Your Best Diet is Right Here

What’s the best diet?

We already know.
The best diet that works for our life and our lifestyle is the one we are already eating.

I don’t have to persuade anyone that there is a lot of conflicting diet advice out there. And I likely don’t need to say out loud that most diets fail. Meaning that maintaining them for life is rare. So, it makes sense not to jump to an extreme change in our eating if we want any benefits to last.

But what other choices do we have?

Inherent to us asking what is the best diet, is our desire to eat better. Healthier, than we are right now.

Stay with that thought of better or healthier, rather than eating in a whole new way or ‘perfectly’.

Then we can begin with what is already easy and what seems to work in the midst of everything we live.

Keeping parts and tweaking parts. And building from what is familiar, toward where we want to be.

If I wanted to run a marathon (and believe me, I don’t, but let’s just suppose), I wouldn’t start by running 20 miles tomorrow, but I could try running for ½ a mile. No wait, this example is breaking down already, because I can’t even see myself doing that. I have run before. I don’t like it. So, it isn’t going to last. But if I wanted to learn to run, I could do a walk/jog on my normal walk tomorrow. Now that sounds much better. I could do that. It’s just adding to what I am already doing. To work towards my goal.

See the comparison?

A reasonable add-on to what we are doing right now, we can picture ourselves achieving.
Completely changing from my usual, filled me with dread (even in a hypothetical example!) and would totally use up any willpower I had to spare.

And if I’m being honest, the work, and the gumption required, would keep the covers over my head.

The alternative to a reasonable add-on requires squishing our family into a one-size-fits-all diet regime. Or making separate meals and missing out on family connection. Either option will rely on willpower to maintain.
And I don’t know about you, but my willpower stash is limited. Committing to use up that spare willpower every day for the rest of my life is a heavy thought. That’s what a new diet program will require of us.

Let’s explore some options that can fit into the life we’re living so that when life happens, the new strategies still stick around.

We begin with a 5-minute investment.

 And a realization that,

Awareness always precedes change.

We know how to eat, of course. We tend to be the ones that get the groceries, cook the meals or order the delivery. But are we aware of how we eat?

There’s a difference.

To determine what our first eating tweak will be, we need to be aware of:

What and why we eat so we can know what’s affecting it.

And, why we make the food decisions we do.

This insight will inform all your steps to eating healthier. And set you up for permanent change.

Let’s identify a customized goal for your family. A goal that takes a step from where you are, to where you want to go.

5-minute To-Do:

 Quickly jot down everything you ate and drank today or yesterday as well as the times you did. This step alone can be the most enlightening of them all. No self-judgment. We are just exploring here and gathering information.

Now that we have the info, we are going to look for foundational pillars on which healthy eating is built. Like a house needs a sturdy foundation, healthy eating builds from these. How each family achieves them is individual. When we try to superimpose a diet change without them, we are building our diet foundation on sand.

 Which foundational pillar is not yet a habit? Look at the foods recorded, and at the following list to compare:

1) 3 meals a day – never been a breakfast eater? Skip lunch? Enter here to see how this can sabotage the very thing you are trying to achieve.

2) Meals have 3 food groups – usually leave out a food category? See how this can backfire.

3) Eating regular meals/snacks about 3-4 hours apart – does the craziness of life trump eating regularly? Find out the key to eating the amount your body needs.

So, before we get into any other diet tweaks, these 3 pillars are what we work at to become a habit. They just can’t be skipped to have our best diet. If all 3 pillars need tweaking, start with #1 and work your way through.

This post includes Step 1. Steps 2 and 3 posts will follow. We will explore why each step is foundational. And look at some easy tweaks to get started. If I included them all here, I would need to be transitioning to chapters of a book!

STEP 1) 3 MEALS A DAY

Occasionally when I text my husband, Collin, the text starts like this:
“PLEASE READ ALL OF THIS”.

He is a guy on the go, and God-love-him, he reads every text, but we have had important parts missed that are at the end of a text. And I can be wordy which doesn’t help. Sometimes, this prelude is needed to make sure he gets it all. Anyone?

So, when I start with, this is the most important, most boring part of eating well, I’m smiling as I say, please read all the way to the end of Step 1. If we skip the foundation, all else we try will be shaky at best.

Review what you wrote down that was eaten in the run of a day. Do you usually eat 3 meals? 1? Or 2?
Never mind snacks or grazing right now. We will get to that. Let’s look for 3 main anchor points when you are intentionally nourishing yourself.

Here is a common pattern:

“I have no time for breakfast, I just grab a coffee and go. I have never been a breakfast person. I am trying to eat better though, so I pack some almonds for a snack and a salad with some chicken for lunch and that satisfies me. But I can’t stop myself from picking at food from the time I get home until I get supper ready. I do pretty well at supper but then I crave snacks every night. If I could just stop snacking, I would be fine.”

I think you know where I am going: Your best diet starts with breakfast.

5 Convincing Reasons to Eat Breakfast

 1. If we don’t eat breakfast, we make up for the missed calories by the end of the day but usually not the missed nutrition.

When we are not fed during the day, we tend to snack more later. And in general, snacks tend to not be as healthy as breakfast foods. 

2. Our metabolism jump-starts for the day once we eat.

Otherwise, our body’s engine so-to-speak stays in sleep mode. If our body senses a fast, it lowers how much energy it uses on whatever we are doing. Sitting or active. Break-the-fast i.e. breakfast, gets things ramped up again. We want this.

3. Our body requires more energy when at rest if we eat breakfast, than if we don’t.

Often in defense of not eating breakfast, I hear:

“Whenever I eat breakfast, I’m starving a couple hours later. And then I have to fight hunger. All morning. It’s easier to skip breakfast than to have hunger grate on me until lunch.”

See? Clear evidence that after eating breakfast, we are burning more energy doing the same thing. We often get hungrier sooner. We want this.

4. Having breakfast will set us up to respond to natural hunger, rather than responding to cravings later in the day.

Our body knows what it is doing and will drive us to eat the energy it needs. Don’t see this as negative. We are going to use this to our advantage to work with our body rather than fight against it. God’s design is perfect and incredible when we stop to ponder. We go into more detail about hunger and fullness in steps 2 and 3 in the posts to come.

5. We miss an opportunity to nourish more than just our bodies.

Pausing with food is said in this space frequently. Because it is that important. Our culture rushes through meals and a part of us is not nourished. We miss the rest and restoration of being in the moment, investing in relationship with our family and with God. It happens when we sit at our table together. I talk more about this in my freebie, 7 Steps to Bring Peace to Your Table.

The 30-day Experiment for the “I’m Just Not a Breakfast Person.”

The great thing about an experiment is we can always go back to what we were doing before. No harm in giving it our best shot for a month.

(Need inspiration? Watch this 3-minute TED talk)

Here is what you are committing to:

Eat something for breakfast 6/7 days a week for the next 30 days.

Sound too ambitious? Reign in the target and set a goal that is more than last week.

Eat breakfast within 1 hour (max 2 hours) after getting up.

This may require setting the alarm 10 minutes earlier, so you have time. Experiment until it settles into the routine.

Name something you can see yourself eating tomorrow morning and plan for it.

Reminder: we are starting small, not perfect. And building from there.

Don’t change what you are doing now, add-on:
Can you grab a banana and eat it in the kitchen with your family?
Face a handful of dry cereal to start?
Maybe yogurt with some frozen blueberries tossed on top?

Anticipate the increased hunger mid-morning after eating breakfast and plan a small snack so you can make it to lunch.

Eating breakfast regularly will result in our body waking up hungry for it. The rhythm of our metabolism will change for the better. Our body will trust that it will be fed in the morning and no longer has to conserve energy. It wakes up in anticipation.
I have witnessed non-breakfast eaters exclaim after this experiment,

“I can’t go without breakfast now. I’m hungry when I wake up! I don’t even know how I did it before.”

We are talking about people who don’t remember ever eating breakfast before.
The same goes for lunch or supper. If we skip a meal regularly, our body goes into conservation mode and the result is a lower metabolism. And we usually make up for the food deficit later. Usually in larger portions or more snacks.

This all starts with a change in viewpoint.

Instead of stating “I am not a breakfast eater”, try out, “I am not a breakfast eater…yet”. What has always been, does not have to always be.

Experiment for a month. If breakfast is consistent, you will discover new energy and be well on your way to working with your body’s design.

Eating 3 regular meals daily trains our bodies to be hungry during the day rather than at night.

It sets us up to then learn how to listen to our hunger and respond to it rather than try to control it.

This discernment is intuitive, but many of us have lots of reasons why the last time we ate like this was in preschool. We can get it back though. Trusting our body’s ability to regulate our appetite and working with how God designed us is possible.

Trying to fit into someone else’s idea of the best diet for everyone and their sister, works against our unique self. 

Keep with this journey to find rest in eating well rather than striving to mold our design into someone else’s. We will keep at this together and learn more as we go along.

Let’s encourage each other. Share breakfast experiments. Post pictures below of nourishing your body and soul at any meal. Not just of the food but of the experience. As we take this step toward the best diet.

With breakfast under our belt (ohhhh…that was a bad pun. And oddly enough, the first time I’ve said it) we are good to move onto pillar #2. That’s coming out next.

A gentle reminder,

God wants you to know: I see you, I hear you, I love you.