Nutrition

Nutrition is a very discussed topic where opinions can diverge a lot. I don't want to convince you to be a vegetarian or to do a paleo diet. I don't think that there is one right way to eat for everyone, instead, I believe that everyone has to find their own way. In this section, I will present to you what has worked for me and give you some inspiration. I am also not an extremist (in any sense of life). For nutrition that means that I try to follow my "rules" 90% of the time but I am always open to making exceptions (when going out for dinner with friends, when being invited to a family dinner in a foreign country, or when on vacation).

Intuition Eating is an eating method where you eat what your intuition tells you and don’t forbid yourself too much. The positive effect is that you feel better about your body, you don’t feel forced to eat something or not to eat something and even weight loss is possible. When people forbid themselves to eat something even if they want to eat it a yo-yo effect is possible (which means that you don’t eat the "forbidden product" for a certain time but then you get a snack attack and eat A LOT of this "forbidden product"). To avoid this yo-yo effect intuition eating is a very good method.

The 4 rules of intuition Eating are:

1. Eat what you want to eat and don’t forbid yourself from certain products

2. Eat when you feel hungry and not because “it’s time for lunch or dinner”

3. Eat slowly and enjoy your meal

4. Eat until you are satisfied, don’t eat more “just because the plate isn’t empty yet”

I can already imagine some of you thinking now: “If I eat what I want and when I want, I will be eating chocolate the entire day.” Maybe you would do that for two to three days but then you would get tired of it. Nevertheless, I can understand the concern and it's not completely wrong. Intuition Eating builds up on the belief that our body knows exactly what to eat, when to eat, and when to stop. Unfortunately, due to our modern food culture, our body has forgotten what’s good and what’s not. For example: One of the 4 rules says that you should eat when you feel hungry. But people nowadays don’t really know what hunger feels like and most of us even confuse hunger with thirst. So, in order to be able to include Intuition Eating into your nutrition your body might have to learn what’s good and what’s not again.

Slow Eating is a very healthy habit that is even included in Intuition Eating. It means that when you eat you take time to do so (30 minutes more or less) and don’t eat while running to the next meeting. This helps you first to regulate the amount of food you eat (as faster you eat as more you eat because your stomach takes time to give you the signal that it has had enough food) and second to enjoy the meal and really taste it (if you really start tasting the food and eating consciously you will see that a lot of snacks aren’t even delicious). It also helps you to take a break from your day. What’s also recommended on top is to focus on your meal for these 30 minutes and don’t do anything else at the same time (like checking your emails). For me, this was hard in the beginning and sometimes I can’t do it, but I try to do it as much as possible.

Clean Eating has become very popular. It means that you eat fresh products and not "ready-made" products from the supermarket. You can take time to cook at home. If you don't have time to do so, you can eat somewhere where you know that the food is freshly cooked. I once heard a guy say in a Podcast: "Ask yourself if your grandma would eat a certain product. If the answer is no, then try to avoid it." Also try to avoid adding white sugar and a lot of salt. Instead of that you could add more spices and herbs.

It is also important to eat regional food (food that grows where you live) and seasonal food (eat food when it's in its season and not during the entire year). There are 3 reasons to eat regional and seasonal.

1. Our digestive system is made for the products that grow where we come from. That's why European people can tolerate milk products more easily than East Asian people.

2. Regional and seasonal food needs less (chemical) treatment. If you eat fruits and vegetables that come from very far they have to use chemicals to transport them and make them last longer. The same applies to eating food outside of its season. This food has to grow in "unnatural" ways so it has been through more (chemical) treatments.

3. It's also good for the environment as food doesn't need to be transported by plane or ship over continents.

I like to apply this when I live abroad. I always try to eat local food, like Quinoa in Peru, Avocado in Mexico, Mango in Pakistan, etc. I also do it because I love to try different food but especially because I feel that it's cleaner and better for the environment.

Intermittent Fasting is something that I have been practicing for 3 years now (as much as possible). My mom (a pharmacist) always used to tell me I shouldn’t eat small snacks every two hours because my insulin would get too high and when I started informing myself about intermittent fasting I realized that she was right. Intermittent Fasting means that you take all your meals within an 8-hour interval each day. For the other 16 hours you fast.

For example: you could take your first meal at 12.00 pm and your last meal at 8.00 pm. The 16-hour fasting time gives you and your stomach time to recover and rest. People who start eating at 6.00 am and finish at 11.00 pm never give their stomach time to rest because it’s always digesting something. A lot of effects have been proven with intermittent fasting: more energy, less stress even weight loss. There is also a TED talk on this subject on YouTube. 

What is most important is that you can integrate this lifestyle into your daily routine. For me 8:16 is too much, that’s why I do 9:15 or 10:14 (which means that between my last meal of the day and my first meal the next day there are 14 or 15 hours and not 16). This is the maximum I can do. Even if it’s not 100% as recommended it’s better than not doing it at all. In the beginning, this lifestyle will be a little hard to adapt to because you will feel hungry in the morning - but with time you will get used to it.

It’s recommended to eat 3-4 times a day and have between 3-4 hours between one meal and the next one in order to give your stomach time to digest and recover. If snacks can be avoided it would be better because if you never stop eating your body never gets time to recover.

Ayurveda and TCM are two old health systems from India and China. Both of them are different but have some similarities. Although I don’t focus my nutrition on these two systems there are a few things I like to include in my meals from these traditions.

First of all, both of them are based on the concept of balance in nutrition. In TCM foods are classified as having Ying or Yang, so whatever your body is lacking at the moment you should be eating. In Ayurveda, people are assigned different doshas (vata, pitta, and kapha) depending on their body structure and behavior, so they eat according to their dosha. Both traditions classify foods in 5 different elements (fire, earth, water, wood, and metal in TCM and fire, earth, water, air, and space in Ayurveda). Each of these 5 elements matches a flavor or a certain consistency or even a certain part of the body.

In the Ayurvedic tradition, meals should include all 6 flavors (sweet, sour, salty, spicy, bitter, and astringent). It is also said that you shouldn’t drink 30 minutes before, during, and 30 minutes after eating, because then your stomach can digest better. In TCM meals should include all 5 elements as well as all 5 colors (green, red, yellow, white, and blue/black). I try to include different colors and flavors into my meals as well as avoid drinking while, before, and after eating.

There is a big discussion about whether you should eat more carbs, fats, or proteins. There are many different diets out there with different opinions: Low-Carb, No-Carb, Keto, Low-Fat, etc. It's important to know that not all carbs, proteins, or fats are the same. There are different types, some better than others. I recommend eating all three macronutrients because they all have different functions for our body but I also recommend eating the "good ones" out of each section. Click here to know more.

Know more about different types of food that I eat and meals that I can recommend.