Nutritious dietary advice

「"Various foods to match needs" - this is the most practical conclusion I have come to after working as a public nutrition guide for 6 years and seeing thousands of ordinary users adjust their diets.

When many people mention a nutritious diet, their first reaction is to "eat boiled vegetables, abstain from sugar and oil, and calculate weight by the gram." Last week, I met a girl from a major Internet company who only ate boiled broccoli and chicken breasts every day at noon, eating only the calories. For three consecutive months, my aunt postponed it for half a month, and told me "I am eating a healthy diet", which made me very angry. Don’t be fooled by the perfect diet templates on the Internet. No diet plan is suitable for everyone.

Take the currently popular dietary patterns as an example. The Mediterranean diet is praised by many people as a god. It is recommended to eat more whole grains, deep-sea fish, and olive oil. It is indeed friendly to cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. However, if you already have high uric acid and still eat deep-sea fish every day as required, don’t blame the bad diet if you have a gout attack. The low-carb ketogenic diet has become popular recently, and many people rely on it to lose weight quickly. However, if you run three half-marathons a week, have a heavy workload and often stay up late, and insist on very low-carbohydrates, you will most likely feel dizzy after running two kilometers and your hands will shake when you change the plan. You are simply looking for trouble for yourself. The Dietary Guidelines for Residents issued by our country are actually the most universal reference. It is recommended to eat 12 kinds of food every day and 25 kinds per week. It sounds difficult, but it is actually very easy to do: cook a multi-grain porridge with a hard-boiled egg in the morning, order some pickles and a small handful of almonds, that’s 4 kinds. ； At noon, I ordered kung pao chicken, garlic lettuce, and a small portion of corn for takeout. I could easily make up seven or eight kinds, so I didn’t even have to work hard to make up the numbers.

Having said this, someone must ask, who is listening to the "do you want to skip dinner" that is so loud on the Internet? There are two groups of users I have come into contact with. The group that insists on skipping dinner says that prolonged fasting can promote the body's autophagy, which is the body's self-cleaning mechanism. There is a 40-year-old sister next to me. She has a slow metabolism and usually has nothing to do at night. She lies down early to rest and has not eaten dinner for 3 years. The physical examination indicators are normal than many 20-year-old young people, and her skin condition is also particularly good. However, some users who objected complained to me, saying that they skipped dinner after listening to the suggestion. When they worked overtime until 10 o'clock, they had stomachache and broke into cold sweats, and almost fell down due to hypoglycemia. If you ask such a person to skip dinner, that is really unhealthy. To put it bluntly, it depends on your own condition. If you have little activity at night, go to bed early, and don’t feel uncomfortable if you don’t eat, then you don’t need to eat. ； If you have to stay up late at night, take care of a baby, or have chronic gastritis, it will be much more comfortable to just eat a bowl of vegetable porridge and a bowl of small wontons than to carry it.

Some people also ask me if I should spend hundreds of dollars on supplements such as multivitamins and fish oil. I usually ask him first, have you eaten enough 12 kinds of food in the past week? If you only eat white rice with fried vegetables every day, and rarely touch eggs and milk, then supplementing with appropriate supplements can indeed fill the nutritional gap, which is better than not supplementing at all. ； If you drink milk and eat eggs every morning, at least two kinds of vegetables plus a high-quality protein at noon, and eat some fruits and nuts at night, then supplements are really an IQ tax. If you have that kind of money, you might as well buy two boxes of strawberries that have just been released and buy some cherries to eat, and you can be happy and supplement your vitamins.

I usually don’t pay much attention to the food I bring. I just divide the lunch box into three compartments. One half contains dark green leafy vegetables, sometimes stir-fried romaine lettuce, sometimes boiled broccoli dipped in mustard and soy sauce. One quarter contains multigrain rice. Occasionally, if I want to eat polished rice, I replace it with white rice. The remaining quarter contains braised beef or fried chicken breast. If I get cravings this week, I will replace the multigrain rice with half a piece of sauced elbow skin. I don’t feel guilty after eating it. After all, eating is a happy thing, so there is no need to regard it as a KPI that must be completed.

Oh, by the way, there is also the issue of quitting sugar that everyone is most concerned about. Nowadays, many people say that free sugar is the root of all evils and they must quit completely. I have also seen people who have not touched any added sugar for a year, and their skin condition has indeed improved a lot. However, some friends also said that they love drinking milk tea. They drink two cups a week without getting acne or weight. On the contrary, because they don’t have to restrain their appetite, they usually don’t eat randomly. My own habit is not to add extra sugar when cooking, choose three-thirds of sugar for milk tea, and eat cream cake once a week. My weight has been stable in the normal range for so many years, and there are no problems in physical examinations.

In fact, after doing nutritional consulting for so long, the most common thing I say to users is, don’t regard eating as a burden, and don’t force yourself to copy other people’s recipes. Just like buying clothes, what others wear well may not necessarily suit your figure. The same goes for diet. If you feel comfortable after eating, have enough energy, and have normal physical examination indicators, that is the most suitable nutritional diet for you. If you really want to eat hot pot and barbecue one day, feel free to eat it. You won’t gain weight after one meal. Long-term balance is the last word.