nutritious diet plan

The first is to match your physical foundation, life rhythm and dietary preferences, and the second is that you can effortlessly persist for more than 3 months. Those programs that require you to forcefully change your eating habits, spend huge sums of money to buy niche ingredients, and have a headache counting calories every day, no matter how perfect the nutritional data are, have little practical value.

A while ago, I helped a girl who worked in Internet operations adjust her diet. She followed the trend and bought a bunch of Mediterranean diet ingredients. She drank olive oil on an empty stomach in the morning, and ate ice lettuce with boiled cod at noon. She persisted for three days. On her way to get off work, she turned into a hot pot restaurant and ate two plates of fat lamb and a portion of brown sugar glutinous rice cake. Instead, she gained two kilograms in weight and suffered from stomach problems for three days. You see, it’s not that the plan is bad, it’s simply not suitable for ordinary people who work overtime until ten o’clock every day and have a heavy mouth and love to eat braised food.

The mainstream eating patterns on the market now actually have their own advantages and are suitable for different groups. There is no need to praise them all. For example, the Mediterranean diet, which has been promoted by the WHO for many years, does have a large amount of clinical data proving that it is cardiovascular-friendly and can help regulate blood lipids. However, it is based on fresh and easily available deep-sea fish, extra virgin olive oil, and seasonal fruits and vegetables along the Mediterranean coast. For ordinary office workers in China, not to mention how expensive it is to buy fresh salmon every day, just getting up half an hour early every day to make salad is enough to dissuade 90% of people. There is also the Deshu diet designed for people with high blood pressure, which requires daily sodium intake to be controlled within 2,300 milligrams. For northern families who are used to eating pickles, braised vegetables, and heavy stir-fries, it is really difficult to adhere to it for a long time. If you insist on it, it will easily lead to emotional overeating.

I also tried the controversial low-carb ketogenic diet. I did lose weight quickly in the first two weeks and my face became smaller. But in the third week, I started losing hair like crazy. My aunt postponed it for more than ten days. I went to the hospital and the doctor said that I didn’t eat enough protein and almost developed ketoacidosis. At present, the academic community has no unified conclusion on the long-term safety of ketosis. Some people have maintained good health indicators for five or six years, while others have developed dyslipidemia after taking it for half a year. Ordinary people should not try it easily without professional guidance. There is also the popular vegetarian model in recent years. Whether it is ovo-lacto-vegetarian or vegan, as long as the combination is reasonable, it can meet the nutritional needs. However, if you do not understand the nutritional combination at all, it is easy to lack B12, iron and high-quality protein. I once met a girl who had been vegetarian for a year. During the physical examination, the hemoglobin was only two-thirds of the normal value, and she often felt dizzy and weak.

Talking about how ordinary people plan their own diet, there is really no need to buy a food scale to calculate the calories of each meal. I have been doing dietary guidance for a long time, and the advice I give to ordinary people is to first find out about themselves: do they have basic diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes? Are there any problems such as lactose intolerance or gluten allergy that make you feel uncomfortable after eating? Do you sit in an office every day, or do you have to do physical work? It's better to figure these things out first and then proceed.

What I usually recommend to my friends is the most worry-free fist rule: take a fist-sized staple food for each meal, try to mix it with half of whole grains, such as sweet potatoes, corn, and oats. You don’t have to give up white rice and flour completely. If you like to eat white rice, just take half a spoonful less each time.； A fistful of high-quality protein, including eggs, milk, soy products, fish, shrimp, chicken, and duck. You don’t have to eat tasteless boiled chicken breasts. It’s still fine to marinate chicken legs and eat them without the skin. ； For two fists of vegetables, try to account for half of them dark green, red and purple, such as spinach, purple cabbage, broccoli, etc. The nutritional density is much higher than that of Chinese cabbage.

Take the office worker who is most worried about eating as an example. If you catch the subway in the morning and don’t have time to cook, you buy a multi-grain pancake on the roadside, ask the boss to put more lettuce and less sauce, add an egg, and bring a box of sugar-free soy milk along the way. This meal is full of nutrients, which is much better than eating boiled vegetables for half a month and then eating a big meal for health reasons. If you work overtime until 11 or 12 o'clock in the evening, don't listen to the myths about "not eating after lunch" or "not eating staple food at night". When you are hungry, just cook vegetables and egg noodles with less oil and salt. It is better than eating three steamed buns the next morning when you are too hungry to sleep.

There is another question that everyone is arguing about: Should we give up sugar? One group says that free sugar is harmful and does no good and should be stopped completely. The other group says that life is too short and there is no need to drink milk tea just to live for two more years. My own experience is that there is no need to go to extremes. I gave up sugar for three months and only ate cucumbers and tomatoes even for fruits. But when I passed by a bakery, I couldn't hold it back and bought three cream cakes and ate them all in one go. Instead, I gained three pounds and felt guilty for several days. Now I just set aside one open day every week. If I want to drink milk tea, I can drink full sugar. If I want to eat cake, I can eat a piece of cake. The rest of the days I eat normally according to the fist rule. My weight is very stable, and I have never had overeating again. After all, a nutritious diet is meant to make your life more comfortable, not to put you in shackles.

To be honest, I have met too many people who asked "Is there the best nutritional diet plan?", as if they could get healthy and lose weight immediately by getting that template. But in fact, the best plan is what you can stick to every day without any effort. Even if you eat home-cooked food every meal, as long as the meat and vegetables are properly mixed and there is less heavy oil and salt, it will be 10,000 times more effective than if you spend a lot of money to buy a bunch of imported ingredients and eat them for three days before giving up.