With holiday feasting and 2018 coming to a close, thoughts inevitably turn to resolutions to be healthier and lose weight in the new year.
The plethora of diets out there (Paleo, Keto, Low FODMAP, Low Carb-High Fat, Low Fat-High Carb and more) can easily leave you calorie counting, confused and/or stressing over micro-managing your macronutrients (“gee, how many grams of fat, protein and carbs should I eat?“).
So let’s cut straight to today’s pearl of dietary wisdom, expressed so eloquently by New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan and captured succinctly in this 3-minute video…
Eat anything you want. Just cook it yourself. And I want to help.
As a member of The Nutritional Reset community, each month you will receive a day’s worth of delicious and nutritious recipes to inspire your home cooking – sign up here for free. And then, go ahead… Eat anything you want. Just cook it yourself.
Eat anything you want. Just cook it yourself.
While I admit this may oversimplify things a bit, I do believe that cooking your own food is likely the single most impactful step you can take to improve your overall health and energy. Let’s face it, just like your car needs the right fuel to work optimally, your body needs the right food to be its healthiest.
Unfortunately, too many of us feed ourselves with overly processed foods. Many processed foods are full of refined sugar, salt and poor quality fats. Even worse, they are often stripped of nutrients like vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids (usually to extend shelf-life). This is calorie-rich but nutrient-depleted food. To understand why this is so problematic for our health consider this:
- it is estimated that the body performs an average of 37,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chemical reactions every second to function (you read that correctly, that’s 37 thousand billion billion chemical reactions every second)
- every one of these chemical reactions is catalyzed by an enzyme
- every enzyme requires co-factors
- vitamins and minerals are the co-factors
So if your diet is not providing you with optimal levels of vitamins and minerals, your body simply will not perform at its best. And processed foods are poor providers of nutrients.
Foods that are whole and unprocessed are hard to binge on…
Highly processed carbohydrate foods also do not trigger the release of satiety hormones. As a result, it is easy to overeat such foods. Foods that are whole and unprocessed, however, are hard to binge on. When was the last time you heard someone say they ate an entire head of cauliflower in one sitting? By preparing and eating whole foods you ingest far more health-promoting nutrients without over-consuming calories. So you can pretty much eat what you want, as long as you cook it yourself and, I would add, as long as you ensure half your plate is non-starchy vegetables (as John, one of my favourite trainers on Aaptiv signs off, “live your truth and eat your vegetables”).
Yes, it does take time to cook your own food but you can whip up a meal in less time than it takes to order something for delivery. It just takes a little planning – meal planning and shopping in advance so you have what you need on hand when you need it. Batch cooking on the weekends is a great option. Your slow cooker can be your best friend to have something hot and tasty on the table without having to pay much attention to it at all. And an arsenal of satisfying, healthy and simple-to-make recipes is absolutely critical to success. So go ahead… Eat anything you want. Just cook it yourself!
Free Menu of the Month
Beginning in January, members of The Nutritional Reset community
will receive our Menu of the Month direct to your inbox
– a day’s worth of nutritious, delicious meals you can easily make yourself –
to inspire your home cooking.
Not a member? Sign up for free and be set to start cooking up a storm in January!
Weekly Meal Planning Services
The Nutritional Reset also offers Weekly Meal Planning services – find out more here.