Nutrition for the busy adult

Who wants to look great, not only wearing a suit but also when hitting the beach.

Where to start..?

It‘s easy to dig yourself into a never ending rabbithole, when researching diet and nutrition. There are more diets and successful reviews of those, than anybody ever could count and even nutrition-styles are never ending, circling around with ever changing popularities and oftentimes contradicting dogmas.

So as with clothes and exercise, simple always trumps complexity and moderation might be the right approach in the long run on any given day. Don‘t go for extremes, don’t take what sounds too good to be true for a real shortcut, just apply common sense and be consistent with it.

After all, human are omnivores, no buzzwords will ever change that.

Start with a balanced diet, eating a bit of everything, just skip heavily processed foods and sweets.

I really like the French approach, of eating till you are around 80% full.

What to eat..?

As mentioned above, you should eat a very balanced diet, that fits your local customs and habits, don’t try to copy a Mediterranean diet, if you are Japanese and vice versa. Local food might be the right for you, genetically speaking. But don‘t condemn adding olive oil or coconut milk either. Please, just try not being dogmatic about anything.

So what’s a balanced diet, as you might be aware of, there are mainly 4 different macronutrients, where your calories can come from. Protein, from meat, fish and every other food category derived from livestock, like cheese, milk, cottage cheese, skyr and so on. Then there are carbohydrates, from vegetables, rice potatoes, pasta, fruit and every other sugary treat you can think of. Fats, which are really good for you by the way, again meets and fish, butter, nuts and so on. Lastly there fourth and most important macro nutrient, alcohol, preferably consume through red wine, added to each meal, after working hours, or even before, if tolerated in your workplace of course. This is the only one positively affecting your soul and outlook on your day to day life. Hope you got that I‘m joking, but coming back to that dogmatic comments before, a glass of wine from time to time won’t hurt, and might be beneficial for longevity.

Try to have a even distribution of macronutrients in every meal and throughout the day, maybe slightly in favor of protein, won‘t hurt, if you want to build some muscle, or carbohydrates, since you won’t overeat as easily and portion sizes can be bigger compared with fat (4kcal vs 9kcal per gram). I would suggest, your calories should come from 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat, or the other way round for protein & carbs.

How to put it all together

Try to have a protein source with every meal, add some kind of carbohydrates and some vegetables or salat & fat will mostly take care of itself. Eat two to three times a day, with balanced portion sizes, if you are older, you might want to aim for 2 and skip either supper or breakfast, just to have less calorie intake in total and maybe benefit a bit from the addition to your natural fasting window. If you don‘t trust the French 80% rule or really want to build muscle, use some kind of tracking app for a while, just to get a feeling of how many calories you are eating. After several weeks you should be able to eyeball the portion sizes and still make progress.

If you are a parent like me, working a demanding full time job, logging your food can push you right over the cliff of burnout.

To find out how much you should be eating, there are great calculators on the interwebs, go for the easiest ones, the results will be good enough.

I really like this one.