Eat The Rainbow
There is a lot of diet advice out there. The advice should change based on what your goals are. Some people want to gain weight, some want to lose. At a baseline, I want to first talk about eating to be healthy and to feel good.
My kids are picky eaters. I try very hard to get away from “good foods” and “bad foods”. Food is food, different ones just do different things for us and we need different amounts of these different ones.
Here’s what we try to tell our kids when they ask if bread is bad for you or if corn is really good for you.
Eat your meat because it helps your muscles to grow.
Eat your bread because it helps you have enough energy to play.
Eat your cheese and drink your milk because they help you have strong bones.
Drink your water so the things you eat can travel all around your body easily.
And eat your fruit and veggies because they help to keep you healthy and from getting sick.
That’s where “eat the rainbow” comes in. In the US, less than 1 in 10 adults get enough fruits and vegetables. I think this is a big part of why I have patients coming in all of the time feeling tired and exhausted. Or why they feel like they’re getting sick all of the time. The nutrients we get from plants help to do a lot of awesome things in our bodies.
If you’re anything like me, something like this can seem overwhelming at first. I almost start panic planning how to get all of these colors all of the time. It can feel like an all or nothing situation and lots of people give up before they even start.
But it doesn’t have to be perfect. Getting better than your current is good enough and will go a long way towards improved health. For me, that looks like grabbing different fruits and vegetables at the store each week instead of the same ones. I’ve been adding random things to stir frys, omelets and burritos. My kids enjoy their vegetables dipped in cheese or ranch.
The goal is about 4.5 cups of colorful fruits and vegetables every day. But again, if you’re currently eating maybe a half cup everyday (probably the usual when I talk to my patients), then 1 cup a day is a huge improvement!
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Now, there’s the whole other side of diet that’s more tied to your weight. The advice here is so very different based on your individual goals. For a lot of people, focusing on improving health automatically helps with losing weight as well (think cutting out high sugar and calorie drinks, filling up on fruits and vegetables instead of candy, etc.).
I recommend tracking your food for at least 3-7 days to get a baseline idea of how much you’re consuming and what essential nutrients you’re missing. This is similar to tracking how much money you spend for a couple of months so you actually know where you’re starting before you set a budget.
I threw together a spreadsheet that can do some basic calculations for figuring out your basal metabolic rate, goal caloric intake, and starting macros. It looks like this.
Click the picture for the link to the google sheets if you’d like to have your own copy to play around with. You’ll have to login to your google account. Once you see it, click “Use Template” in the top right corner to make yourself a copy.
Or reach out to me on the contacts page if you’d rather me email you a .xlxs file.
Let me know if there’s changes you’d recommend or additional information that you think would be helpful.
If you have a history of eating disorder and getting into the nitty gritty is dangerous for you, my recommendation is to pick a measurement of change that you’re comfortable with. This can be the way a specific outfit fits on you, your weight, a waist circumference measurement, or even your perceived energy levels. Keep track of this measurement once every 1-2 weeks. If you’re no closer to your goal in this measurement, then change something in your diet. This can be eating more protein, smaller portions of what you currently eat, increasing exercise, etc. Every 1-2 weeks, if you’re not closer to your goal, change something.
