Eating Healthier

After growing up on a midwestern diet of meat & potatoes, pasta and pizza (with the common distaste for most vegetables) I've made several attempts at eating healthier. While I'm a long way from the ideal, I have made significant progress in the last few years. My three main influences have been:

1.) Visiting a nutritionist -- for me, this happened to be at a naturopathy clinic. While my overall experience with naturopathy was not good (I will now only go to a M.D. as a primary care provider -- but that's a different story), the area where I think naturopathy is the strongest is around the area of nutrition, digestion, and its relationship to preventative care and overall health and well being (including just how you feel on a daily basis). At the time, I had a pretty busy schedule but also had a fair amount of disposable income -- which translated to not enough time to plan meals and cook, but the ability to pay a bit more for healthy meals from the deli at the local organic co-op. This simple recommendation was the first step in getting me exposed to a variety of well-prepared healthy foods, as well as wandering around the rest of the co-op for healthier groceries. At the time, they were also exploring the possibility of a food allergy, and recommended that I try cutting out all beef, dairy, and wheat -- which makes it a lot harder to find things to eat at anyplace other than an organic co-op. While I eventually concluded that I probably don't have allergies to any of these, the experience of eating on such a highly restrictive diet was beneficial for the following reasons:

• It forced me to try new foods (spelt bread and cookies, all kinds of new fruits and vegetables, lots more fish).
• I have read somewhere that adding a dietary restriction of some kind (any kind, it doesn't matter whether it's no ice cream or no peanuts) helps you lose weight. I'd like to produce a reference for this but can't find it at the moment -- if you know where this info comes from, please post a comment.
• It taught me to look more closely at the ingredients of everything I was purchasing or consuming (or, in the case of eating at a restaurant, to ask the server questions about contents). You will not believe how many things you didn't realize have partially hydrogenated oils, artificial sweeteners, or other additives that, as the nutritionist said, really belong in the trash can rather than your body.

The other general principles the nutritionist gave me to eat on were: more fruits and vegetables, NO hydrogenated oils, the less processed the food the better (e.g., whole grains) EXCEPT in the case of soybeans. Oh, and eggs are considered healthy -- as long as you don't overdo it, which is the other general rule; all (or most) things are OK in moderation.

2.) Eat, Drink, Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating by Walter C. Willett, M.D. This book came out in 2001, and is an all-encompassing review of nutrition based on the latest scientific studies. Not surprisingly, it demolishes the USDA food pyramid and suggests an alternative one. It also includes some recipes near the back for getting started. It's readable, practical, authoritative, and makes good common sense -- as far as I'm concerned, this book is the best place to start learning about nutrition and planning what kinds of changes to want to try to implement in your diet and why.

3.) 8 Weeks to Optimum Health by Andrew Weil, M.D. While not restricted to just nutrition (Weil is one of the founding fathers of "holistic" medicine -- some of the weekly tasks include buying flowers to put in your house or deep breathing exercises), he has some solid recommendations on what to eat or not eat as well. Despite my current skepticism with regards to naturopathic practitioners at large, I do appreciate the holistic approach, and in Dr. Weil's case, he generally supports his recommendations with scientific studies or preventative logic; plus, he is an M.D., not just a N.D. (Naturopathic Doctor). The things I really added to my diet after this book were: eating broccoli; eating more salmon, or even canned kippers; drinking more tea (rather than sodas or occasional coffee) for my caffeine fix; garlic; crystallized ginger; and a multivitamin.