Academy, where we explore the art and science of creating positive behavior change. We’re going to be running a special series on the Change Academy podcast starting December 26th designed to help you get your mindset tuned up for a healthy New Year. You’ll find the Change Academy wherever you listen to this podcast.
Nutrition Diva is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast and is supported by Brannan Goetschius, Nathan Semmes, Davina Tomlin, Holly Hutchings, Morgan Christianson, and Kamryn Lacy.