A few simple tweaks can make a massive difference to your health and happiness down the line. Your body will love these changes as they hook into what your body’s genetics expect.
- Get your portion size right. Per meal: A palm sized portion of protein, 1 fist size of starchy carbs like white rice, potatoes or sweet potatoes, 1 fist size vegetables, 1 piece of fruit. 1½ tsp added healthy fat to lose weight, 1 tbsp to maintain e.g. olive oil or butter. This is a mindset handle that will mean consistently hitting near optimal macronutrient ratios. You can tweak your own so that you get the results you’re looking for. For example if you’re very active, you might go with 1½ or 2 fist size carbs. Carbohydrate intake is linked to LDL particle size… getting it right means low amounts of small dense LDL (that cause heart disease) and more of the large buoyant LDL (good). Correct carb-protein-fat ratios also mean minimizing chronic inflammation, one of the key root causes of nearly all chronic disease. Carbohydrate intake is linked to insulin. Low insulin is linked to good long term health. Tweaking fat alone is all you need to lose or maintain weight. Fat is the macronutrient to adjust for weight loss vs. maintenance.
- Eat oily fish 3 times a week, total about 16 oz, for long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. E,g, salmon, sardine, mackerel, and have plenty of seafood in general: shrimp, prawns, crab, lobster, oysters, other fish, etc.
- Cut out the omega-6. No vegetable oil (high in polyunsaturated fat aka industrial seed oils like sunflower, corn, soybean, cottonseed, canola or rapeseed), limit nuts to a handful a day and have mainly macadamia nuts and occasionally almonds, cashews or hazelnuts. Poultry 2 or 3 times a week, the rest of the time, eggs, red meat, seafood. Use low omega-6 fats like coconut oil, butter, ghee, beef tallow and olive oil.
- Cut out all grains apart from white rice (low in toxins). Grains damage the gut in many ways via their toxic anti-nutrients and a damaged gut will ruin all your efforts to be healthy. Focus on starchy tubers and white rice instead.
- Eat eggs, 6 + a week, and 4 oz liver once a week or liver pâté (I add ½ oz to my daily salad) for B12, choline, and pre-formed vitamin A (retinol). Without these foods, you will probably be deficient.
- Take a vitamin K2 supplement to make sure you’re not getting calcified arteries or weak bones. Problems with our industrialized food supply mean nearly everyone is deficient in this absolutely critical vitamin.
- Take a magnesium supplement of 200 mg if you are under stress, not well, not sleeping well, or train hard. Modern life depletes magnesium rapidly and it’s hard to get optimal amounts in our diets. Magnesium deficiency is widespread and implicated in so many diseases e.g. diabetes.
These are easy things. And yet the difference to your long term health by doing them is like night and day. It can mean the difference between health and happiness or disease down the road.
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Michael Kinnaird is the author of Happy Guide, the result of a 20 year exploration into what works for health and happiness.
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