Previous part – Balanced Diet 101 (Part 1)
Sure we know that what we eat is important but did you know that when we eat plays an equally important role? Eating meals and snacks at the set time every day can significantly improve your digestion and boost weight loss.
So what are the best times to eat?
Breakfast is the first most important meal of the day as it helps control insulin levels. This is why you should never skip breakfasts. Your breakfast must be nutritious and keep you full for 3.5 – 4.5 hours. This helps to fight the urge to snack!
The best time to have breakfast is 6:30-8:30, 12:00-14:00 for lunch and 17:30-19:30 for dinner. Timing is important because it is necessary to give your liver time to use up gluconeogenesis (endogenous glucose production) without draining your body’s resources.
Now about what to eat and when to it:
Breakfast jumpstarts your metabolism, defines hormone patterns over the course of a day and fuels your body for the whole day. So make sure your breakfast is low carb. Focus on healthy fats, protein, vegetables, and greens, and cut back on carbohydrates. We don’t eat cereals with milk and honey, wholegrains and pastry for breakfast. Granola, dried fruits, puddings or juices are not an option as well. You can have a small dessert, but it’s better if you stick to something with protein in it.
Lunch is the largest meal of the day! The ideal lunch should contain a mixture of fat, protein and carbohydrates. Lunch time is for eating whole grains like quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, millet, brown / black / unpolished rice, root vegetables like beets, parsnips, carrots, sweet potatoes, chickpeas, and lentils. 1-2 times a week you can have whole grain sourdough bread or durum pasta.
The basics for the dinner are almost the same as breakfast — a portion of protein with vegetables on the side.
What food to eat and what to avoid
It’s Ok to eat berries, herbs and non-sweet fruits daily. But note that berries and fruits should be consumed 20 minutes BEFORE breakfast and lunch.
What berries to put on your list: black berries and red berries( from blueberries to raspberries, gooseberries, and lingonberries). As for the fruits, go for kiwi, plums, mangoes, pretty much all things citrus, and you are all set!
Things are a bit trickier with dairy products though. You see, cow’s milk doesn’t have any nutritional value for an adult person. Milk is very hard to digest, it’s high in calories and it doesn’t really team with other products.
To keep you on track of improving your digestion, we are going to limit certain types of products for the next 4 weeks. But don’t worry, we’ll get them back as soon as our digestive system is back to normal. So here we go:
- Polished wheat (couscous, bulgur, spelled, kamut, semolina, homemade pies, pasta, pastries, tortillas, pancakes). Bread and buns made from refined white wheat and rye flour. 2-3 times a week you can eat whole rice or buckwheat cakes, vegetable or nut bread.
- Oatmeal and corn grits.
- Polished grains (white rice). It’s OK to eat buckwheat, quinoa, amaranth, wild brown rice, millet + flax seeds, oats and pearl barley.
- Any kind of sweet drinks (packaged juice, lemonades, freshly squeezed juice, milkshakes, etc). We drink tea, matcha and sencha. If you want a liquid snack, go for coconut, almond or soy milk.
- All dairy products, except for very hard cheeses. No more cheesecakes, cottage cheese topped with honey/jam, feta, Philadelphia cream-cheese. No ice creams and flavored yogurts. We eliminate all dairy products and their derivatives from our diet.
- Sweet fruits such as bananas, grapes and figs.
- Honey, fructose, jams.
- Natural sweeteners (maple or agave syrup, Jerusalem artichoke, etc).
- We don’t snack on dried fruits.
- No beer, cocktails and hard liquor.
- Canned food with oil (except for first cold pressed unrefined oil). Cut back on refined oils, marinades and store bought sauces. You can try cod liver, tuna canned in brine, sardines in unrefined olive oil, or any canned fish in brine.
Read more in Balanced Diet 101 (Part 3)
