How to apply all this advice?

This is the major component of eating healthy that most guides leave out. All the advice is nice. Buy fermented foods. Try intermittent fasting. Don’t eat sugars.

But how? We love sugars. We love good food. We love eating. How do you apply the good habits and remove the bad habits?

Well, this is such an important concept, that I wrote a full course about it: Productivity. I highly recommend reading it, all the way through. In as little time as possible, it explains exactly what I know to work, after 15 years of trying everything and recording my results.

In this chapter, I will only focus on the most important parts for eating, and summarize.

Small habits

This is the crucial part. Don’t wait for motivation or discipline. Don’t expect things to magically change or help you.

Build habits. Build them by taking tiny steps towards the habit. Steps so small, that you can repeat them every day.

Remember my example about drinking lemonade. I didn’t completely stop drinking lemonade one day. That’s too hard. I was too addicted to the sugar, too used to the taste. Instead, I slowly swapped a glas of lemonade for a glass of water, every day. I did so for weeks, taking tiny steps, until all my glasses were water.

The same for yoghurt. I swapped one bowl of yoghurt for bread. After a long period, I was able to balance my diet better.

The same for fasting. My sleep schedule used to be terrible, which meant I kept eating until 12 o’clock, then fasted until 2–4 PM the next day. This was a very weird eating schedule that had many downsides, as you know by now.

I didn’t tell myself “go to bed at 10 o’clock now and stop eating at 6!” and do that. It’s too hard! My body is not used to it. Maybe I can do it once, or twice, but then I’ve lost motivation and energy.

Instead, I moved my sleep schedule, 15 minutes a day. It took months to move both sleep and food schedule to reasonable times. But I was able to do it, because I could maintain my habit of taking a tiny step every day.

Can’t maintain the habit? Make the step even tinier.

Build the habit? You can grow it into something more difficult.

This is all that counts. My productivity course explains why “tricks” or “punishing / rewarding” or “discipline” are all myths to ignore.

Buying food

Yes, healthy food is more expensive than junk food. This hasn’t changed (at all) by now, so it most likely never will.

What to do? Choose food that comes in bulk. Food that, for a relatively low price, gives you a lot of calories and nutritional value.

There are always options. Two vegetables might be similarly prices. But one is small, and the other is large and provides more. Pick the food that is still healthy, but also provides a lot of bang for your back.

For example, rice provides a lot for little money. In fact, for most people, cooking rice means they’ll end up with waaay too much and will eat rice for the rest of the week 😂

It’s a very simple idea. Many people miss it.

If you choose your products wisely, you never have to worry about having too little food on the table.

For all the Dutch people: no, you don’t need apple sauce with everything. In fact, as we’ve learned, it’s just sugar (only the bad bits from the apple, not the good bits). Many households spend a lot of money on this, adding it to every single dish, but it’s unhealthy and unnecessary. If needed, try other sauces instead.

What if I don’t like vegetables?

Join the club! I absolutely despise the taste of most vegetables. (Probably something connected to my sweet tooth.)

But here’s the trick: you can just sneak them into other dishes. This combines with my advice above.

I highly recommend to build your main food source (probably warm dinner) like this:

• A bulk grain product as the base, like pasta or rice
• Throw something you really like (we often used tiny vegetarian meat cubes) in there
• Throw many small / cut vegetables in there as well
• Try to get fermented foods and varied herbs in there
• If needed, drench it in a sauce, like tomato sauce
• While eating, grab a few (cashew) nuts and throw them in there. I like the taste of a soft pasta or rice, combined with the hard chunks of nuts and seeds. Most people really like the combination of soft and hard, easy and crunchy.

This way, I can eat a lot of vegetables. At the same time, I like the taste of what I eat, because I mostly taste tomato sauce, the meat cubes, the pasta.

My favorite dish is probably curry madras, which does this beautifully. Rice, many vegetables, and curry all over it.

This is probably my most personal advice, but I think it’s a crucial one. Too many people either …

• Don’t eat healthy, because they don’t like the taste
• Are forced to repeatedly eat stuff (perhaps by their parents) that makes them gag

Both situations are bad. By mixing tasty with healthy, using my plan above, you can solve all issues. You can eat something you love, while getting more than enough vegetables and protein.

Eating the right way

You might think: “erm, I think I already know how to eat! Been doing it my whole life!”

True, true. But even if you know some way to (repeatedly) do something, it doesn’t mean it’s the best way.

It mostly has to do with the hunger / full signal.

When you get the hunger signal, you should immediately find something to eat. This is most natural to us animals: we’re hungry, we hunt, we eat. This is why keeping a schedule helps: your body will be trained to send the hunger signal at the right times.

It doesn’t mean immediately eat. It means you start working towards eating food as quickly as possible, by going to the kitchen, or preparing it, or buying groceries.

What if you don’t?

• The moment you see food again, you’re inclined to overeat. You’re so hungry, you eat too much, you eat junk food, you don’t chew properly anymore.
• As explained in the “fasting” chapter, your body goes into panic mode and starts storing more fat, afraid no more energy is coming in.

It takes around 20 minutes for your brain to get the signal that it’s full. If you eat fast, you will always eat more than you need. Because during those 20 minutes, you will already have eaten a lot more.

On top of that, eating fast means you don’t properly chew your food. Which makes it harder to digest. Which means our second brain is unhappy and maybe not all of it is properly absorbed by the body.

Therefore, eating healthy is also just about … eating more slowly. Chew more. Drink water in between bites. Take a short break before considering if you really want an extra slice. Give your body time for the “I am full” signal

It helps if you are mindful while eating. Be focused on your food, not on something else. Don’t watch TV in the meantime, or a movie, or do some other distracting activity. Sure, it’s nice to have some snacks when watching that awesome blockbuster. But make it an exception, and keep it to snacks. Otherwise, don’t eat whole meals while being distracted by something else.

You will eat too fast, you will overeat, and you won’t even notice at all when you’re full, because your attention is somewhere else entirely.

Conclusion

Hopefully this, at least, points you in the right direction.

• Build small habits, that can grow bigger or more healthy over time.
• Certain healthy foods are very expensive for very little nutrients. Avoid them. Go for the bulk foods, the ones with bang for your buck.
• Mix vegetables and protein with things you do like, in one dish that tastes nice. It might take some experimentation to find the right combinations, or what you like best.