Ok, so....I went on a bit of a long one that's basically what I wish someone had said to me when I was in a similar position to you. I dunno if it's helpful, but I feel like it would have helped me if I'd taken the faith I needed to just believe the very boring research and government recommendations instead of trying every diet change ever and discovering for myself why a lot of it's bunk.
Either way, good luck and I hope you have a long and healthy life :)
Eat a varied, high vegetation diet which focuses on grains, beans and low saturated fat oils like sunflower and olive oil, and reduces high saturated fat, high sugar or simple carb foods like cheese and white bread respectively.
It's fine to eat high fat foods like a salad with lots of olive oil as long as they're low in saturated fat, and it's fine to eat high carb foods like pearl barley and other grains as long as the carbohydrate isn't too simple.
It's fine to eat a big quantity of healthy foods because they're often low calorie density except for those high in unsaturated fats.
It's fine to have simple carbohydrates, saturated fats and high salt foods, and really in order to have a proper diet you should have these things, not for nutrition but because it's more sustainable to be able to find a way of eating that doesn't restrict you with rules that say what you're eating is either 'allowed' or 'not allowed', like eating healthily is a set of rules you switch on and off and have to abandon if it's someone's birthday party or a night out or you just fancy something in particular.
Would recommend taking a multi for extra insurance if meeting nutritional needs is something you might struggle with.
And remember, if you're not overweight, you don't have to lose weight to be healthy because health and weight do not correlate when you're in a healthy range. Health is about having adequate nutrition to keep your body functioning optimally.
You could lose a lot of weight through strict dieting, and it would most likely make you far less healthy if you have to restrict your variety heavily, because it's variety that ensures adequate intake of all required nutrients. Changing your diet with the main intent of losing weight, either outwardly or inwardly with the guise of health on the outside, will not make you healthier, it will will drive you to lose weight until you have lost weight, and then when you no longer need to lose weight your diet will go back to previously because your driving force for eating this way will no longer exist.
How 'healthy' your diet is falls on a spectrum, and it's best to nudge it up bit by bit, while keeping in mind that low calorie does not necessarily = healthy and high calorie does not necessarily = unhealthy.
Homous is a good example of a health food high in fiber, fat soluble vitamins (which are often neglected on low fat diets), low in simple carbs and high in complex carbs, high in unsaturated fats and low in saturated fats.
Protein: a fallout of the confusion between losing weight and being healthier, which is only applicable to people who are overweight. Protein is often sited as the healthiest of all macro-nutrients, because for some reason we've put a competition on it, but the reason people recommend high amounts of protein is because it's got a high satiety to calorie ratio, i.e. it takes a long time to digest so keeps people full for a long time and aids in weight control. If your goal is health and you are a healthy weight, as above, this doesn't really matter. If you struggle to maintain a healthy weight, then this may be a good solution, but high protein foods are not necessarily healthy. They can be, like in the case of beans, nuts, white meats e.c.t., but they're not necessarily, like in the case of high sugar protein shakes or bars, or high saturated fat meats like bacon.
Protein consumption is recommended at about 0.36g per pound of body weight, which is not a lot, and it's hard to have a deficiency in the developed world without subjecting yourself to rigorous restrictions to low protein foods, such as an 80/10/10 diet (high carb, low protien). Protenatious foods can be healthy, but because of the other things in them.
Be skeptical of diets with a brand-name; Sugarbusters, weight watchers, south beach, military, atkins, zone, detox, anything that can be sold.
Healthy diets aren't a set of rules that can be sold to you, they're an area in a spectrum that has the requirements: adequate to meet nutritional needs and be sustainable long term in your daily life. Sustainability is the personal bit that you have to adjust for yourself, and hence it's not something that someone can sell to you, because your realistic idea of what you're happy to eat like for your long term life is important.
P.S. studies show that increasing exercise in people at most health levels tends to correlate with a natural desire for healthier foods, and since exercise is an important part of being healthy, maybe doing a bit more might help things along. (I find taking a 10 or 15 minute walk is fairly easy to do when I'm more sedentary, or even doing a bit more cleaning/housework, whatever gets your heart rate up :) )
P.S.S Diet industry people have pushed a lot of ideas that are generally accepted to be true that aren't, but one of the most egregious ones is that poor diet is the cause of all illness or that a healthy diet can cure all illness. Unless your illness is caused by poor diet, please don't expect for it to be curable by a certain diet, if only you try hard enough to find it. Part of being a being is getting ill, and it doesn't always have a treatable cause. As time goes on you will get older and you will have health issues and these cannot all be cured by diet, no matter how much the people who want to sell you that diet say it's true. There are very few cases when a change in diet can cause a long-term reduction in systematic illness beyond the placebo effect, and the cases that are creditable like reduction in acne with decrease consumption of milk are subjective, i.e. may work for one person and will not necessarily ever work for another. The placebo effect is a common thing that people experience with the high of the excitement and hope being on a new diet, but it has to work long term to be a proper solution.
Healthiest diet?
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Ok, so....I went on a bit of a long one that's basically what I wish someone had said to me when I was in a similar position to you. I dunno if it's helpful, but I feel like it would have helped me if I'd taken the faith I needed to just believe the very boring research and government recommendations instead of trying every diet change ever and discovering for myself why a lot of it's bunk.
Either way, good luck and I hope you have a long and healthy life :)
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Aroura77
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Eat a varied, high vegetation diet which focuses on grains, beans and low saturated fat oils like sunflower and olive oil, and reduces high saturated fat, high sugar or simple carb foods like cheese and white bread respectively.
It's fine to eat high fat foods like a salad with lots of olive oil as long as they're low in saturated fat, and it's fine to eat high carb foods like pearl barley and other grains as long as the carbohydrate isn't too simple.
It's fine to eat a big quantity of healthy foods because they're often low calorie density except for those high in unsaturated fats.
It's fine to have simple carbohydrates, saturated fats and high salt foods, and really in order to have a proper diet you should have these things, not for nutrition but because it's more sustainable to be able to find a way of eating that doesn't restrict you with rules that say what you're eating is either 'allowed' or 'not allowed', like eating healthily is a set of rules you switch on and off and have to abandon if it's someone's birthday party or a night out or you just fancy something in particular.
Would recommend taking a multi for extra insurance if meeting nutritional needs is something you might struggle with.
And remember, if you're not overweight, you don't have to lose weight to be healthy because health and weight do not correlate when you're in a healthy range. Health is about having adequate nutrition to keep your body functioning optimally.
You could lose a lot of weight through strict dieting, and it would most likely make you far less healthy if you have to restrict your variety heavily, because it's variety that ensures adequate intake of all required nutrients. Changing your diet with the main intent of losing weight, either outwardly or inwardly with the guise of health on the outside, will not make you healthier, it will will drive you to lose weight until you have lost weight, and then when you no longer need to lose weight your diet will go back to previously because your driving force for eating this way will no longer exist.
How 'healthy' your diet is falls on a spectrum, and it's best to nudge it up bit by bit, while keeping in mind that low calorie does not necessarily = healthy and high calorie does not necessarily = unhealthy.
Homous is a good example of a health food high in fiber, fat soluble vitamins (which are often neglected on low fat diets), low in simple carbs and high in complex carbs, high in unsaturated fats and low in saturated fats.
Protein: a fallout of the confusion between losing weight and being healthier, which is only applicable to people who are overweight. Protein is often sited as the healthiest of all macro-nutrients, because for some reason we've put a competition on it, but the reason people recommend high amounts of protein is because it's got a high satiety to calorie ratio, i.e. it takes a long time to digest so keeps people full for a long time and aids in weight control. If your goal is health and you are a healthy weight, as above, this doesn't really matter. If you struggle to maintain a healthy weight, then this may be a good solution, but high protein foods are not necessarily healthy. They can be, like in the case of beans, nuts, white meats e.c.t., but they're not necessarily, like in the case of high sugar protein shakes or bars, or high saturated fat meats like bacon.
Protein consumption is recommended at about 0.36g per pound of body weight, which is not a lot, and it's hard to have a deficiency in the developed world without subjecting yourself to rigorous restrictions to low protein foods, such as an 80/10/10 diet (high carb, low protien). Protenatious foods can be healthy, but because of the other things in them.
Be skeptical of diets with a brand-name; Sugarbusters, weight watchers, south beach, military, atkins, zone, detox, anything that can be sold.
Healthy diets aren't a set of rules that can be sold to you, they're an area in a spectrum that has the requirements: adequate to meet nutritional needs and be sustainable long term in your daily life. Sustainability is the personal bit that you have to adjust for yourself, and hence it's not something that someone can sell to you, because your realistic idea of what you're happy to eat like for your long term life is important.
P.S. studies show that increasing exercise in people at most health levels tends to correlate with a natural desire for healthier foods, and since exercise is an important part of being healthy, maybe doing a bit more might help things along. (I find taking a 10 or 15 minute walk is fairly easy to do when I'm more sedentary, or even doing a bit more cleaning/housework, whatever gets your heart rate up :) )
P.S.S Diet industry people have pushed a lot of ideas that are generally accepted to be true that aren't, but one of the most egregious ones is that poor diet is the cause of all illness or that a healthy diet can cure all illness. Unless your illness is caused by poor diet, please don't expect for it to be curable by a certain diet, if only you try hard enough to find it. Part of being a being is getting ill, and it doesn't always have a treatable cause. As time goes on you will get older and you will have health issues and these cannot all be cured by diet, no matter how much the people who want to sell you that diet say it's true. There are very few cases when a change in diet can cause a long-term reduction in systematic illness beyond the placebo effect, and the cases that are creditable like reduction in acne with decrease consumption of milk are subjective, i.e. may work for one person and will not necessarily ever work for another. The placebo effect is a common thing that people experience with the high of the excitement and hope being on a new diet, but it has to work long term to be a proper solution.