Develop a Healthy Eating Plan for a better Wellbeing

What do I Eat to be Healthier and have Sustained Energy?

by Jim Rial

Get that diet right before starting a workout regimen. What do I eat to be healthier and have sustained energy? Especially through your intense workouts as well as having a better sense of well-being from a healthy eating plan. Before I get started here, I just want to iterate the fact that I am not a dietician nor am I an expert in any way. I am writing this article based on my own research and my own results and my own opinions on what should be a good healthy eating plan. The web provides a wealth of information regarding diet and exercise, but the fact is it can get confusing and possibly overwhelming to someone trying to get started. There are so many questions and each site you visit just brings up even more questions. How can I develop a healthy eating plan for better well-being without being overwhelmed with so many options?

Do you go with the high protein, moderate carbs, and low fat? Or is it high protein, low carbs, and high fat? Do you follow a fad diet like keto or become a member of weight watchers? Then you have the bodybuilding websites giving you sample meal plans for building muscle and telling you if you follow this diet schedule it will produce lean muscle, how do they know? It may have worked for them, but your body is different. You’re a different size and shape. In fact, for the sake of this article, we no longer use the word diet unless it fits. Any eating habits are a diet, it's just a matter of whether it’s a healthy diet or a bad diet. A diet, in general, is what you eat, and we want to eat healthily and develop a good healthy eating plan.

In my opinion, some of the stuff you read on the web is great for research and it can help get you started with some ideas about how to plan your healthy eating habits, but in the end, you need to find what works best for you. You can model your diet or healthy eating plan after one of the body-building sites if you choose, but what portions are right for your current weight and frame size? Are you allergic to any of these foods? Or maybe you plain and simple just don’t like the food options they give you. Then you have the commercial diets that just seem like pure nonsense. They have ads saying you can eat your favorite meals and snacks and still lose weight. If it was that easy to lose weight eating Krispy Kreme donuts, we’d all be doing it and the US wouldn’t have an obesity problem. Don’t forget the diet pills we see so much on the television. Don’t waste your money on gimmicks and fads. Just focus on a healthy eating plan and working out. I swear it will all come together, you just need patience.



The best way to approach healthy eating is by learning just to eat clean healthy foods. Yes, you can have a cheat meal every so often, so you don’t fall into a rut and eventually just give up. In fact, I encourage a cheat meal at least once per week. I did, however, skip the cheat meals for the first six weeks of my healthy eating plan. Then I eventually opened to the cheat meals and I haven't looked back. You will read other sites telling you that yes you can cheat but only have a sliver of cake or just eat one slice of pizza. Bullshit, eat a bunch of pieces, indulge, just make it one meal though. In some cases, I think it may even help confuse your body back into burning calories and I will explain this later. Most of all, don't get frustrated if you slip up, this can affect you negatively or cause you to just beat yourself up for nothing. Let’s just say your work clan has a birthday party with cake and ice cream and you indulge yourself on a non-cheat day. Oh well, just keep moving forward and continue the path of eating healthy for the remainder of the day. The truth is slipping up will happen and if you’ve been at it adamantly for a while, then chances are it won’t affect you. The reality is that we are not all Olympic athletes, and we are not going to be underwear models anytime soon. The idea is to try to eat clean and healthy more often and adopt a healthier lifestyle. The better foods we consume will provide us with better numbers on those blood panels our doctor orders and give us higher energy levels throughout the day. Overall healthy eating at the end of the day just leaves you feeling good physically and with yourself. 

When I first got the motivation to start my healthy eating plan, I was approximately 210 pounds. I am 5 foot 6 inches tall with a medium frame. My ideal weight according to the weight charts is somewhere between 140 - 150 pounds. There was a point where I did reach 155 pounds, but I felt way too skinny. I’m comfortable somewhere between 160 to 165 pounds, to be honest. My goal is just to have as much lean muscle and be as fit as I possibly can be. That is the best I can do and at the end of the day, I feel great both physically and mentally with my accomplishments.

Another thing to take into consideration when creating a healthy eating plan is digestive health. I started thinking a lot about this before the commercials that now beat us up with prebiotic and probiotic pills and drinks for your digestive system. This was a long time ago. I was doing some research due to some of the symptoms I was feeling in my stomach like heartburn, bloating, and gassiness. I also noticed medications did not affect me as they should, and I concluded my digestive system was not digesting properly. I suspected medications were not absorbing properly into my system due to my digestive health. Not to mention I wasn’t going to the bathroom well and was often constipated. I’d find myself struggling on the toilet for an hour having numb legs and it is not fun, especially when there are so many better things I would rather be doing. So, when I started healthy eating, I included foods with high fiber and ones that are better suited for supporting the digestive system. From my results, I concluded that just getting my digestive system on the track resulted in losing weight more efficiently. Below is a list of some great superfoods to add to your healthy eating for digestive health.

High Fiber Foods	Probiotic Foods	Prebiotic Foods
Beans, dried peas, and lentils	Kefir (fermented milk)	Asparagus
Whole grains	Kimchi (fermented                     vegetables)	Bananas
Fresh fruits, especially apples with skin, pears with skin, oranges, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries	Kombucha (a fermented         tea drink)	Onions
Nuts, almonds, cashews and pistachios	Sauerkraut (fermented             cabbage)	Oats
Vegetables, especially artichokes, broccoli, green peas, winter squash, and white potatoes and sweet potatoes with skin	Yogurt, both dairy and             non-dairy	Berries

If you add some of these foods into your healthy eating along with healthy sources of protein such as poultry and fish. You will start feeling the results immediately. Even if you don’t have regular stomach issues, these are great sources of nutrition that will get you on your way to clean eating. You have everything here in the list along with the sources of protein to create complete meals. If you’re looking for that sugary sweet fix add some pineapple as well which is excellent for your digestive system. Pineapples are the only known food source of bromelain, a combination of enzymes that digest protein. That's why pineapple works as a meat tenderizer: The bromelain breaks down the protein and softens the meat. In your body, bromelain makes it easier for you to digest food and absorb it



Eggs are another excellent food and a great source of protein. Eggs are healthy, nutrient-rich food. For most people, eating eggs does not increase cholesterol levels much. Even when they do, they often increase HDL (good) cholesterol and modify the shape and size of LDL (bad) cholesterol in a way that reduces disease risk. I would however eat them more sparingly. In my healthy eating plan, I eat them a few times per week. Now I don’t always have time for breakfast or cooking eggs in the morning anyhow, so I just make my own meal replacement shakes. A good meal replacement for me is adding some almond, cashew, or coconut milk to a mix of berries, fruits, and veggies along with a scoop or two of whey powder. Whey powder does not seem to affect my digestive system like other lactose foods do but if you experience digestive symptoms and they don’t subside over time, plant-based protein is a viable option. Whey protein powder contains lactose, a common food sensitivity. Opting for whey protein isolate can lower the amount of lactose per serving but may still lead to stomach upset, bloating, and gas if you’re highly sensitive to lactose. Plant-based protein powders contain varying ingredients. Some types contain the common allergens soy and gluten, so read labels carefully and select products specifically labeled soy-free and/or gluten-free if needed. Some plant-based protein powders — especially those containing pea protein — can cause bloating and cramping if you have irritable bowel syndrome or are sensitive to FODMAPs. If you have food sensitivities, a good way to find out which protein powder is right for you is to simply try out a selection and keep a food and health diary. This can help you identify and keep track of any side effects that arise from using different products. Anyway, this is just another area where experimenting will help you make the best decision for your body.



Once you come up with your eating plan your next step may be wanting to lose some weight. This is a good place to start using the myfitnesspal app to get your goals in order. As I stated previously you may need to adjust your macronutrient and caloric intake levels to find what works best for you and thus fits into your lifestyle and goals. Another approach is to find out your BMR.



The Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the amount of energy (calories) your body needs while resting. This accounts for about 60 to 70 percent of calories burned in a day. In general, men have a higher BMR than women. One of the most accurate methods of estimating your basal metabolic rate is the Harris-Benedict formula:




Adult male: 66 + (6.3 x body weight in lbs.) + (12.9 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years) = BMR

Adult female: 655 + (4.3 x weight in lbs.) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years) = BMR



To determine your total daily caloric needs, multiply your BMR by the appropriate activity factor, as follows:

If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2

If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375

If you are moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55

If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week): Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725

If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9



Then If you want to lose fat, a useful guideline for lowering your calorie intake is to reduce your calories by at least 500, but not more than 1000 below your maintenance level. For people with only a small amount of weight to lose, 1000 calories are too much. As a guide, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends that calorie levels never drop below 1200 calories per day for women or 1800 calories per day for men. Even these calorie levels are quite low.



In conclusion, the best way to develop a healthy eating plan is to experiment. Do your research and find out what works best for you. Keep track of your calories and macronutrients but don’t get carried away. Over time you will develop good habits that need less monitoring. If you slip up don’t get discouraged just keep going with your plan. Eating healthy along with a good workout routine will turn your body into a fat-burning machine. However, eventually, you may hit a plateau and you will notice that you’re just not losing the amount of weight you had been over the course. This is where I suggest indulging in a nice big cheat meal, eat whatever and as much as you want. This again is my opinion, but I swear this method confused my body back into burning calories. Because at first your body becomes this calorie-burning machine but eventually it seems to get used to the diet, you're on. When cutting calories to lose weight your body may slow its metabolism as a sort of starvation mode. This in turn reduces the number of calories burning during healthy eating and exercise. I found that indulging when this happens appears to trick your body back into burning calories again. I hit these plateaus a few times and when I followed my own idea here it seemed to work. Hence the reason I say just give it a try, if it doesn’t work, well, at least you tried. Perhaps your eating plan just needs more tweaking. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to add a few more calories to your plan or maybe you need a slight reduction. As I stated before, it takes some tweaking here and there, but the idea is to continue developing your own methods of shedding those pounds. Overall, the result is that you are healthier and feel much better about being you.