Speaker 1: healthy eating for beginners at 2024 edition. So it's 2024, we live in a very fast-paced lifestyle, food is not necessarily our main priority. However, we have a plethora of food options that are always just like right in our faces, in most cases not the healthiest options. So eating healthy balanced meals is definitely a conscious choice that you have to make. It's not just about weight management at all. Healthy eating obviously plays a huge role when it comes to preventing certain diseases and living a happier, healthier, longer lifestyle. And with this video, my goal is to give you the basics for healthy eating so that you have kind of like a reference point that you can trust in order to get started with healthy eating, learn all the basics you need to and I'm also going to be referencing a lot of my other videos where I go more into detail about certain aspects and this video is just going to be more like a global healthy eating for beginners because or else if I would go like in detail it would last multiple hours. So let's get started and first thing on the list is understanding the nutrition basics. So first let's talk about macronutrients that break down into three categories proteins carbs and fats. Proteins are essential for muscle repair and muscle growth. Carbs are essential for energy and fats are essential for hormone production and getting in the right balance of these macronutrients is essential for healthy eating. So you can find carbohydrates in bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, legumes, fruit, foods with refined sugar, and they give you four calories per gram. You can find protein in fish, meat, dairy, eggs, legumes, tofu, and they give you four calories per gram as well. And you can find fats in nuts, nut butter, seeds, oils, fatty animal products, and they give you nine calories per gram. The proportions in which you need to get these macros vary from person to person depending on your lifestyle and like a multitude of factors, but a good starting point is getting around 50% of your calories from carbs and then 25% from protein and 25% from fat. So if you're eating 2,000 calories that means getting 1,000 calories from carbs, so 250 grams. That means getting 500 calories from protein, so 125 grams. And that means getting again 500 calories from fat, but in this case that means 55 grams. Now micronutrients are extremely important as well. You have vitamins and minerals that support healthy the healthy functioning of your cells, of your bones, of your immune system and honestly if you are a beginner getting into healthy eating I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about your micronutrients. If you're eating a healthy balanced way in a healthy balanced way then you are going to hit the required daily intake for vitamins and minerals. If you know that you are deficient in something or if you think you are and then you get tested for it, then you can supplement. But don't go about like supplementing like random vitamins and minerals just because like you think that could be a good idea. Eat healthy, balanced meals like I'm gonna teach you how to do and don't try to micromanage your micronutrients. So another important tip for beginners is learning about calories and portion sizes. So calories are just energy units. That's it. You don't need to overcomplicate it. That's just what they are. Obviously the balance of calories that you consume is going to affect your weight, but it's not as simple as like calories in versus calories out. And I definitely don't recommend calorie counting for most people. However, I do think that if you have absolutely no idea how much you're eating, what calories are, or whatever, it can be helpful to just get a general idea of the amount of calories you're eating. You should know that approximately for a woman you should be eating around 2,000 calories a day and approximately for a man it's 2,500 calories a day. Of course this varies depending on so many factors and you can find like online calculators where you can like plug in all your measurements whatever and it will tell you how many calories you need to eat but again please just use this as a guide. By the way I'm dog-sitting for my friend so if you see a cute little dog in the background or little dog noises that's that. Oh it wants to come. Do you want to come with me? I'm speaking to him in English but he's a French dog. So now that you have this knowledge, I would recommend getting more familiar with the amount of calories in different foods that you eat, or the amount of calories in a serving size, and then how much that would make up for your own calories throughout the day. But I wouldn't obsess over this at all. I would just really just use this as a guide and just as a little learning tool if you have absolutely no idea like how many calories you're consuming. The main goal with this should be just like bringing awareness because you may think that you're eating correct portion sizes when in reality you're not whether that is like too little or too much but again this is just to use as like information doesn't mean that you need to stick to it. If you feel like your portions are too big then it's a good idea to start reducing them a little by little. Of course you need to take this slowly you don't want to go from a 5,000 calorie diet to like a 2,000 calorie diet in like three days. Of course not. And same thing if you feel that you're eating too little, you don't want to like overload your body all of a sudden. You want to do things slowly, little by little. I'll tell you more about how to do that when you learn how to like listen to your body and things like that, but that should be your goal. And again, I want to reiterate I don't necessarily recommend calorie counting for people. I don't think that it should be the goal. I think that we should all be able to listen to our bodies and eat what we need to intuitively, but I know that some people have no idea what that means so in the beginning it can be okay to do that. Another thing you can do to kind of help you with your portion sizes is use the plate method. So you take a 9-inch plate and you fill a third of it with vegetables, a third of it with healthy carbs like whole grains or like starchy veggies or legumes, and a third of it with healthy proteins like lentils, beans, tofu, fish. Then add a portion of fruit for dessert and that's a very easy way to balance things out. Now let's talk about foods to eat and avoid. And it's very important that you don't classify foods as like foods that you should always have that are like the good foods and then foods that you should never have that are the bad foods. There is room for any and every type of food in your diet. Now with that being said, some foods are undeniably healthier than others and these are the foods that you should be having most of the time and I'll talk about what that means a little bit more in a next point. So these mainly include whole and minimally processed foods such as all the fruit and veggies, whole grains like brown rice and whole wheat pasta, oatmeal, buckwheat, bulgur, quinoa, beans and legumes, nuts and seeds, and then of course there are foods that you can be eating once in a while but shouldn't be having on a regular basis so these include refined carbs like cake and candy and soda and trans fats which artificial trans fats have been banned but you can still find trans fat in like certain products like junk food and also processed meats like salami or bacon sausage ham and i say this a lot but just because certain foods are good in certain situations doesn't mean they're always the best choice like having a salad won't always be the best choice so planning Planning your meals is also an important part of healthy eating because even if you have all the willpower in the world and you're super motivated to do all the things that I'm talking about in this video, when you come home from a long day at work and you open your fridge and there's nothing there and you have no idea what to make and you need to think of a meal, you need to go grocery shopping to make that meal, and then you need to cook the recipe, wait for it to cook, and then you can eat it, like that's not realistically going to be possible. So a great way to help with that is to plan your meals or like even better prep your meals but you know that can be very time consuming but at least take some time during your weekend or like a calmer day for you to go through the meals that you feel like having this week and then go through the ingredients that you have and then buy the ones that you don't have and that you need for those specific meals and then make sure that you have like a list of all the meals you need to make and then all the ingredients that go with it so you don't have to think too much. You just know, okay, Monday evening I'm coming home, I'm making like spaghetti and veggies. Everything is there for me to do it. Very simple. So this is the minimum that I would recommend, but you can of course take this a step further and you can batch cook certain parts of your meal. Like maybe you can batch cook some grains in the beginning of the week or like peel and cut some veggies. That's gonna make things easier for you. Or you can even prep your entire meals if you feel like that if you if that works for you you can do that too that way you just come home and then get your meal all prepped and don't hesitate to go for options that are easier like pre-cooked veggies like frozen veggies or like canned veggies or microwavable rice or things like that you know you don't need to cook very elaborate three-hour meals for it to be healthy eating like simple meals will work just fine and it's much better to have like a simple meal that you open a few cans and then put a bag of microwavable rice in the microwave, that's much better than being like, oh I don't feel like cooking I'm just gonna order McDonald's. A big reason why people eat junk food and order takeout is because of its convenience, so you really need to be doing everything in your power to make healthy eating convenient too. Just a little reminder that you can find all of the services I offer on my website and that's gonna be the first link in the description. You can check out things that are paid like my nutrition coaching sessions or my courses, but there's also a ton of free material from webinars to ebooks to checklists to challenges, so make sure to check that out. So another big aspect of healthy eating is learning to listen to your body. So mindful eating can be very helpful with this. This just means that you are going to take the time when you eat to solely focus on your food. You're not going to get distracted by anything else. You're not going to be doing anything else. You're gonna be focused on what you're eating, on like all the different flavors and textures of your food. You're really gonna eat more slowly and be very aware of all the things that you're eating. And another thing to help you with listening to your body is learning about intuitive eating. So basically intuitive eating has a bunch of guidelines to kind of help you regain control over your eating habits and kind of like let go of food rules and like diet culture rules and like outside regulations and really learn to tune into what your body is telling you. A very important aspect of this is to learn to start eating when you're hungry and stop eating when you're full. I feel like if everybody did this that there would be like way fewer problems with food in the world. The problem is that we don't know. We don't know how to do that. And both of these are equally important if you're just listening to your body when it's telling you it's full and you're able to stop when you're full but but you're also letting your body starve for multiple hours when it's telling you it's hungry and you're not doing anything, then that's not good. That's not sustainable, that's not going to last, and of course the opposite is true as well. So you really need to learn to do both of these things, and the hunger and fullness scale can really help you do that. It's a scale where you need to rate your hunger from like 1 to 10, 1 being you're absolutely starving and 10 being you're like absolutely, completely full, and 5 is kind of like the neutral middle ground and you need to rate your hunger like before during and after a meal and so you always need to stay around 5 you know never go below 2 never go above like 8 and then that can really help you tune into your body signals. Okay this is perhaps the most important aspect of this entire video like if you need to remember one thing it needs to be this you need to be enjoying your food. Enjoyment and eating is absolutely crucial because if you don't enjoy your food it's not gonna be sustainable. So you need to make it a priority for your meals to be healthy and balanced but you need to put as much energy into doing that than the energy you're putting into making them actually enjoyable because eating the same meal of broccoli and rice and chicken is not going to last very long. Put that same energy into finding things that you enjoy, into using ingredients that you crave, flavors that you want to try, textures that you want to test out, and recipes that actually really sound good to you and where you're like really excited to eat them. Eating should be a source of pleasure and not just nourishment. My favorite way to look at it is to see it as a Venn diagram where you have the foods that you like on one side and the foods that are healthy on the other, and then where they intersect you should be eating 70% of your meals from this. So that means that 70% of your meals should be foods that you like and that are healthy. And then you can have 20% of your foods be treats because that is also very important for your meals to be enjoyable. You need to be eating those things that aren't healthy you know like chocolate cake or like candy or like soda. That's not healthy but who cares because they're enjoyable and you enjoy them. Now that doesn't mean that you should be having them for every single meal every single day but 20% of of your calories is a pretty good amount and you're gonna be able to be satisfied with that. And then remaining 10% is for foods that are healthy. You don't like that much, but you're like, you know, whatever, I know that it's gonna be good for me if I have them. You should never do more than 10% because if you do more, you will start to associate healthy eating with, you know, not good and not fun. And that's when you will start feeling restricted. That's when you will feel that you need binges so that you can actually get the foods that you enjoy. And this can be very helpful for eating in moderation. And I talk about eating in moderation all the time, but basically it just means finding a balance between eating healthy, nourishing foods that you enjoy and also treats that you really enjoy and finding a way to incorporate all of them into your diet so that you feel satisfied and not restricted, but you're also getting in all the energy and the nutrients that you need. I have a whole video on learning how to eat in moderation. So check it out again here or in the description. And finally, don't forget to focus on improvement and not perfection. A healthy diet isn't about strict rules or being perfect. And often we have this mentality in the new year. We think that we need to have super extravagant, super complicated goals and we need to hit all of them or else we're not doing well. Every year we finally think that this is the year when we're gonna do it right. So we want to hit all of our goals and follow everything perfectly. and most of these goals are unachievable. So that's really what you don't want to do. Like there is no better way to get tired of doing this and to be like unsuccessful in your goals and then to stop everything altogether. Like that will happen if your goals are too high. What I recommend instead is setting goals that are actually reasonable and achievable. Again, I have, I think multiple videos on how to do that. I'll link one here and then in the description as well. need to take little steps you need to focus on achieving these small goals so that you feel satisfied with yourself and then you can move on to bigger goals and then you should never be disappointed if you aren't able to do certain things that just replace them with things that are a little bit easier to do if every week you're adding a new health goal to your list even if that goal is very small week by week and month by month you are going to build up your goals so much and you are going to improve so much when it comes to healthy eating. Remember this, if you strive for perfection, you will fail, you will be disappointed, and you will quit all of these goals by February. If you just strive for progress, then all the little steps that you're going to take will motivate you and get you feeling better, and you will make actual, true, lasting progress, and it's going to be incredible. So if you do all these things, that's already going to make you healthier than a big, big chunk of the population. But of course healthy eating is the only thing you need to take into account when you're trying to get healthier. You also need to make sure that you're sleeping enough and that you are exercising or at least like moving your body and that you are drinking plenty of water and that you are prioritizing your mental health and that you are using like techniques to reduce stress. All of that is extremely important as well. Most of my channel is is dedicated to healthy eating and doing so in a way that is actually enjoyable and sustainable. So please check out all my other videos. I'll put like a bunch of videos in the description to like go further into all the points I talked about, but please go digging as well and find like other things that I didn't talk about here. You can also look at my Instagram reels or TikToks if you want more like bite-sized short content, but I am here to support you every step of the way. I also offer online consultations if you really feel like you need like one-on-one help. So I wish you all the best in this new journey to healthy eating and so happy that you're here. So if you enjoy this video, don't forget to like it, subscribe and see you on my next ones, bye.