Knowing these nutrition secrets can make eating healthier easier!

Go to the checkout line of almost any grocery store and you’ll see magazines touting the latest “nutrition secrets.”  They likely focus on how to lose weight, eat healthier, or have more energy.  All too often, the advice is skewed, gets important nutrition concepts wrong, or is impossible to follow for the long term.  Why?

The goal is to sell magazines to make money, not help you achieve your health goals for the long term.  The same is true for social media and much of the internet.

So after more than a decade of helping people cut through the confusion and achieve better eating habits that are healthy, can be followed for the long term, and are easy and enjoyable,  here are the five nutrition secrets that I’ve found most people don’t know:

Nutrition Secret #1:  In most cases, it’s not about eliminating but figuring out how to fit things in!

Often eating healthier doesn’t mean having to give up foods you enjoy.  For many people, thinking “I can’t have X” makes us just want it more. We may be able to hold out for a short time, but eventually our desire makes our intentions go out the window.

It’s more a case of figuring out how much you can have and how often.  No, you shouldn’t have potato chips every day, but having a small amount occasionally is usually okay, depending on when you have them and what else you’re having.

Now, if you have a gastrointestinal condition like celiac disease, I’m sorry but until we find a cure for this disease, you do absolutely need to avoid gluten!  But one of the things I help people with gut health issues figure out is how to find similar items they can enjoy.

Nutrition Secret #2: All calories are not created equal

One of the biggest diet fallacies out there is that maintaining a weight or losing weight is only about calories.  Nothing could be farther from the truth!

Your body is a magnificent living machine with complex processes that are interconnected.  If you ignore them or do things that work against them, you are eventually going to run into problems.

Like so many things in life, quality matters when it comes to what you eat.  Eating X number of calories that are highly refined or ultra-processed or don’t give your body the nutrients will backfire.  What you eat and when you eat matters as much as how many calories you eat. (For more about this, read the article “Why eating different types of foods makes you feel better.”)

One of the things I so enjoy about the nutrition counseling sessions I have with people is helping them get a better understanding of these processes and how to work with their body instead of against it.   This also means helping them discover ways to do this that fit into their busy lives and still allow them to enjoy food and their lives.

Secret #3: Protein can work for you…but if you do it wrong, it can work against you

Many people know protein is important to our health from when we are very young until we are what teens might jokingly describe as “ancient.”  If you’ve tried to lose weight, you’ve also heard about how eating protein can help you feel fuller longer and help limit muscle loss as you reduce calories.

But there are three important pieces of information that many people don’t know about protein:

• How much protein you eat at each meal or snack is important. Too much or too little can be a problem.
• Not all proteins are equally available to your body. It’s a bioavailability issue even for “complete” proteins.
• Some forms of protein can increase inflammation even if they aren’t red meat.

Don’t worry!  There are ways to address all of this that can fit your preferences, likes and dislikes, medical issues, risks, and budget.  I help people navigate this all the time!  Feel free to book a free discovery call with me by clicking here.

Secret #4:  Your gut microbiome is the key to your health.

If you’re like many people, you may not have heard about your gut microbiome, or you may think “gut health”  only needs to be considered if you have problems with your digestive system, the intestinal flu, or need antibiotics.

The reality is this:  Your gut microbiome is the most important “organ” in your body!

It affects far more than what you do in the bathroom.  It’s not an understatement to say that your gut microbiome is an integral part of your overall health. To read a quick and easy to understand summary of what your gut microbiome is and what it does, click here to read “Gut health: 9 Ways your gut microbiome affects your overall health.”

The great news is that, in most cases, what you eat or don’t eat plays a major role in keeping your gut healthy.  If your gut health isn’t good, changing what you eat and how you eat can often improve the situation as long as you’re careful about eating a variety of foods to meet your nutrition needs.  How to eat for a happier, healthier gut while still enjoying food is something I specialize in helping people figure out.

Secret #5:  Focus on progress, not perfection, when you eat

Here’s the most important of the five nutrition secrets I’m sharing with you today: There are so many things that influence when, what, and why we eat.  When we are trying to “eat healthier,” it’s important to realize this.

We usually aren’t able to instantly change our eating habits overnight and stick with those changes for the long term.  It’s too big of a change for our brain to make and doesn’t address what I call the “outside influences” that affect why we eat.  This is why diets often fail.

The secret is focusing on making progress in how you eat instead of focusing on perfection. When I help someone like you successfully change how they eat for the long term, we focus on making progress towards changes in eating habits instead of trying to be perfect overnight.  In fact, I fact I never recommend perfection, especially in eating habits!  That is unrealistic, no fun, and just leads to being really hard on yourself!

For a step-by-step guide on how to start using this powerful approach, instantly download your free guide, “Your Guide to Success With Healthy Eating Goals For The Long Term” by clicking here.  

What’s the biggest nutrition secret to eating better?

Getting personalized help from a nutrition expert like me.  I’ve spent more than a decade helping people like you successfully make lasting changes to how they eat.  Use my expert knowledge and years of experience to answer your questions, overcome the obstacles that can get your way, and feel better!

Book your free discovery call with me. We can talk about what you want to accomplish and see if working with me would be helpful to you.