From my personal experience and working with thousands of patients, there are 7 healthy eating habits that can transform your life. The word “healthy” can seem nebulous. 

First off, what does it mean to be “healthy” and second, how does one become healthy?

I often say, “accumulate health” because health is a daily process of stacking one habit on top of another. And by health, I mean a strong, resilient body.

These habits will then compound and manifest as health or disease in our lives.

As always, this is about accumulating health, so there is no need to go from zero of these habits to all seven tomorrow.  Brick upon brick, layer upon layer is how you build a strong home and a strong, resilient body.

7 Healthy Eating Habits

1. Eat nutrient dense foods

When you go grocery shopping, walk the perimeter of the grocery store.  Gather foods into your shopping cart according to the hierarchy of digestibility and nutritional density. 

• Grass-fed, free range meats, wild caught fish (no Atlantic salmon or farmed fish, those babies are loaded with heavy metals and fat soluble toxins)

• Eggs

• Favorite fruits and vegetables (ask yourself how you will use the vegetables so you don’t see them go bad in your fridge and then feel guilty about wasting money, which leads to not buying them in the future)

• Whole grains
• Dairy
• Nuts/seeds
• Beans/lentils  

This strategy will save you lots of money and pay you back will lots of health opportunity. As well as save your neck from all the label reading. You can also check out this blog post on Food Hierarchy.

2. Optimize your day with protein

Aim to start your day with 30 grams of protein and then knock two more meals during the day with at least 30 grams or protein. By  protein I mean beef, chicken, turkey, buffalo, fish, goat whey, bison, eggs, yogurt, kefir, nuts, seeds. 

Look at your first meal and use a search engine or the app, My Fitness Pal to find how much protein and fiber are in it. If you can get 30 grams of protein and at least 10 grams of fiber for breakfast, it is going to be challenging to not have a great food day.

3. Delete artificial sweeteners

Artificial sweeteners such as (Aspartame, Splenda, Sucralose, Ace K) and sugar added to foods.

Artificial sweeteners are a health disaster and added sugar when it is applied by the big food companies is multiplied times greater than you would ever do on your own.  This is wasted energy that is bogging down your body and using up precious resources.  Make your own sweets or only buy products that use honey, stevia, Monkfruit, or maple syrup.

4. Cancel vegetable oils

This would be sunflower, safflower, corn, soybean, canola oils. Look for them in breads, chips, crackers, dressings, nuts milks, granola bars.  

Why do we don’t want avoid them?  Well they are associated with increase risk of dementia, heart disease, diabetes, over eating, arthritis and cancer.  That is not a good line up.

Choose olive oil, coconut oil, butter, ghee. 

5. Hydrate

Your body is 75% water if you take the water out of us, there isn’t much left.

Aim for 1/3-1/2 your body weight in ounces of water per day. Start your day off with a hit of 16-24 ounces of water before any other food or beverage touches your lips. 

A plump vital grape fresh off the vine is what we are aiming for rather than a shriveled aged raisin.

6. Stop eating 2-3 hours before bed

Your sleep will be that much more satisfying and restorative if you give yourself a 2-3 hour window without food before you go to bed.

This is fantastic for the reparative mechanism in the gut and permits the body to use all the nutrient dense blood that would otherwise be flooding the stomach in support of digestion to be sent to areas with the greatest need for repair and revitalization.

7. Prepare your food in advance

We only have so much willpower in a given day. Since food is everywhere, we don’t have to hunt for and gather it in each day. We just go to our pantry, the refrigerator or head down to the grocery store with 40,000 items, the necessity of preparing what we are going to eat in advance has never been more important. 

If we don’t prepare breakfast, it will likely be unwholesome, lunch will be hit or miss and then after 2-4pm depending on circumstances, we may end up at McDonalds, calling in pizza or perhaps sitting down to a wholesome meal. 

Don’t leave your food routine to chance, prepare for health accumulation.

Which of the 7 Healthy Eating Habits have you implemented? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.