10 Steps To Better Nutrition

Posted: January 12th, 2010 | Author: Dr. Bill | No Comments »

As I ate my breakfast this morning I was thinking about what they taught us in medical school about nutrition. That would be a very slim book indeed, and might not even fill a few pages. The truth is that in those days nobody thought nutrition was all that important, and a good deal of the medical problems we face today are the result of that attitude.

Somewhere along the line, medical thinking started to shift, but it really wasn’t until those outside the medical community began making a lot of noise that anything was done at all. The thinking was that we should all have been on a low fat diet, which turned out to be disastrous.

That line of reasoning came out of the Harvard Medical School, and wasn’t challenged for close to 40 years. It still has many adherents today, even though we now know that it doesn’t work.

I’ve come up with a few rules to make nutrition a little easier for you:

1.  Eat every 2-3 hours. This doesn’t have to be a full meal, but you should take in some food, 6-8 times a day.

2.  Eat complete, lean protein every time you eat. I’m not saying eat half a chicken here, just ingest a small amount, as little as 1 ounce of protein, like sliced turkey breast.

3.  Eat a vegetable every time you eat.  This is in addition to the protein, and every once in a while you can throw in a little fruit. But if you’re going to eat protein, don’t skip the vegetable.

4.  If you’re going to eat a carbohydrate that isn’t a fruit or vegetable (pasta, rice, taters, couscous) …save it until after you exercise.

5.  25-30% of your diet must come from fat.  Yes, you heard me right.  There are three types of fat: saturated (that is, fully saturated), monosaturated, and polyunsaturated. Saturated fat comes from animals. Monosaturated fats come from nuts, olives, canola and olive oil. Polyunsaturated fat comes from nuts, and fish oil. (Like my ultra pure, pharmaceutical grade fish oil, the Powerhouse Omega Formula.) Eating all three fats, in a healthy balance, can improve your health.

6.  Ditch the sugar drinks, including fruit juice, and diet sodas, too. Drink water, water, water, and  some green tea.

7.  Focus on unprocessed, natural foods.

8.  You can cheat 10%.  90% of the time you follow the rules, 10% you don’t. This where most diets fail. Nobody can stay on the straight and narrow 100% of the time. So enjoy your cheating (that’s about 4 meals a week, based on eating six times a day).

9.  Develop a food strategy. Plan how you’re going to eat. You can even plan your cheating.

10.  Balance your food. Some food will be very, very simple. Make things easy on yourself. Avoid making nutrition complex.

Remember what the Italians say: “Great ingredients, very little fuss, simple cooking, means great food.”

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