How to Start With Real Food
This doesn't have to be complicated
Previously in my post “What you actually crave is a connection to real food”, I wrote about how our food has become a weapon of mass destruction. The two great lies of the food industry are that a calorie is just a calorie and that ultra-processed, high sugar, junk foods are a normal part of a healthy diet.
The first lie ignores the fact that the food you eat is supposed to provide critical nutrients to your body and signal your brain to tell you to stop eating. There may be energetic truth to the sentiment of how food is burned to make energy (calories) in a laboratory, but our biological reality needs our food to provide MORE than just energy. It must also provide nutrients and information to our bodies.
The second lie tries to normalize the mistake from the first. There is no realm in which over-sugared breakfast flakes covered in ultra-high temperature (UHT) shelf-stable milk is the equivalent of eating whole fruits, vegetables, eggs or yogurt just because we call the two things “Breakfast” and we concoct two bowls with the same number of calories. They are not biologically equivalent meals to our bodies.
Most of have struggled, or continue to struggle, with switching our diets to something healthier. We’ve become hooked on the sweet, salty, fatty bliss-point foods that are just so darn convenient to access or prepare. When you are tired, who doesn’t want a meal ready in 10 or 15 minutes?
And yet, just because you switch to eating more whole foods doesn’t mean you also have to spend hours every day making meals. These are the biggest lessons I have learned over the last few years as I have made a deliberate effort to eat more foods that don’t come with a laundry list of ingredients on the package.
Start with one small change at a time
It’s easy to be enthusiastic about a new diet in the first day or two, maybe the first week. And then often it just gets overwhelming to remember all the new rules and to suffer through the cravings of what you’d rather have.
It’s a whole lot easier to change out one ultra-processed food for one whole food. Some changes are easy. Dump the margarine and eat less of real butter. Ditch the zero fat yogurt for real Greek yogurt or other whole yogurt version. Why? Two reasons: because real butter and yogurt are foods humans have eaten for thousands of years, and the natural whole fats are satiating and send stop-eat signals to brain.
Read
fantastic post Feel Free To Choose Cheese for a great take on why cheese is good in a healthy diet as well. Real foods for real people.What other small changes help get the ball rolling? For me that was switching out a store bought tomato sauce with a home made version. I learned this easy way to make tomatoes into sauce and never looked back. This sauce provides the foundation for everything from soup to a great rague.
It is also easy to make tomato sauce seasonally and then freeze it in convenient one and two cup portions. I have been using ziplock freezer bags to do this, but I have just recently purchased some one and two cup silicon freezing molds to see if I can also cut down on my plastic waste (links are at the end of the post).
Allow time for your tastes to change
Moving the needle just a little bit towards a healthier lifestyle was the motivation I needed to start making bigger and bolder changes. I like to think about it like the effects of compound interest. It might seem small at the start, but it really adds up fast.
As I progressively started to make a few more things at home (replacing favorite store bought foods with homemade versions), my tastes began to shift.
At first it felt really hard to make things that tasted really great. I’d either try a recipe and be disappointed that the flavor just wasn’t there or something I wanted to make sounded so good but the recipe was loaded with exotic ingredients or complicated steps. Those things really shut down my effort.
It took me a while to find reliable, easy and delicious recipes for foods that made me excited to keep trying whole foods. So if you are looking for a great example, then Easy. Whole. Vegan. by Melissa King is a must have cookbook (affiliate link). I have loved these simple recipes that are loaded with flavor and nutrition. This one is worth checking out.
But the simple reality is that it took time for me to truly enjoy whole foods to the point where I didn’t need them to be drowning in sauces and dips. I think that the further you take yourself away from ultra processed foods, the more your mind and body connect the improvements you feel to the food you are eating. The mind-body-food connection is so powerful.
Level up your courage and your actions
Once these wins start adding up, it gets a lot easier to make a significant change. My next big move was to look at the foods I think of as ‘emergency’ meals and replace those. You know the ones I mean - those convenience foods you turn to when you are tired and need food now without effort.
Soup is one of my key emergency foods. No matter how tired I feel, I can open a can of soup and throw it on the stove to warm. But most commercial soups are loaded with fats and ultra processed ingredients that make them anything but healthy. Learning to make some simple but amazing homemade soups shifted everything for me and made a big difference in my health.
I used to tell myself that I would make a big pot and freeze some, but the truth is I make a big pot and then eat it for the following day or two as lunches or dinners. I rarely manage to get a cup tucked away in the freezer for the future.
My go-to soup cookbook is The New Soup Bible by Anne Sheasby (affiliate link). As a beginner soup maker, this book helped me learn to create company-worthy soups with ease.
By choosing to shift my ‘emergency’ meal to something home made, I was able to start re-wiring my thinking as well as my food preferences. Tackling pizza - my other favorite fast meal - turned out to be as easy as shifting my mindset from “pizza” which seems like a lot to make, to FLATBREAD which is so easy and so versatile. I can make up a batch of flatbread dough and freeze it in portions so I can just grab it from the freezer, let it warm a bit and roll it out and presto - ready to top with anything I’m in the mood for.
So level up by picking something you turn to all the time as a fast commercial meal and shifting that to a fast and delicious home made version. Once you do, the excuses of not eating healthy at home or because you are in a hurry really crumble and fall away.
If you fall short of your goal, own it, and recommit
Few journeys we take in life are effortless and without some twist and turns along the way. Eating healthier is no different. Don’t beat yourself up for being human.
Backsliding into old eating patterns can be the thing that derails your efforts long term. That’s why I don’t let the today version of me decide what food to eat.
Think about it. The today version of you is the one struggling to eat healthier.
But at some point in the future you start living as that healthy food-wise energetic person and never look back. Why not let THAT version of you, decide what’s to eat today.
How does this work? Imagine the person you are when you are successful and eating an amazing whole food diet. What are your goals? To lose 10 pounds? 25 pounds? 50 pounds? To have energy? To have clearer skin? To have less inflammation? Less joint pain?
Whatever your specific goal - imagine how you feel when you have achieved that? Imagine how your body feels, how you move, how much easier you can manage your time, your energy, your wellbeing. Let THAT person decide what you need to eat today.
For me, a big challenge comes in afternoon snacks. In the past I would need a little something and reach for a bag of chips (and then eat too much), or even a soda for a pick-me-up. That’s not what SHE would do. Now if I am struggling to decide what is a good snack, and my brain starts telling me I need chips or pop, I just pause and I let my future healthy self choose the snack. SHE chooses cashews, or a banana - great choices. And just like that I break the old pattern and I establish a new one. I might have to play this game over and over, but I win every time.
Give it a try and see if putting the decision-making into the hands of your future self works for you.
It’s a good time to start eating real foods
Switching to eating more whole foods isn’t a gimmick or trendy diet or a fast fix. But it can help shift you onto the path for a healthier future. Starting with one small change at a time, allowing time for you mind and body to adjust to real food, and then levelling yourself with some critical substitutions make shifting how you eat something that anyone can do. And that last step is to not give up at the first sign of trouble. Instead let your future self make decisions for you. It’s amazing what happens when you start living your dream life today, and that includes eating like your future healthy energetic self right now.
Let me know in the comments if you have favorite cookbooks or go-to meals that make eating healthy the easy choice.
If you are interested in those freezer molds I am testing out here are my Amazon affiliate links so you can check them out:
Ohhh that sounds fantastic and yes, I’d love to know more about baking bread. This is going my list!
Great post Sue. I find so many look for the quick and easy way but have to realize it is a journey. I always recommend slow steps to making food changes because it can get very overwhelming for people. One tip is to take the time to meal plan and make a list. There are so many resources out there to help with that so there should be no excuses.