Lately, I’ve been thinking about healthy lifestyles. Because of my active interest in fitness and nutrition, I follow a lot of health-related blogs. It seems like everyone is always talking about ‘the worst foods for your diet’ or the ‘best things to eat to stay fit’, and I feel like sometimes, we forget that moderation is the key to any healthy lifestyle.
Over the past several years, I’ve developed a pretty intense love of running. When I first started, I wasn’t worried about the foods I was eating, and didn’t really take my diet into consideration. I’ve since learned that diet has a huge impact on exercise performance, and now my diet is carefully planned out to ensure that I get the right amounts of carbohydrates, proteins, and healthy fats.
I admit that for the most part, I do stay away from things like refined sugar, white flour, and most dairy – simply because through a lengthy process of trial and error, I’ve learned how my body responds to specific foods, and I want to eat in a way that allows me to feel my best. And for me, that’s using honey instead of sugar, quinoa instead of pasta, and almond milk instead of regular milk.
Running and exercise are important to me, and I know that if I don’t eat the right foods to fuel my body, my workouts will suffer. My desire to start the day with a pea protein shake and a teaspoon of matcha doesn’t mean I think there is anything wrong with enjoying a piece of toast with peanut butter – quite the opposite, in fact.
I frequently see friends talking about cutting out carbohydrates to get ready for bikini season, or ‘staying strong’ and not giving in to random cravings for sweets or salty snacks while they are sitting around watching TV in the evenings, or commuting to and from work.
I understand that sticking to a diet is hard, but I’m not sure that limiting the variety of foods you eat is an effective way of doing it.
To me, a healthy lifestyle involves balance – eating the right foods to fuel my body while also allowing myself permission to enjoy a treat, if I want one. I think an important thing to remember is that while foods certainly can have a positive or negative impact on your overall health, labeling foods as good or bad, allowed or not allowed, isn’t making you eat any healthier. It’s more about consistently choosing to eat things that your body can use, while treating yourself occasionally to foods you love – whether or not they are included on the list of ‘top foods for weight loss.’
A good friend of mine is a personal trainer, and one of his favourite things to tell clients is to remember the 80/20 rule. If you eat to fuel your body 80 per cent of the time, you can indulge a bit with the other 20 per cent.
It sounds easy, but it’s a tough adjustment at first – especially for someone like me who has never really paid much attention to food. I’m not a big eater and protein is so filling, so getting enough protein in my diet has always been a challenge for me. After a few years of effort, though, it’s second nature, and I don’t even really need to think about it anymore.
Grocery shopping with this in mind is super easy, since I know exactly the things I need to buy to feed me for the entire week.
Cooking is even easier, as most foods I just eat raw. But on Sundays, my day of active rest, I go out sometimes to have a dinner at a restaurant without feeling any guilt – because there isn’t anything wrong with treating myself, even if I do occasionally eat foods that are on the ‘bad’ list.
