Day 52: Diet Pt 2 - Healthy Eating Tips

                EDIT: This post on diet quickly turned into a 6,000-word behemoth, so I have separated it into two parts. The first post, which can be found here  focused on the types of foods that I suggest eating & avoiding. The post that follows looks at 7 tips for sticking to your diet once you establish what foods you would like to include in it. Bon appetit!

                    I recently posted a progress picture in my day 49 post on Transformation Tuesday, & by far the most common feedback & questions I got came regarding my diet. This was an encouraging sign to me because it showed that many in the OCR community are acutely aware of just how important diet is to achieving fitness goals, a knowledge that I’m not sure is replicated in the rest of society. There are tons of misconceptions out there regarding what we should and shouldn’t eat, & while by no means do I consider myself any type of expert or authority on the subject, I have been able to find a diet that works well for me after experimenting with many different diets such as the paleo, ketogenic, & slow carb diets.
 

                Note what follows is my personal approach to dieting. Dieting is entirely individual, so I encourage you to find what works for you & stick to it. In my opinion, the key to success with any type of diet is that you follow it consistently.

Healthy Eating Tips

 

                Now that I’ve established what types of food you should be eating, I discuss below 7 of the strategies I use to try to stay consistent with my diet.

1. Stock your fridge full of healthy foods: although it seems simple, for me keeping only healthy foods in my home has a hugely positive effect on my diet. Even if I get the late-night munchies, the most damage that I’m going to do is a handful of almonds or a piece of cheese. Sure it isn’t ideal to be eating these extra calories late at night, however it’s a lot better than digging into that bag of chips or cookies. A lot of people such as Tim Ferriss suggest incorporating one cheat day per week. Cheat days are not a good option for me personally because I have an addictive personality & one day quickly turns to one week, however my suggestion if you do elect to have a cheat day is to keep the ‘cheat foods’ out of your house until the actual cheat day arrives. Although some may argue that it is a good strategy for practicing will power & self-control, I am not a proponent of putting oneself in difficult situations just for the sake of overcoming difficulty. If the food is not in your house, you are far less likely to cheat on your diet. By not having the food readily available, it forces you to have to walk or drive to a store, which can often provide the time needed for cooler heads to prevail & to avoid you from cheating at all. Next time you’re grocery shopping ask yourself a simple question each time you put something in your cart; ‘is this part of my diet?’ The results will quickly speak for themselves. 
    
2. Pack your lunch: perhaps the biggest contributor to my improved diet over the past 8 weeks has been the practice of packing my lunch every single day. I used to go out to a restaurant with co-workers each Friday for lunch, a completely reasonable routine, provided it only occurred on Fridays. As with any other habit I take on, this quickly developed into me going out throughout the rest of the week, even on days that I packed a lunch. Not only did the food from the restaurant often fall outside of my idea of ‘healthy eating,’ it also took a toll on my bank account. Since I started this journey, I have made a habit of packing my lunch every night before I go to bed, ensuring that I don’t skip packing a lunch due to a missed alarm or one too many morning ‘snoozes.’ Bringing my lunch has simplified my mornings & made it much easier to stick to my diet & turn down my co-workers’ invitations to go out for lunch. I’ve also been able to shorten my work days (I have a flexible schedule), as eating my lunch in the lunchroom only takes 15 minutes compared to the hour that I would often take with co-workers. This has allowed me to get my work done earlier, & get home earlier. Obviously not an option for everyone, but it does free up time to read or go for a walk at lunch if you have set hours that you must be at the office. Finally, another unexpected bonus has been that I’ve been saving a lot of money by avoiding those lunches out (which I’ve promptly spent on supplements…). If you haven’t already, I challenge you to start packing your lunch before bed each night & begin experiencing better health, more free time, & cost savings!
    
3.  Automate your meals: I suggest eating the same thing everyday for breakfast & lunch. No seriously. I thought this was insane myself, but since I’ve automated my breakfast with kale shakes, it has freed up time & made one thing less that I have to think about or take care of in the morning. My lunches, which typically consist of 3-4 cups of vegetables & leftover protein from the night before, take me at most 10 minutes to prepare the night before. In my post on habit-forming, I discussed how forming habits allows your mind to automate the process which requires less brain power & allows you to focus instead on more unique & challenging tasks. Automating my breakfast & lunch has made my life a lot easier & I know that each day I am getting the nutrients that my body requires. To keep things from getting boring with my lunches, I vary through the type of vegetables & meat that I’m eating, but realistically it stays about 75% the same every single day & I love it! Try automating your lunches for a week & see the benefits it provides. The beautiful thing is, if you get bored of the meal, you can move on to the next one & recycle through different meals as you go. Trust me, it will free up time & provided the meals you choose consist of the nutrients your body requires, you will feel great!
    
4. Tell those around you: all my co-workers are aware that I’ll be running this race on June 23^rd & they’re all aware that I’m taking my training for it quite seriously. By sharing my goals with them, they often carry my narrative for me & reinforce what it is I’ve set out to accomplish. An example would be recently when a co-worker was walking around passing out sweets that she baked on the weekend, & before I even answered my office mate answered, ‘oh he won’t eat those.’ Although this could be considered meddling, I appreciated it because I have built up a reputation amongst my co-workers that makes it easier to live up to. I love the added pressure that if I vary from my diet or decide to go out for lunch, my coworkers will notice. Even though they would take it in stride & not make a big deal out of it, I like that the expectation exists because it has created something for me to live up to. 
    
5. Don’t drink calories: one of my strongest rules aside from limiting sugar consumption is to avoid drinking calories wherever possible. This would include soft drinks, juice, milk, cream, sugar in coffee, & of course – alcohol. I am fortunate to have never developed a taste for pop, however I did have to make a conscious effort to eliminate iced tea, juice, & coconut water from my diet, all of which were crammed full of sugar. As mentioned in my first post on diet, I have struggled a little bit with completely eliminating alcohol from my diet. In the first 50 days of my Spartan Race journey, I believe alcohol consumption was my number 1 diet ‘cheat’ that I’m looking to eliminate in the second half of the journey. Calories in beverages are problematic because they can add up quickly while not providing any form of satiation; leading to even more consumption. A notable example of this lack of satiation would be the ability to sit down & drink 5-6 beers. Rarely do you feel full, yet you have consumed the same caloric content as you would have if you had a meal from a restaurant. A second issue with drinking calories is the types of drinks that we consume often contain 35+ grams of sugar per serving which is INSANE! If you read my first post you would know how I feel about sugar consumption, so for me a good rule is to avoid drinking calories whenever possible. 
    
6. Eliminate ‘the binge’: in my day 27 post on setbacks, I discussed the importance of avoiding the all or nothing mentality. See below for an excerpt from that post:
    
   “The ‘all-or-nothing’ mindset refers to the type of thinking that states ‘since I already cheated on my diet with this slice of pizza, I might as well eat an entire chocolate cake.’ Moderation is key here; if you’ve made a mistake, acknowledge it, put it in perspective, & get back to the regularly scheduled programming. Habits or old ways of living can be very challenging to overcome, do not fuel the fire by getting back into a negative cycle.”
   
     In short, when you slip up on your diet (yes, when – you will not follow your diet perfectly), the key is to not allow the problem to compound by writing off the entire day or week, but instead to identify it as a slip-up & get back to the regularly scheduled programming. Since I am so susceptible to this style of thinking, I avoid the ‘cheat days’ that are popularized by many diet experts. If however you are the type of person that can pull off a cheat day, just make sure that your cheat day doesn’t leak into the days that follow & that you are able to get back to a strict diet as soon as the cheat day ends.
      
7. Don’t overcomplicate things: after I’ve thrown all of this information at you, I am going to leave you with one contradictory piece of advice – don’t overcomplicate things. Between the paleo, ketogenic, & other diets, there is a ton of conflicting information floating around the diet regarding dieting. For me, the key is to establish what foods you would like to include in your diet, establish what you would like to avoid & use common sense & moderation to monitor what food you put in your body. Once you learn about what types of foods make you feel good & which ones don’t, eating healthy becomes intuitive. You will soon know what you should be eating, as well as what you shouldn’t. The major key is that you are consistently eating nutrient-dense, raw foods, & that you only allow yourself to indulge once in a while.

                As mentioned in the beginning of this article, diets are far from universal. We all have different tastes, bodies, & preferences & our diets should reflect these differences. The ‘one-size-fits-all’ diet simply does not work & forcing yourself to consume foods that you don’t enjoy is bound to result in failure. What is important is that you find what works for you & stick to it with as much consistency as possible. Establish what foods you would like to eat (my suggestion being vegetables & meats), & establish what you would like to avoid (suggestion being simple carbs, sugar, processed foods, & alcohol), & try to stick to it as closely as possible.

100-Day Spartan