TL;DR:
Try to eat a mixture of less processed fruit/vegies with less processed meats, try not to over do it with fats/carbs/sugar and you should have a pretty balanced diet. Also check out CSIRO’S total well being diet.
Now I don’t diet, it’s such a horrible word. I do try to live a healthy lifestyle and try to make healthy food choices, there are times where I go “F it, I want chocolate” and it’s ok to have those moments and not feel guilty about it. As long as I don’t do too much damage which having a smaller stomach helps control.
Lots of things are marketed as “healthy” when they aren’t. Learning how to read food nutrition labels is a good start. I look at ratios of fat to carbs to protein. I also look at ratio of carbs to fibre to assess if something really is “high fibre” if it’s trying to market itself as that.
Knowing that 1 tablespoon of sugar is 20 grams is a good guide for measuring how much sugar is in things e.g. fruit juice is horrible for sugar.
Understand that we are horrible at guessing how much we eat, even when calory counting we will still grossly underestimate serving sizes. You can combat this by using smaller plates and weighing out recomended serving sizes. We also have a tendency to eat more when we think something is healthy.
Fats and sugar aren’t really the enemy and protein is not this amazing thing just because everyone keeps raving on about it. Over consumption is the enemy, your body is an amazing self regulating machine.
Every cell in body needs sugar to survive, your body will convert carbs/fats/proteins into sugar (in that order) to support your body. Eat too many fats/carbs and your body will store it as fat, eat too much protein and you’ll have smelly expensive poo.
It doesn’t really matter if/how you skip meals. Intermittent fasting is a tactic that lots of people use to keep their overall food consumption low and stomach capacity down. E.g. I’ll often skip breakfast if I haven’t been to the gym in the morning. It doesn’t matter when you eat your large meals. There is a lot of misinformation out there around this though so tread carefully.
There are some things you can only get from your diet and they usually start with the name essential, e.g. essential amino acids (the building blocks for protein) can not be created in the body and need to come from your diet. This doesn’t mean essential oils are essential in any way though, that’s just misleading marketing.
Try to eat a mixture of fresh-ish fruit/vegies (nothing wrong with frozen) with less processed meats, try not to over do it with fats/carbs/sugar and you’ll have a pretty balanced diet. Processed foods tend to have higher amounts of fat/carbs because these are really tasty and these tasty enhancements help companies sell more food. If you need recipe ideas check out CSIRO’s total well being diet, it’s backed by science and isn’t the latest fad.
You can even try cutting out meat/dairy for a little bit if you are up for it. I’ve seen many people have success on the vegetarian/vegan diet. You don’t need to worry about protein if you are eating a mixture of things (e.g. peas, beans, legumes and nuts have some protein). Be careful with nuts though, it’s easy to over do because of the high fat content. I’ve challenged myself with periods of vegetarianism.
It’s easier to overconsume when alcohol is involved. I’ve challenged myself with dry periods when I’ve wanted to focus on my health.