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The Last (and Best) Diet You’ll Ever Need

By: Natasha Uspensky, CHHC

The Last (and Best) Diet You’ll Ever Need | The Organic Beauty BlogThe traditional Ayurvedic approach to eating emphasizes when you eat as well as what you eat, and it is literally the best and healthiest key to permanent weight loss, lifelong weight management, and optimum health and digestion.  It points to the body’s ideal time for consuming the biggest meal of the day.. and it’s certainly not when most Americans think it is.

Our bodies are designed to consume the majority of the day’s calories before 3pm, when digestion is the strongest.  This means a balanced breakfast that is nourishing and filling enough to get you through to lunch without feeling hungry (and without needing that mid-morning cup of coffee or snack!).  Our bodies function best when lunch is the biggest meal of the day.  Midday is when our digestion and metabolism are the strongest, and our system is in need of nourishment and healthy calories.  So guess what?  That soup or salad just aren’t going to cut it.  Your typical light lunch is what’s responsible for your late afternoon energy crash, your high hunger levels in the evening, and your struggles with weight!  Making your lunch healthy and dinner-sized is the biggest secret for longterm weight loss, and the end to dieting forever.  This big lunch keeps you full and energized throughout the day, and keeps you from overeating in the evening, which is when calories eaten go directly to your problem areas and contribute to weight gain.  Dinner, or better yet “supper” (sharing the root of “supplemental” or “soup-like”), should be the lightest meal of the day.  Soup is the absolute ideal supper, although a salad is also great.

This way of eating certainly has history and culture on it’s side, being the traditional way of eating for many Eastern cultures, and even much of Western Europe, before eating habits and work cultures were Americanized.  But now, there is also cold, hard scientific evidence supporting it!  A new study recently published in the International Journal of Obesity proves once and for all that eating your main meal of the day in the evening contributes to weight gain.  In the study, a group of 420 overweight men and women were evaluated over five months.  During that time, half the group ate their biggest meal of the day before 3pm, while the other half ate it after 3pm.  Both groups had the same amount of exercise, ate the same amount of calories throughout the day, and got the same amount of sleep throughout the study.  Over the course of the 5 month study, the early eating group lost an average of 22 pounds, while the late eating group lost only 17 pounds.

Further supporting this evidence is a study from the University of Alabama last year, showing that eating higher fat meals in the first half of the day, and a lighter low-fat meal in the second half of the day (see The Key to Sustained Weight Loss) support longterm weight loss.  So here’s how to eat:

  • Eat three meals a day, and don’t snack.
  • Make lunch the biggest meal of the day.
  • Make breakfast big enough to get to lunch without feeling hungry.
  • Make dinner light and “supplementary.”

Even if you change nothing else about your diet, just this shift alone will give you some results!  But of course, for this to be the last and best diet you’ll ever need, you’ll want to make some changes to what you’re eating as well.

  • Eat less meat and dairy, and more low-mercury fish and healthy plant-based fats like nuts, seeds, avocados, and healthy oils.
  • Eat more vegetables!!!  Better yet, eat mostly vegetables!  They are nature’s perfect foods.
  • Eat less processed grains and flours, and more whole grains like brown rice, quinoa, millet and oats.
  • Eat less sugar.  If you need a little sweetness, get it from fruit and healthy sweeteners like stevia or raw honey, all in moderation.

Doesn’t sound so hard, does it?

Want some healthy meal ideas?  Check out What Do I Eat? Healthy Eating is Easier Than You Think!, and our Healthy Recipes database.

Reference:
Garalualet M. International Journal of Obesity, Jan 2013.
Bray M. International Journal of Obesity, Mar 2010

What Do I Eat? Healthy Eating is Easier Than You Think!

how we eat

By: Natasha Uspensky, CHHC

With all the crazy conflicting ideas about what a healthy diet looks like, I’m sure that on more than one occasion you’ve found yourself staring into your fridge, throwing your hands up and asking “What the hell do I eat?!”

I’ll let you in on a little secret. It is SO much easier than you think it is. Healthy eating does not involve slaving in the kitchen for hours on end, calculating complicated ratios and formulas, or resorting to bland, boring food.  I’ll let you in on another secret. You already know how to eat healthy… It’s just a matter of loving yourself enough to do it! (Tweet it!)  

The answers are already there, you know them intuitively. It’s making the choice, consistently, every day, to act on that intuitive knowledge that so many of us struggle with. I dealt with the same challenges in my own long journey toward optimal health, but I’ll tell you what did it, what sealed the deal: Experiencing for myself the drastic difference in how I feel when I eat great, delicious, fresh, healthy foods… And when I don’t, opting for what I think is easiest and fastest. The proof is in the pudding, my dears. And until you give yourself that chance, until you commit to listening to your intuition for a solid few weeks or even months, you will continue fighting an uphill battle.

For me, connecting to that intuition daily has become second nature.  When I’m home, when I’m out, when I’m on vacation or at my parent’s house, I hold on to that knowledge of what feels good (and makes me look good), and what doesn’t.  Now don’t get me wrong. I’ll have an occasional fro-yo (I mean, there’s a Red Mango literally in my building), or share an amazing Neopolitan-style pizza with my hubby; I’ll eat some super yummy goat cheese at a party once in a while, or enjoy a few squares of killer artisanal dark chocolate.  But I’ve experienced first hand that when these yummy things enter the picture more often, I feel bloated, tired, and gross.  And after a while, it starts to show up on my body as well.  It just isn’t worth it!  I would rather look and feel amazing than eat cheese, and meat, and sweets, and lasagna, and all that other crap I know, intuitively, does not make my body happy.

So what do I eat?  My diet is simple, delicious, and super satisfying.  It allows me to eat my favorite foods (with healthy tweaks), eat out at my favorite restaurants, and still maintain my ideal weight.

Breakfast

I have green tea and a green smoothie most days… about 1 cup of organic kale, spinach, or collards; half a cup of fruit (organic berries, pineapple, an apple, or mango); half an avocado; a little handful of nuts or seeds; water and maybe a little squeeze of raw organic agave.  That’s it!

On days when I’m in a rush, I’ll just grab two pieces of sprouted grain toast with some raw, organic almond butter.

A couple times a week, if I’m a little hungrier, I’ll have two farm fresh eggs, sunny side up, over spinach with some toast.  Or, I’ll have a yummy bowl of steel cut oats or a quinoa porridge with apples, cinnamon, walnuts, and agave.

Lunch

As my private clients will tell you, lunch is the most important (and biggest!) meal of the day.  I mix it up, depending on my mood, but I’ll typically have quinoa with veggies (for example: roasted squash, sautéed greens, garbanzos); quinoa pasta with tons of veggies; some seafood and tomatoes over brown rice; or a huge salad with beans, avocado, sunflower seeds, and oodles of seasonal veggies with apple cider vinegar or lemon juice and olive oil (at least a tablespoon).

I make sure to eat my lunch in a calm, relaxed environment, which promotes digestion and metabolism… No rushing through lunch or eating while working!

Dinner

Dinner is nice and light most days of the week, which, as my clients will tell you, is the number one secret to sustainable weight loss and weight management.  The great thing about these light dinners is that they are quick and easy, which means we spend less time cooking, and more time hanging out and relaxing.  Most evenings, my hubby and I will have soup or a salad, or some cooked veggies (when it’s cold out).  Two nights a week, we order in.  We love sushi Tuesdays, and always share a “sushi for one” and a roll with miso soup or a salad (depending on the weather).  Another night, we’ll order in Thai where my winter favorite is Tom Yum soup… noodles, shrimp, and greens in a yummy spicy broth.

On the weekends, our whole schedule shifts later, so we end up having a late brunch, big, late lunch, and usually we’ll skip dinner altogether.  If we go out to eat, we try to make it on the earlier side, and I’ll typically order yummy veggies off the sides menu or we’ll split a veggie or seafood entree and a salad.

You might notice that there aren’t any snacks.  I am a firm anti-snacking advocate.  If you feel the need to snack, that means your meals (particularly breakfast and lunch) aren’t big enough.  If your meals are satisfying and nourishing enough, you won’t feel the need to snack, which means your blood sugar is more stable and your body has the chance to burn fat all day long.  You’re also not getting all kinds of unnecessary additional calories throughout the day, nor are you feeling hungry and obsessing about food all day long!  Win-win.

You’ll also notice a conspicuous lack of sweets.  Occasionally, I’ll have some dark chocolate or a handful of dried fruit.  Even more occasionally, I’ll have a little bowl of coconut milk ice cream with some berries.  But this happens so rarely that I don’t even include it in my “diet”.  How do I do it?  By keeping my blood sugar stable, my stress levels managed, and my love tank full ; )

Sounds easy right?  Nothing crazy, nothing mind-blowing… just simple, intuitive, healthy eating.  You know you can do it too.  Need help?  Let me know!