The Best Healthy Diet: For Healthy Eating

When it comes to diet and eating healthy I’m certainly no novice, since I, during my many years of looking for solutions to my own chronic health problems often have come to the conclusion that it’s what I eat and drink that has the biggest positive (or negative, if you eat like crap) impact on how I feel and function, along with on my productivity and drive to work, exercise or just on trying to achieve my goals in general (whether they be financial, health related or something else).

Dietwise I’ve tried most things and had varying opinions on what we should ideally be eating along the way, including having tried full carnivore (100% meat and animal products), vegan, paleo, keto, very restricted diets (due to allergies and food intolerances), low carb diet, high protein, fruitarianism (where you only eat fruits), with or without various supplements (among which I have also tried a lot of over the years chasing that magic pill (or pills).

The best healthy diet, chicken, fish, nuts, fruit, veggies and berries

And then of course, I’ve also tried the largely processed diet that most of us westerners are eating nowadays and which I, like most people, have basically grown up on, with perhaps even less of the amount of fruits and veggies that is normal since I nor enjoyed or could tolerate a lot of the options that were available (allergies).

I learned a lot from pretty much each new diet or way of eating that I tried (including supplements) and how it affected me, but likely even more from a bunch of online research on health and what to do or not do in order to feel your best that accompanied and motivated me to try each one of them, not to mention the research on how to get rid of or reverse chronic health problems which I know I was far from alone in battling these days.

“I’ve tried and researched a lot of diets (and supplements) over the years to reach the conclusions and opinions about a healthy diet that I have today.”

There was (is) a logic (and often a convincing one at that) and studies done behind a lot of different ways to eat and reasons why that should be the best way to eat, but at this point I feel like I’ve come close enough to the actual “truth” of what’s good or bad dietwise and how we all likely should be eating in a perfect world to stay healthy and on top of our game, and thus I’m no longer actively “seeking” an answer there (I’ve already found it, that is).

Yay :).

Of course, I still keep learning new stuff and details about various foods, supplements and their nutrients, sometimes leading me to rethink some things or change my recommendations slightly, but overall I’m strongly enough convinced of my ways by now that I’m comfortable writing about them and recommending them to others without too much worry that I’ve gotten anything majorly wrong.

This is important since bad dietary advice could lead to a lack of results as well as outright harm or a worsened health in people (as opposed to an improved health, that is), which has clearly been a problem historically, if we look to how the current nutritional recommendations have led to nationwide and global issues with health (especially the vegetable and seed oils).

“Bad dietary advice could lead to bad results, a worsened health and outright be harmful.”

So, largely speaking, I’ve got diet covered by now, and I’ll do my very best to describe a proper healthy diet on this page.

Having said that, I’d now like to start off the rest of this article with a few words on why you should want to eat a nutritious, healthy diet as well as how you can think to help motivate yourself to also do just that:

Why You Want To Eat A Healthy And Nutritious Diet (And Keep A Focus On Health Overall)
What A Good Diet Is And Includes
Weston A. Price And Our Modern Diet Causing Birth Defects
Adding Superfoods To Your Diet That Can Be Both Superhealthy, Economical And Tasty
Fruit Juices, Dried Fruit And The Like
How About Alcohol?
Physical Activity (And Its Effect On Your Diet)
And Then We Have Sleep
Addictions’ Effects On Each Other
Periodic Or Intermittent Fasting
Some Handy Tips For Sticking To A Healthy Diet:
Frequently Asked Questions
Recap Of The Entire Thing In Its Entirety :)
Related Reading:
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Why You Want To Eat A Healthy And Nutritious Diet (And Keep A Focus On Health Overall)

To find your own why can easily prove to be among the most important things when it comes to motivating yourself at the start (and continuously) to stick to a healthy diet, but if you haven’t quite found yours yet, here are some pretty big universal reasons as of why you wanna eat healthy (some of which you might be able to adopt for yourself).

**You’re Likely To Feel Considerably Better Overall**

As the bread and butter and most important part of improving your health for a healthier life and lifestyle, the best thing with staying on a good diet in my opinion is how much better you feel on a day to day basis because of it, which in turn is also something that can help motivate you to stick with it in the long run.

A better mood, better energy levels, higher testosterone, lower levels of anxiety and stress and being overall more free from various health problems such as frequent colds, infections and various lesser aches and pains (which are all symptoms of a compromised health).

And then you also have:

A Lower Weight And Looking Better In The Mirror

It can certainly be something as simple as wanting to look better in the mirror, whether that means coming closer to your ideal weight or maintaining that, or through exercising and building muscle, since the correct diet helps a lot in both of these regards (your diet really is, by far, the single best way to reliably lose weight, and the healthy diet laid out for you on this page does exactly that as well, while being superhealthy for you at the same time!).

It can also help you in:

Becoming Smarter, More Capable And More Productive

A healthy diet also makes for a healthier brain, thus making you smarter and more capable of achieving your goals (whether they be related to career and finances, education and learning or be it personal development, not to mention health-related goals in and of themselves).

A healthy diet can result in you becoming better at focusing and concentrating, better at learning and remembering things, as well as giving you those increases in energy and just a possible direct baseline boost to your overall motivation and drive to achieve things.

Less depression and trouble concentrating, less procrastination <-> a better you.

And then we have your life expectancy:

Increasing Longevity And Life Expectancy

A healthy diet can have a huge impact on your longevity as well, so if you want to live longer and get plenty of time to play with your grandchildren, it’s definitely time to start making better dietary decisions.

But what is living to an old age if you haven’t got your health and healthspan with you (and most people don’t, today)..

Which brings us to:

Freedom From Chronic Disease Both From A Preventative And From A Healing/Regenerative Perspective

Chronic disease freedom nurse and happy patient

A big and note-worthy thing about eating a healthy diet is that it very likely can keep you (and your loved ones should you get them to eat healthier as well) free from the chronic disease that nearly all of us sooner or later fall victim to these days (when we shouldn’t have to).

This includes cancer, heart disease, stroke, heart failure, metabolic syndrome and other metabolic diseases, obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, arthritis and problems with joints and muscles, allergies, asthma, chronic lung or kidney disease, hypertension and high cholesterol, vision problems, Alzheimer’s, dementia and so on, as well as most conditions related to inflammation, neurodegeneration and autoimmunity.

It can be difficult to think that far ahead unless you’ve stumbled upon any of these conditions yourself already, or in a loved one, but once you have you’ll more easily understand the importance of being able to prevent or treat these.

And truth be told a healthy diet can likely also help reverse and cure these so called “chronic” diseases entirely, leading me to the conclusion that it’s almost never too late to start eating healthier.

“You’ll want to eat healthier to feel better, weigh less, get smarter and perform better and to live a longer and healthier, disease-free life!”

What A Good Diet Is And Includes

What a good diet entails, two people eating

A good and healthy diet is one that is:

Free from or with as little processed foods included as possible, thereby mainly consisting of ”real” and whole foods and without too much sugar, white flour, vegetable oils, trans fats and refined salt (a healthy diet preferably uses unrefined salts such as sea salt and Himalayan salt, rich in natural trace minerals, and skips out on the refined salt completely if possible).
Pretty much entirely free from polyunsaturated omega-6 oils (which are also considered a type of processed food) and the products that include them. This is very important. A little bit of processed white flour, sugar and salt you can definitely get away with and still eat really healthy, but the omega 6 oils have to go.
A healthy diet is often varied and balanced, meaning it includes a lot of different types of foods and from different food groups (although it doesn’t have to be). “Eat the rainbow” is a good quote to go by, meaning you should add whole foods of a lot of different colors to your diet.
Relatively rich in fruit, berries and vegetables, especially if you’re still eating some processed white flour and rice or sugar, since these can help compensate (especially the veggies) for the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and fiber that was lost during the processing.

Includes animal products such as meat, fish, seafood, egg and dairy, and almost the more the better from a health perspective when it comes to these since they have a lot of easily absorbed and bioavailable nutrition in the form of essential proteins, vitamins, minerals and mostly healthy fats. A good source of food to get your calories from and nothing to skimp on for reasons other than economic, animal rights, personal preference or possibly climate ones. Full fat dairy is best.
Contains only and preferably plenty of natural fats that we’ve eaten historically (thus once again, no polyunsaturated omega 6 oils), such as butter, ghee, tallow, lard, coconut fat and olives/olive oil, but cacao fat, avocado oil, palm oil and fat from whole nuts and seeds work well too (click the links to shop for good options of those products).
Whole grains and legumes are healthy but should ideally be properly prepared before cooking and consumption through traditional processes such as soaking, sprouting and fermentation making them a bit more work and time-consuming than their refined (processed) alternatives, but like I’ve mentioned before I believe one can fairly easily get away with a bit of processed grains such as white pasta or bread or rice (as well as some sweets) as long as you simultaneously compensate for their loss of nutrients and effect on satiety and blood sugars by eating more veggies on the side.

Before (say 150 years back or so), we ate considerably less of fruits and greens and did fine on that, but instead we then ate a lot more whole grains and a lot less processed food overall.

(We were also a lot healthier back then when it comes to chronic diseases that today on the other hand are very common, but that probably has more to do with the polyunsaturated oils than it has with to do with less whole grain consumption, even if those likely have a small impact too.)

A good diet today, in my opinion, also contains a bunch of supplemental nutrients that can be difficult to obtain enough of even in a very healthy diet and of which actual deficiencies are common today (click the links for the imo best/right products), such as a good multivitamin, vitamin D (if you get too little sunlight), magnesium (good for most things), boron (a miraculous supplement) , preformed vitamin A (if you don’t eat liver regularly) from a good cod liver oil, beef liver supplement or retinyl palmitate, vitamin K (this one has the most important forms), collagen (for much needed amino acids for skin, bones and joints), natural iodine from kelp, fulvic trace minerals and trace minerals with lithium to compensate for declining mineral levels in our soils (I use both of these), some good omega 3 (if you lack fatty fish in your diet), a good natural calcium source could be useful too, ideally from crushed bone powder or calcium hydroxyapatite, a good B12 supplement and possibly a decent probiotic (if you aren’t eating a lot of fermented foods), and last but not least you may also want to include a good and affordable greens powder (an easy way to ramp your intake of veggies and superfoods up a bit).

Then we have some honorable mentions, and they’re just honorable mentions because they can often be adequately provided through a mix of your healthy diet and a good multivitamin.

These include mixed vitamin E (I take this one), zinc (ideally from an oyster extract if supplemented), selenium (best from brazil nuts), whole food vitamin C and potentially some good electrolytes for fasting and exercise performance purposes and possibly some B-complex vitamins (but again, your multi should have these as well).

Synthetic vitamins and minerals are something one should be a bit wary of though in my opinion when it comes to working towards optimal health, since there’s just so much we don’t yet know of their additional effects in the body and with that their capability of sometimes doing more harm than good.

Some types of vitamins and minerals in specific forms (the molecule of which it comes together with) can work very well in the body even when it’s synthetically produced, while others can come with large negative effects or be straight out toxic, which gives that the best and safest way for us to get many important nutrients is through as natural forms and doses as possible (meaning from or extracted from real food, or if synthetic at the very least in forms that are also commonly occurring out in nature) when supplementing.

This is why most if not all of the recommended supplements above are actually exactly that – real foods or extracted therefrom, or at the very least in their most naturally occuring forms. You can read more on this in my full article on the supplements you should probably be taking for the sake of your health, where I go more into how I choose the supplements that I take myself and recommend to others (those are the same as the ones recommended here above though!), recommended dosages as well as why to take each and every one of them and where you can order them in their best forms (again, same place/links as the above ones though!).

Offal as well, particularly liver, also has its place in a very healthy diet, even if it’s possible to get around its intake by supplementing preformed vitamin A, through a liver supplement, as per above recommendations.

We are meant to eat liver (and all parts of the animal, not just the muscle meat), which means we lose out on essential sources of many important nutrients when we don’t, since liver probably could be considered the by far best “superfood” that there is when it comes to pre-formed vitamin A and B vitamins.

Interestingly enough you can intuitively test which healthy foods and superfoods that your body wants/needs more of and that work best by trying a lot of different things and using your healthy intuition.

“There’s a lot to a truly healthy diet, but the sooner you learn the better (for your health) :).”

And now on to a very interesting and underappreciated topic:

Weston A. Price And Our Modern Diet Causing Birth Defects

Although my dietary recommendations are very similar to those of The Weston A. Price Foundation, it does differ particularly in that I don’t place as high a value on consuming some of your animal-based foods raw (can be good but not critical to a healthy diet imo) and don’t condemn pasteurized dairy (I still agree that unpasteurized dairy is probably healthier for us, but am of the opinion that pasteurized dairy is still very healthy for us as well, especially considering some of its common modern alternatives).

What’s of particular interest to me though regarding the work of Dr. A. Price, is that he discovered and proved as early as in the 1930’s that in addition to chronic disease, the processed diet we’re eating is causing a lot of birth defects and developmental problems.

So there’s another huge argument in favor of eating a less processed diet if there ever was one!

Our modern diet is causing birth defects

“Our modern processed diet is causing very preventable birth defects!”

Moving on:

Adding Superfoods To Your Diet That Can Be Both Superhealthy, Economical And Tasty

”Superfoods” (I wrote a whole article on them here), according to me, that I think everyone should have at home or consider trying to eat more of overall (both from an economic standpoint and a health related one) include some of the aforementioned whole food supplements, as well as foods such as (with links to the actual products):

Healthy fats – such as coconut oil, ghee and avocado oil.

Nuts and seeds – such as, which are also filled with good fat, especially organic chia seeds, organic flax seeds (both high in omega-3), organic brazil nuts (1-4 per day is enough of these due to their high selenium content) and macadamia nuts (low in omega-6 and high in monounsaturated fat instead), but others such as almonds or organic cashews are alright too.

Shredded coconut.

Beef jerky and dried meat – try these grass-fed meat sticks (or see Best Beef Jerky and Is Beef Jerky Healthy?) for the perfect protein-rich snack (regularly cooked meat is also very healthy of course, just slightly less convenient)!
Kefir or yogurt – and you won’t need a good probiotic.

Rolled oats.

Gelatin and collagen – from good pork rinds and bone broth or a good multi collagen supplement such as this one.

Liver and oysters – can be had as a beef liver supplement and as tasty canned smoked oysters or as an oyster extract supplement if you don’t like the specific foods as they are.

Healthy spices – such as cinnamon, curry, turmeric, chilli, black pepper and many more.

Cacao and its many products – including healthy dark chocolate, organic cacao nibs, organic cacao powder.

An affordable greens powder.

Coffee and teas – such as this healthy instant coffee plus some mushrooms or this healthy green tea. I do consider caffeine healthy or at least not unhealthy in normal amounts (less than 400 mg per day), especially in tea and coffee due to their high antioxidant content).

Fresh fruit, veggies and berries overall.

Convenient seafood such as quality canned clams and good canned oysters.

A healthy dip/sauce/condiment – such as Unsweetened ketchup, Marshmallow Dessert dip, Organic soy sauce, Street taco sauce or Powdered dip mix (mix with creme fraiche or sour cream).

Sea salt or Himalayan pink salt.

But again, read the whole article on superfoods with a lot more context, comments and a larger number of superfoods included here: 23 Best & Healthiest Superfoods To Incorporate Into Your Diet!

Calories must come from somewhere and the more of them you get from healthy and unprocessed foods, the less there is space for other unhealthier choices in your diet. Because it’s about a lot more than just what foods you’re avoiding, since what you’re having instead of those is just as important. If you want to smoothly transition to a more healthy diet, you need to find the foods that can effectively replace your unhealthy ones, so you won’t tire of eating healthy or fall off the health wagon in the long run. Also, the taste buds get used to a less processed diet fairly quickly, making it taste better and better at first. Another good way is by making use of very healthy snacks.

“Calories must come from somewhere, and replacing some of yours with those from superfoods is a good and simple way to make your eating healthier.”

Fruit Juices, Dried Fruit And The Like

A good diet also entails trying to avoid sugary drinks as much as possible (and to some extent dried fruit), including soda of course but also fruit juices, despite them usually only containing the natural sugar from the fruits. This is because juice, without the otherwise higher levels of fiber and nutrients from the whole fruits, in this concentrated form is more similar to soda with a few extra vitamins (about as much sugar per glass) than it is to actual fruit.

The “fruit sugar” is still the same type of sugar that we get in sodas meanwhile this easily consumable liquid form makes it very easy to overconsume sugar and calories in a short amount of time (again, just like with sodas), in a way that wouldn’t happen if the juice was instead consumed as whole fruits.

A small glass of juice with breakfast or next to a meal is alright and not too big of a deal, but do still keep in mind that a fruit instead with or after your meal would be considerably better for your health.

And as for dried fruit, I’d say nutrient value per sugar content is better than with fruit juice, but still something you’ll want to eat in moderation and stick to fresh (and/or frozen variants when possible), since this is also a highly concentrated form of natural sugar that can be easy to overeat on. But again, dried fruit is still fine in moderation, period.

“It’s better if you don’t use, fruit juice, or dried fruit in excess.”

Related Reading: Our Best Health Quotes And Poems :).

How About Alcohol?

When it comes to alcohol I believe the public recommendations are pretty good, meaning up to 2 glasses a day for men and perhaps then just 1 for women, and I don’t necessarily think this retracts anything from a healthy diet overall (consuming alcohol) but rather that it might contribute with its own unique health benefits such as reduced stress and less heart disease, not to mention it can make for a better experience socially (regularly having fun socially can in and of itself be health-promoting).

Drink too much per occasion though and there’s no debating of it being bad for health, so if you can’t stick to moderate drinking you might be best off not drinking at all.

“Alcohol is fine, in moderation.”

Physical Activity (And Its Effect On Your Diet)

Because even if your focus right now is on getting started on a truly healthy diet, there are strong arguments to be made for also starting a training regime (if you’re not already on one) since that in itself could help you with staying on your diet (on top of making you healthier overall in its own right, which is also often the same goal as with a healthier diet in the first place, so they definitely align well with each other).

Exercise can fairly quickly lead to an increased natural appetite for healthier food choices, and a lessened one for the processed foods you want to avoid. This makes it easier both starting and sticking to a good diet, meanwhile making you both healthier and more fit.

For me personally it has a marked effect on my cravings or what I naturally choose to eat after I’ve recently exercised (which you always have if you exercise regularly), and it also seems to go the other way too in my experience, where a healthier diet makes you more likely to want to exercise and move your body through physical activity.

I thought I’d also say something brief about exercise and physical activity, as we all likely know that’s something highly beneficial for us to be doing when it comes to our health (one of the 3 main pillars in my opinion, alongside diet and sleep).

They (a healthy diet and exercise) are like 2 twins that synergize with and benefit each other, where one makes the other one take less will power to do and vice versa, making it like a puzzle where it’s best to start from two places simultaneously rather than just one (as is also true for most health related things in that you want to tackle it from many angles at once as opposed to just one)!

“Exercise can reduce junk food cravings and make it feel easier and more natural to stick to your healthy diet!”

And Then We Have Sleep

Sleep can also have a large effect on your dietary preferences and appetite and a poor one can make you overeat, so try to get a good night’s sleep to not make the cravings for processed foods worse than they need to be.

And as with diet and exercise, good or better sleep alone can make you feel better and considerably healthier in almost no time at all, so, little to lose here and definitely something you’ll want to optimize and prioritize for the sake of your overall health and a healthier diet.

Addictions’ Effects On Each Other

I’d also like to point out that processed food as well as other addictive and desensitizing habits (since unhealthy food often is addictive today) can also affect how easy (or difficult) it can be to start with and stick to a healthier diet, since these can dull the reward system in the brain through overstimulation and make us appreciate whole and less stimulating foods less, which in turn can make us seek out more stimulating and often more processed and unhealthy foods instead. These processed foods and other habits can contribute to making healthy foods seem not quite satisfying enough.

Such other addictive habits can include drugs and alcohol, smoking/nicotine, gaming, gambling, porn, internet addiction (including social media), etcetera, and can often go unnoticed if one doesn’t realize or consider that they’ve actually become problematic addictions.

Even if these other potential addictions don’t necessarily have to be your main focus when it comes to starting a new and healthy diet, they can be worth to at the very least have in mind if you find the transition to and cravings on your healthy diet harder than expected.

Meanwhile, a healthier diet (and training regimen) in itself should in turn make such addictions easier to control as well (again a situation where it goes both ways).

“Addictions can affect each other, and since processed food can be addictive, you may want to look over your addictive tendencies as a whole in the name of eating healthier.”

Periodic Or Intermittent Fasting

There’s also a definite place for the term periodic or intermittent fasting when it comes to what a healthy diet entails, since the periods between our meals as well as when on the day we choose to eat these can have a marked effect on your health and how much you get out of being on a healthy diet.

There are a few general guidelines for when it comes to intermittent fasting and how we’ve eaten historically (and are likely evolutionarily adapted to) as well as for what various modern studies have shown to be beneficial, and they are:

Don’t eat at night – That you should only eat in the daytime has with your circadian rhythm as well as insulin sensitivity to do, and studies have shown that this can lead to a lower body weight and BMI, better sleep, less negative digestive problems such as bloating, stomach aches, constipation and diarrhea, a better balance of intestinal bacteria and a quicker recovery of your immune cells. Our body’s insulin sensitivity differs depending on time of day, which makes it more beneficial for our health not to be eating during the nighttime, at all, and to reserve that to the daytime.
Don’t eat for at least 3 hours before bedtime – This has to do in part with the digestive process and that your body recovers itself better when it’s not busy digesting at the same time, but also with, as mentioned earlier, that you should avoid eating during the nighttime, since the body is less efficient at taking care of ingested calories in a healthy way at that time. Eating too late at night is linked to increased risk of obesity, more body fat, diabetes and heart disease while also often making you hungrier the next day. The body also sees food intake as a “wakefulness signal” which affects your circadian rhythm and which many bodily systems follow, so eating too late disturbs this as well.
Let it preferably go a minimum of 12 hours between your evening meal and your breakfast – This, which is the actual periodic fast, has to do with that this period is your body’s and digestive system’s effective regular window for recovery and repair, which we’ve evolved together with (having regular longer periods where the body can properly rest). Fasting for about 12 hours or longer is strongly connected to weight loss and a lower BMI (even despite keeping calorie intake the same), less inflammation, better blood fat levels and blood pressure, better blood sugar control and insulin sensitivity, more growth hormone, activation of cell renewal and repair and more.

These healthy effects get more pronounced the longer of a window you fast regularly (especially the body’s renewal of itself, the autophagy as it’s called, starts really amping up after those 12 hours of fasting), which is why 12 hour is set as a, still definitely very beneficial, minimum daily period of fasting for good health effects. For even better results, 16 hours is a decent time for periodic fasting that can be experimented with as well.

Ideally, this type of longer intermittent fasting (12 hours or more) should eventually happen automatically, where it’s enough just following one’s regular appetite and eat only when hungry, while still receiving all these fasting benefits (basically just not getting hungry early in the morning or late at night, and getting all the required calories for the day during other hours that are within the feasting [eating] window instead), but to have the fasting hours scheduled to make sure you stick with them brings the same or similar fasting effects still, so you might want to see what works best for you personally and then go with that!

“You’ll definitely want to look into intermittent fasting as a healthy and highly beneficial part of your diet.”

Also longer periods of fasting (3 days and longer) can have their occasional place in a healthy diet, but that’s a whole other topic and not something I intend to delve any deeper into right now, since it’s a bit more difficult to do and often times not completely necessary to achieve good health for most people, since intermittent fasting often (though not always) will lead to comparable benefits in due time.

For more, read: Fasting And Intermittent Fasting (Don’t Miss Out On These)

Some Handy Tips For Sticking To A Healthy Diet:

Remember your personal whys for eating healthy and repeat/go through them again as often as needed. Writing them down can help with this.
Don’t buy unhealthy/processed food to keep at home to begin with, since that means it’s probably going to get eaten sooner or later, but especially avoid buying stuff with polyunsaturated seed and vegetable oils in them (since they’re the worst). You’ll want to get good at reading the labels so that the ingredients don’t include things such as canola oil, sunflower oil, corn oil and so on, since avoiding these definitely serves you best both in the long and in the short run (here’s a list of common foods with seed oils in them to avoid).
Again, always have fresh fruit at home to deal with a sweet tooth or sugar cravings (which is likely something we’ve evolved with to seek out just that (healthy fruits and berries).
Avoid fried foods when eating out in restaurants (since that’s the worst when fried in the common seed and vegetable oils you want to avoid, but soda’s pretty bad too).
Always keep healthy snacks at home and don’t skimp out on the sea salt, since too little salt can increase sugar cravings meanwhile salt, when unrefined, isn’t so bad after all, as mentioned earlier. Basically, use as much unrefined salt as you prefer tastewise.
Preferably avoid added sugars entirely since it can be very addictive and thus quickly lead to cravings for more, more, more and more.
Find the unprocessed superfoods that work best for you to make replacing all processed options a much less daunting task!
Definitely don’t skimp out on animal products such as meat (and animal fats such as butter, ghee, tallow and lard), since these can help a great deal with staying full and satisfied hungerwise, meanwhile simply being very healthy and tasty, so same as with salt, just eat as much animal products as you naturally prefer for a good effect on health.
Try to always have cooked food or healthy premade meals ready in the fridge (make several meals when you cook) since this makes it much easier to choose something healthy (and tasty) once you get hungry (boiled potatoes or sweet potatoes, meat or boiled eggs are examples of great foods that are also convenient as snacks or a quick smaller meal for when in a hurry).
Make use of a lot of calorie free superfood drinks and “snacks” such as teas, coffee and gums, both during your intermittent fast as well as during the day if you feel that it helps you with cravings or your energy levels. To drink a lot of water or liquid to stay hydrated is a common and good health tip although I personally believe more in following ones’ intuition and own thirst overall, at least after you’ve switched to a healthier diet where your natural instincts should become more reliable again, but still rather too much than too little here I’d say when it comes to liquid intake!

Following your thirst can still lead to drinking a lot of water, so having a water bottle nearby and at the ready wherever you work or spend the most time is still recommended, so that you can “act” quickly on your thirst when it’s there and thus get that amount of liquid your body desires. How much water you need can also of course vary a lot from day to day due to lots of different factors, along with whether you need that water bottle or not.

Save/bookmark this article so that you can keep re-educating yourself on what exactly a good diet is and how to best implement it yourself.

“Follow these tips for a higher success rate with sticking to your healthy diet!”

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some additional and frequently asked questions about eating and sticking to a healthy diet:

Organic VS Inorganic Foods, Is It Worth Buying Organic?

The main difference between organic and inorganic foods and produce is the way the food’s grown and raised.

Organic farmers are prohibited from using artificial/synthetic human-made pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers but can still use natural and approved ones.

They also can’t use GMOs, antibiotics, growth hormones or radiation to preserve the foods, and the living conditions of organically raised animals are usually better and healthier, they’re fed organic foods themselves and are often vaccinated against disease.

Organic farming practices also strive towards the goals of improved soil and water quality and less pollution, which is good for both your health and the environment.

But is organic worth it over inorganically grown/raised food?

Some of the health benefits of buying organic include slightly more nutrients and antioxidants in the foods, better omega-6 to omega-3 ratio in animal products, less toxic metals, less pesticide residue and less types of dangerous bacteria in meat.

All these health benefits of organic foods may look great on paper, but really aren’t that huge in practice since the differences are fairly small although their advantage does become bigger when you include the environmental impact and the better living standards for the animals.

All these then have to be weighed against the cost.

Again, since the differences aren’t that huge, I’d say that yes, organic is generally worth it and better for you if money isn’t at issue at all, and it’s also generally worth it if the price tag difference between the organic and inorganic version is rather small (this can vary a lot between different foods), but if it’s much more expensive to go organic, it’s in my opinion not worth it for most people today.

You be the judge of how big a price difference between organic and inorganic that is acceptable to you though!

“Organic foods are worth it, imo, if the price difference isn’t that big or if money isn’t really an obstacle for you, but the difference for your health generally isn’t that huge.”

And then we have:

Grass-fed VS Grain-fed Meat: Is Grass-fed Worth It?

The grass-fed vs grain-fed question is somewhat similar to the organic vs inorganic one, in that the differences come down to mainly how the food is raised as well as healthier and better treated animals and a slight edge nutritionwise (although likely a bigger one than with organic over inorganic).

You may get less exposure to traces of antibiotics, growth hormones and bad bacteria/superbugs (antibiotics-resistant bacteria) when choosing grass-fed over grain-fed, as well as less exposure to other additives and pesticides that may be present in the commercial grains they’re fed.

Grass-fed often also means better lives for the animals being eaten, which is good for the reasons of it being much more humane to the animals.

The most common meat where you can often choose between grass- and grain-fed is beef, although grass-fed pork and chicken is available as well at some places, which is why i’ll focus more on beef here, while still mentioning the key differences for the other ones as well.

Grass-fed beef has a better fatty acid composition than grain-fed with a better ratio of omega-3 to omega-6, while in pork and chicken the actual difference in omega-6 content is very large, meaning that from a reducing omega-6 fats standpoint, those are a lot more beneficial and healthy for you when grass-fed (while with beef, again, it doesn’t really matter that much), despite being so rare.

That is because these animals, just like us humans, and unlike cows, store omega-6 in their tissues proportionally to their dietary intake, and that their unnatural grain-fed diet is a lot higher in these than it would’ve been in nature and when grass-fed (again similar to our processed diet that is infinitely higher in omega-6 today due to all the vegetable oils as well as slightly due to these grain-fed pigs and chickens).

Grass fed beef (and other meats) also have more antioxidants and a higher level of the fat-soluble vitamins D and A in particular, which are indeed very important, but much less so if you’re already supplementing with those together with the other bunch of supplements you should already probably be taking nutritionwise.

They can also differ tastewise, grass- and grain-fed meat, but that’s neither a good nor a bad thing, necessarily, since taste and which one you’ll prefer will be highly individual.

Is it worth it (grass-fed beef and meat)?

The same goes for this category, in that it’s probably worth it for you healthwise if money is not an obstacle for you whatsoever, so go ahead and indulge in superhealthy grass-fed meat then, but it’s probably not worth it if that’s not the case and you have to consider your budget, especially with beef, since grain-fed beef is still also a whole and very healthy food in itself.

But I’d say that that still applies to pork and chicken as well (despite their fairly high levels of omega-6, since that’s no longer that big of an issue if you’ve already cut out all of the vegetable oils [the main culprit of excessive omega-6], meaning you can handle just a bit of it much better, simply because the difference in cost between grass-fed and grain-fed pork and chicken is just so steep.

But what all this also means is that, if you’re eating mostly or entirely grain-fed meat, beef is definitely the healthiest one by far of the three, simply because it’s so much lower in omega-6 than the others.

I do remember also from a few years back when I intuitively tested grass-fed vs grain-fed beef, that my body didn’t really want the fat from the grain-fed beef and was inclined to shun it, while with the grass-fed option that wasn’t a problem and I seemed to want to eat all of the fat naturally, so, that tells me that the fat from grass-fed and healthier cows/meat is probably better for you (whether it has to do with fat composition, nutrients, toxin levels or something else), although I wouldn’t call it a deal-breaker meaning you shouldn’t eat that fat at all (it’s still much healthier than most vegetable oil-based fats), just an interesting anecdote, imo!

“Grass-fed meat is healthier, especially pork and chicken if you haven’t cut out seed and vegetable oils yet and if you’re not taking supplements, but the difference isn’t that big and thus just as with organic vs inorganic, it comes down to whether money is an obstacle for you or not, but if eating only grain-fed, beef is definitely the healthier alternative of the three and only slightly less healthy than grass-fed (and still a superfood, in my book).”

Next question:

Sweeteners And Sugar Substitutes, Natural And Artificial, Are They Good Or Not (Light Sodas, Energy Drinks, Etc)

Artificial sweeteners and sugar alternatives

Although there are a lot of options for artificial sweeteners and sugar substitutes that are widely used today, the research surrounding them remains a bit lacking and the use of them controversial (especially the artificial ones).

They include artificial sweeteners designed to taste like sugar such as aspartame, sucralose (Splenda), saccharin as well as sugar alcohols like xylitol, erythritol, sorbitol, maltitol, mannitol, isomalt and lactitol.

The USDA considers the commonly used artificial sweeteners safe for human consumption, but some of them are linked with increased risk of disease such as obesity, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and they can be addictive just like sugar can, meaning if you can and it’s easy for you, it’s probably best to avoid at least the synthetic ones completely.

Many of the sugar alcohols can cause symptoms such as gas, bloating, cramps, pain and diarrhea, while aspartame specifically, one of the more common artificial sweeteners, is linked to things like obesity, diabetes, early menstruation, mood disorders, mental stress, autism and depression, although further research is needed.

It’s worth noting though that through intuitive testing I’ve found most artificial sweeteners do not seem to be much of a problem, so I still personally consume them at times through artificially sweetened diet sodas, protein shakes and energy drinks, so, there’s that, and my favorite sugar-free energy drink is Celcius, with a good mix of caffeine, essential B vitamins and good flavor, check it out for yourself!

“Although probably considerably better than an excess of added sugars in your diet, you’d still probably do best by consuming them only in moderation, or even avoiding them completely if you can.”

Decent Sugar Substitutes:

Some decent sugar substitutes that are natural and not artificial include (click the links for good and cheap product options):

That said and although these are healthier than regular sugar, they still contain a lot of actual sugar (with the exception of stevia) and should thus be considered as almost equal to white table sugar, just with some extra nutrients, fiber and antioxidants to sweeten the deal (i.e. they’re better than regular added sugar but you still want to limit your consumption of them).

Stevia, again, is the exception and perhaps something you wanna try out, since it’s both natural, very sweet and doesn’t contain any actual sugar.

This one from Now and All Star Health is great and organic and comes in lots of different flavors!

“Decent sugar substitutes include raw honey, maple syrup, blackstrap molasses, coconut sugar, date sugar and organic stevia.”

But enough about sweeteners now:

Will This Diet Help You Lose Weight?

If you’re switching from a more processed diet, especially one filled with seed oils, as mentioned in the beginning then yes, absolutely.

Eating a whole foods based diet is the best thing you can do to lose weight, and his how we always ate and have eaten before processed food and obesity even became a thing.

A natural diet simply does not cause obesity in humans, and will aid you in (often fairly rapidly) reversing it if it’s gone that far.

So, time to drop those extra pounds :).

“Yes, this diet is very likely to contribute to weight loss.”

And now:

Should You Be Eating Breakfast?

The opinions on whether or not you should be eating breakfast daily are somewhat divided, and it really may just be another of those things where you’ll have to try things out a bit and then decide what works best for you, personally.

Although it’s true that the body responds differently to meals at different times of the day (worse glucose and insulin response at night) and best earlier in the day, you still want those minimum 12 hours of fasting per day, meaning if you want to eat a fairly early breakfast you should try to eat supper early enough in the evening to allow for that.

From personal experience however, I’ve found that I often work better and am more productive when fasting and skipping breakfast (this is common and not just me), but I’ve also noticed that I function better socially in a fed state (makes sense with fasting being a form of stress on the body, albeit an hormetic one), meaning although I often skip breakfast when I’ve got nothing other than work or exercise on my schedule (sometimes I skip lunch as well and only eat dinner), I do tend to prefer eating breakfast, even if it may be just a small one, if I have any social appointments or obligations early in the day.

You be the judge of that but I suspect you’ll be able to draw similar conclusions.

So, do some experimenting and decide for yourself whether breakfast is for you on most days or not!

“Whether fasting a break or not, that’s up to YOU to decide and may differ from day.”

Are Carbs Bad For Me?

Although processed carbs can be bad for you, unprocessed carbs from whole foods are not and are rather very healthy and natural for you, as evident from their recommended inclusion in the healthy diet described on this page.

That said, among the processed carbs, sugar and fructose are still a lot worse than white rice and wheat flour, which you again can get away with eating some of with a side of fiber rich veggies, although whole wheat and rice, ideally properly prepared, is still preferred for your health.

“Processed carbs; bad (especially fructose and table sugar), but unprocessed and whole food carbs; not bad.”

And:

How About Snacking, Is Snacking Between Meals Healthy Or Not?

Although I’d say not snacking between meals beats out snacking when it comes to your health, what types of foods you choose to snack on plays a much larger role than whether you snack or not, meaning yes you can do some snacking, just make sure you pick healthy snacks and not sweets and processed foods filled with vegetable and seed oils and added sugars.

Here’s a list of all the top healthy snacks you can buy to make things a lot easier for you.

“Having a snack, although not a health hack, won’t necessarily hold your health back (unless of course it’s an unhealthy one).”

And now, last but definitely not least, we have a:

Recap Of The Entire Thing In Its Entirety :)

To recap, basically you should:

Eat as unprocessed as you can and try to vary your diet (eat the rainbow).
Avoid polyunsaturated vegetable oils like the plague and change these out for more natural fats such as tallow, lard, coconut oil, olive oil avocado oil, ghee and butter, as well as whole nuts and seeds in moderation.
Eat a decent amount of fruit, berries and vegetables.
Stick to whole grains as much as you can, but preferably when it’s been properly/traditionally prepared.
Eat a good amount of animal products (do not eat vegan [controversial for some but now again, we’re talking health first and foremost, and not the environment or animal rights]).
This diet should be very helpful for losing weight fast.
Take a bunch of carefully chosen supplements (yes, even when on a very healthy diet, since these can make a bigger difference than you think), even if it might not seem the most economic route (it can be difficult putting a price on optimal health though, but you can easily view them as incredibly healthy complementary foods that you could have just as well bought straight from the food isle in the supermarket should they have happened to be found there rather than on an online shelf, especially since they’re all just mostly whole or from whole foods).
If you dare, eat liver (or supplement with it).
You can secure a healthy pregnancy and avoid birth defects through eating healthy.
Incorporate some or as many as possible of above mentioned superfoods.
Switch out your salt to sea salt or Himalayan salt.
Fruit juices preferably not, same with alcohol and dried fruit but small doses are still acceptable and can be healthy.
Exercise and get your beauty sleep, this helps with everything.
Work on overcoming your addictions.
Fast (don’t eat close to your bedtime, have at least a 12 hour daily fasting window).
Follow a few simple tips to more easily stick with your diet and avoid those vegetable oil-fried chips :). (See list of handy tips right above).
Eat organic and grass-fed if you can afford it but don’t stress it too much, same with sweeteners (avoid them if you can but in moderation they’re probably alright!).
Decide for yourself whether and on which days you want to be eating breakfast.
Snacking is acceptable and fine as long as you choose healthy snacks.

And last but not least, again, you should eat a good and healthy diet because it makes you feel so much better, look better in the mirror, can make you smarter and more productive and because it helps you live longer while helping you avoid, heal from and reverse a lot of unnecessary illness, especially that of the chronic sort (the worst kind!). It’s a way of bulletproofing yourself, basically.

So, eat healthy, what more can I say :), or you might with your health have to pay.

Did I miss to include anything? Feel free to ask questions or leave your opinion in the comments, and please, share this article on social media and with friends and people who can have use for it, and don’t forget that, it’s almost never too late to start eating healthy.