I've never been a rules guy, in any walk of life, I really do prefer to "freestyle" my way through challenges, learning as I go, discovering solutions without the restrictions of someone telling me what to do. Sometimes that works, sometimes not.
As with so many other areas of life, when it comes to nutrition, a little bit of structure helps. These rules aren't meant to be restrictive. Rather, they're meant to help you to develop daily habits that will mean that you achieve the magic 80% of your eating that needs to support your goals.
The Eight Rules
1. Eat when you're hungry and eat until you're satisfied.
Humans, like any other animal, do know when we've eaten enough. We've just allowed that sense to be dulled out by routine.
Of course, we've also fallen prey to hyper-palatable foods, designed by food companies to hit what they call the "bliss point". Those foods interrupt our sense of satiety & eliminating them by eating real food will, by-and-large, get us back on track.
2. Eat protein with every meal.
Refer to Principle #3. This turns up here too because it's so important.
Protein serves a purpose in achieving rule #1: Protein aids short term satiety, eat enough and you'll feel full far sooner.
There are a lot of concerns about negative health consequences of eating too much protein that get expressed in the media. I have two points in reply.
Firstly, far from overeating the stuff, most of us never eat anywhere near enough protein on a daily or weekly basis.
Secondly, unless you're drinking protein shakes constantly, it's very hard to overeat protein - to hardcore bodybuilders, probably the biggest protein eaters I've encountered, eating is job!
3. Limit carbohydrate intake and time its consumption to be around training.
You'll get the best body composition results by eating carbohydrate foods at times when they'll either be directly used for fuel or stored as glycogen, leaving very little to interfere with fat metabolism or to be directly stored as fat.
4. Eat enough animal fat.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as a totally saturated fat.
Animal products contain significant amounts of mono- and poly-unsaturated fats. It's a good mix that provides what you need without the need for chemical processing.
In Principle #5, we discussed the various important roles of fat in the body. If you're limiting carbohydrate intake, you need energy from somewhere and it's in fat that you'll find it. It's vital to eat enough of fat.
Unfortunately, vegetable oils do not provide the same fat profile and are largely questionable as human food at all.
5. Drink enough, but not too much water.
Every biological process I can think of requires water, so it's important to drink enough of the stuff. Enough, but not too much.
Ditch the "drink ahead of your thirst" advice; it has no basis in science & can even be dangerous to your health. Your body has very effective controls to protect against the negative effects of dehydration, somehow it doesn't seem to cope quite as well with being over-hydrated.
6. Don't drink your calories.
Liquid calories are usually high in sugars which are very quickly absorbed into the body, raising your blood sugar and triggering a panic reaction to clear your blood of what is essentially a poison.
Do this to yourself for a period of years and you very quickly develop the beginnings of metabolic disease. Juice is fruit with the fibre removed (sugar), smoothies still have the fibre, but it's been broken open to release the sugar in a similar way to juice.
7. Be prepared.
Batch-cooking food so that you have something to eat when you don't have time to eat or have food to take to work with you is the best antidote to finding yourself eating hyper-palatable factory foods that do little positive for your health.
Shop once a week. Make a menu and a shopping list and stick to them.
8. Use supplements only as supplements.
Food should be your first and your prime source of nutrients, both micro & macro. Supplements are useful but generally unnecessary if you're eating real food to hunger. Did you know that prior to around 1920, there were no supplement pills? People ate real food and real deficiencies were rare.
Even the RDA's, RDI's, call them what you will are only meant as a guide and most of them seem to lack any scientific backing at all.
Tasks for this lesson:
1. Print out the "8 Rules" poster and stick it where you can see it. The fridge is a good bet for most people.
2. If you've never made a weekly menu and shopping list, do so for the coming week and stick to it. Don't worry if your cooking skills make it limited - a bit of research and planning will fix that quickly.