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Embracing Change centers around nutritional empowerment through food education. Kai's goal is to simplify the process of clean eating for those who want to improve their lives and fuel a balanced lifestyle. He addresses the complexities of nutrition and provides a clearer roadmap to finding what a healthier life means for you.
Every reader can start building a personalized approach to cooking and eating by building healthier habits and making the journey of cooking and eating simpler and more fulfilling. With over 52% of people not knowing how to read food labels correctly, Embracing Change can become a guide to kickstart healthy habits now.
Everyone has individual needs that should be met with a solution that fits their lives. Instead of selling fixed recommendations or plans, Kai focuses on sharing the tools and knowledge to help you start shaping your health how you want it to be. This includes understanding what nutrition actually means, learning to enhance your plate, and mastering the basics for a better relationship with food.
With a commitment to transparency, Kai dismantles the complexity of nutrition without hiding relevant information or selling a fixed worldview. This is about Embracing Change within yourself to make better-informed decisions for lifelong wellness.
In a world saturated with weight loss programs, fad diets, and trendy detox cleanses, it’s time to try a new perspective on clean eating. You can make an educated choice on how well you want to live. Kai champions simplicity by providing you with a clear and sustainable path to healthy eating; as scientific as necessary and as simple as possible. Empower yourself with the practical knowledge to eat well and the guided tools to feel better with Embracing Change: Your Companion to Lifelong Wellness Through Informed Nutrition Choices.
As the Founder of Clean-Bites, Kai Brockelt debuts his first book filled with helpful knowledge, empowering you to live healthily through informed decisions. Kai is a certified Vegan Nutritionist with an Advanced Education for athletes sharing transformative knowledge about food.
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Embracing Change
Gay Hendricks, PhD
ISBN: 978-84-09-58581-6
First Edition © 2024 Kai Brockelt All rights reserved.
Layout & Cover Design: Franziska Schmidt-Thieme Blurb written by: Kristina Lopez
Table of Contents
CoverFront MatterIntroductionChapter 1
Healthy GoalsNutrients we needHealthy Body Changes and Weight lossTasteRamenChapter 2
The basic principle of healthy dietsCarbohydratesWhole food groupsAromaBuddha BowlsChapter 3
Energy and Body WeightFatReading Shopping LabelsBiteBlack Beans & Sweet Potato ChiliChapter 4
Sport & HealthProteinFood Quality and SpoilageTextureProtein Pesto with Pasta PrimaveraChapter 5
Critical NutrientsUncritical NutrientsOptimizing nutrient absorptionCreating a meat-like experienceMushroom Döner KebabChapter 6
AlcoholDiseases linked to diet Nutrient saving cookingReplacing with whole foodsLentil-Nutloaf Holiday MenuEnd Chapters
A lifelong journey waitsReferencesIntro:
Embracing Change for Lifelong Wellness
Hello! Thank you for picking this book.
What you hold in your hands is an approach to building a healthy lifestyle that lasts. It’s your tool for self-efficacy and making healthy choices around diet autonomously.
Why is this important?
The answer lies in a problem that we can't afford to ignore. A staggering 74% of deaths worldwide are non- communicable diseases. While not all these deaths can be attributed directly to lifestyle choices, the correlation is evident.
The health and wellness landscape has become a dense jungle filled with non-scientific misinformation. The correct information is often drowned out by an avalanche of quick fixes, crash diets, and "miracle" products. Learning to make informed choices is critical in a world cluttered with confusing claims.
What this book is
This book aims to be your guiding light in the jungle of misinformation around the huge topic of dieting and health. Ultimately, I want to support you in finding your way on a journey towards a healthier and happier life. But what's the catch with my approach?
The catch is that I will not tell you what to do.
Instead, we aim to shape a good nutritional understanding that helps you make smarter picks autonomously, no matter your life goals or diet style.
You will build up a solid understanding of food's various effects on your health. You will find answers for "why" proper recommendations are what they are and how they link to the choices you make in your diet. You will learn about carbs, protein, fats, vitamins and minerals. You get the complete package of what's important to know – as scientific as necessary and as simple as possible.
On the other hand, you will learn how to apply that knowledge in your life, through food in particular. You learn systems and guidelines that help you create flavorful dishes from scratch, without the need to rely on products and dirty little helpers.
This book balances scientific insights with practical knowledge. You learn to make good choices for yourself and how to implement them in your life autonomously.
What this book is not
This book is not a guideline for any diet. This is not your promise to lose many pounds in weeks. This book is neither a recipe collection nor a diet plan. This book is about education.
How this book is structured
This book follows several dimensions.
Between the why and how of scientific recommendations:
Many bits of knowledge swarm through the bubbles. We know saturated fat is bad, as well as too much sugar. We know we should eat our greens. However, isolated, this information is neither helpful nor practical. By connecting the bits, you develop a deep understanding of how things affect your health once you put them in your mouth. Through this, you can make better choices automatically without making them feel like torture.
By purpose:
Each chapter is divided into five topics with each topic aiming for a certain purpose:
Mind: Things that you should be mindful about come to this category. This is the stuff that is "more than good to know", and you can use it directly in your choice making.Knowledge: Hard-ass facts that explain you how things work under the hood of nutrition. Building this understanding is the foundation for both good mind-setting and habit building.Habit: These are the topics that you can build your habits around. Be it reading shopping labels, or ways to prepare your food in a nutrient saving way.Skill: The mastery of taste, aroma and texture allows you to get creative in the kitchen. Here, I teach you the most practical, real life tricks that enable you to cook healthy dishes that burst with flavour.Practice: This closing section applies the lessons learned into a practical exercise in the form of a recipe. First, you learn the new tricks, then you put them to practice in your kitchen.By complexity:
We start off easy and build up knowledge once the solid foundation is set. While each chapter can be used as a reference, I recommend reading from from the start.
By type of dish:
With each dish you encounter at the end of a chapter, you learn to cook a new type of dish. You will do soups, stews, bowls, finger food, pasta dishes and oven dishes.
What those recipes are meant for
At the end of each chapter you will find a dish that invites you to put your learned theory to practice. While the actual recipe fits on one page and can be copied from there, each recipe is surrounded by an entire section explaining the reasoning to come up with the recipe. You will learn about why and how this dish came to what it is, ways to change it and how to combine theory and practice.
These recipes are meant to be inclusive. They are meant to be cookable by anybody, no matter their dietary choices or restrictions. The base of each recipe therefore is vegan and plant based. I do however also talk about ways to introduce meat or other animal products into this dish.
Keep in mind - you are the expert on yourself
The knowledge shared is general knowledge aimed at building deep understanding. It assumes the reader is healthy and without allergies, conditions, medications, etc.
That's why you should know best what knowledge applies to you and where to better not to listen to it. If you have doubts about your diet or choices, you should talk to your doctor to clear them.
1.1 Mind:
Life is your journey. Crossroads are your choices.
When I look at life as a whole, I see it as a band of the time. We start with nothing, and we end with nothing. But we have all the room to fill between those two points. This band is yours to fill. This is your life; this is your journey. It was your life yesterday; it’s yours today and will be it tomorrow.
Depending on how you decide to live your life, your day-to-day may turn out quite differently. The time we experience is the consequence of our choices on how we want to live and see life.
Happiness is no destination but a perspective you can find as your point of view. It’s nothing that you have, nothing you need to hold on to, or work hard for. It’s instead a worldview rather than an achievement. It’s time well spent.
If you apply this thought to health and health goals, the question should be, “How can we fill as much time as possible with health and happiness?”
I am not just pointing at the prevention of disease. A good body feeling and well- being through a proper supply of what we need are crucial to enjoying life to the fullest.
This, however, only works if reaching for it won’t stress you or wear you out. If correctly done, you can work on changes with ease.
Why is this important?
All information in the world can only be helpful if applied correctly. It is crucial to start a change with a clear perspective in mind. Challenging goals and an approach that feels like work to do often end up creating stress instead of a positive outcome. To succeed, you must set the right direction before starting to walk. This chapter teaches you how to set a realistic goal and what to expect from a dietary change.
What is this course about?
This course is designed to help you take a holistic approach to nutrition and health without imposing strict rules or instructions about what to eat or how much. We will look at the scientific recommendations for a healthy diet, as the World Health Organization stated. By understanding these principles, you can make informed decisions about your diet and overall health, tailored to your lifestyle.
The key to achieving and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is not through following a fixed diet plan but rather by developing a deeper understanding of the principles of nutrition and cooking. This knowledge will empower you to make healthier choices and prepare enjoyable and nutritious meals.
Throughout the course, I will provide you with the knowledge and tools to make healthier decisions and bring those choices into reality. The course is structured into six chapters, each focused on different areas of nutrition and cooking, with each chapter divided into five sections. The final section of each chapter combines the learned knowledge into practical instruction in the form of a recipe.
Initially, we will cover the basics to set sails and a direction before we go in-depth, starting in the second chapter. By the end of the course, you will have a solid understanding of the principles of nutrition and cooking and the practical skills needed to prepare delicious and healthy meals. You will be equipped with the knowledge and tools to make informed decisions about your diet and health and empowered to control your well-being.
Diseases linked to diet
Many chronic diseases have been linked to poor diet and lifestyle choices. Making positive changes can improve your overall health and reduce the risk of developing such conditions.
While it is true that there are factors out of our control, like genetics or exposure to unhealthy environments, with nutrition and lifestyle, we still got a big lever to change the odds of being impacted by one of those diseases.
Chronic diseases can cause suffering over a long time once developed before ultimately killing us. By improving your diet and lifestyle, you can enhance the chances of both quality of life in the now and longevity and health in high age.
In short, when you care for your health, you improve your life quality today and in the future.
Feeling better today: whether you sleep better or have a better feeling looking into the mirror - living a healthier life can boost your overall life quality today, through confidence and a healthier body.Overall longevity: If we prevent chronic disease, we rule out the most common causes of death. Living healthily improves your chances.Prolonged healthy life: With a healthy lifestyle, you can delay the point of life when things get more challenging.Changes you can expect when adapting to a healthier lifestyle
Improved energy levels: Eating a healthy, balanced diet and exercising regularly can help improve energy levels and reduce feelings of fatigue.Weight loss: A healthy diet and lifestyle can help individuals achieve and maintain a healthy weight, positively affecting overall health.Reduced risk of chronic diseases: Eating a healthy diet and regular exercise can help reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some types of cancer.Better digestion:A diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains can help improve digestion and reduce digestive problems such as constipation and bloating.Improved mood and mental health: Eating a healthy diet and engaging in regular physical activity can help improve mood and reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety.Better sleep: A healthy diet and regular exercise can help improve sleep quality and reduce the risk of sleep disorders such as insomnia.Stronger immune system: Eating a healthy diet rich in vitamins and minerals can help support a healthy immune system, reducing the risk of illnesses and infections.These are just a few examples of the positive changes that can occur when you change to a healthier lifestyle and diet. By understanding the principles of nutrition and cooking and making informed decisions about your diet and overall health, you can experience these and other benefits and improve your overall well-being.
Black-and-white thinking leads to perfectionism.
It is way too easy to compare yourself with what is being published on social media these days. You see perfectly happy, perfectly fit, and healthy people. You are presented with a positively filtered image, painted picture-perfect with the help of professional photography, lighting, filters, and photoshop.
If your goal is defined by being like that, you likely will face many challenges and disappointments. You may have learned a lot on your journey already. You may have gained a good share of knowledge, started changing your cooking, and got motivated to do some work. But still, you won’t be that person. With every reality check, you might realize that the goal still is not reached.
What‘s archived when you compare yourself? Nothing. You still see yourself as not fitting the perfect picture. This can leave you unsatisfied and quickly kills the motivation to move on. Each time you do that, this is an ideal invitation to throw the towel.
Falling into black-and-white thinking removes the perspective from what you have already archived and points toward what you are missing. If you aim for perfection, you will see that you will always need to improve.
Progressive goals
If you bring your goals onto your life roadmap, you can shift to a more meaningful perspective. Instead of having a plan as a measure to compare yourself to, use it as a perspective or direction to move forward. Inspiration shows you the possibilities of where you go from where you are.
Once you start walking the road you choose, you can quickly see progress. You can look back on the path taken and gain strength and motivation based on the things already archived. I like to refer to this perspective as progressive goals. A progressive approach focuses on the steps taken. It allows you to review your progress and adapt to new learnings. You may figure that your original idea is not fitting perfectly. Good! Let’s reshape this idea in a slightly different direction.
You could define your progressive goals like the following:
Instead of the definite goal, “I want to eat five portions of fruit per day,” formulate something like “I will introduce more fruit to my diet.”Instead of saying, “I will cut refined sugar from my diet,” go for, “I am improving my sugar consumption by consuming fewer or healthier sweets.”Instead of aiming for something like “I will lose XZY pounds,” define your goal as “I will aim for less caloric food to support weight loss.”The goal should never be a hard number, a black-and-white status you do or do not fulfill. Consider where you came from, where you are, and where you are going. If you only look forward to the end goal, you will only see what you still need to include.
But if you focus on how you are doing on your journey, you can account for all the progress made so far. If you come 50% closer to your goal, that is still a massive improvement you can feel good about. Don’t ruin this for yourself through black-and-white thinking and a too-strict self-evaluation.
Adapt your goals to your lifestyle.
When thinking about your goals, be realistic. Aiming for a lifestyle that - let’s say - contains 2 hours of sport almost every day, fresh cooking in every meal, and shopping 100% organically and locally can be done if your life allows it.
But most of us have to work, have families, raise kids, volunteer, and meet friends. The time available could be more extensive and conflicts with other interests
If your goal competes with your life, it is not a good goal. When stepping towards it feels like a trade-off or painful, you won‘t be happy following that road.
Focus on what you can change with ease. One change at a time. Eventually, that slight difference becomes a habit and defines the new normal — from here, rinse and repeat. And then focus on your progress made - and yes - be proud of it!
Try identifying areas where there is room for improvement. If your daily routines don’t allow fresh cooking for every lunch, try changing some of your snacks or drinks for something better.
If you aim for more sports but have a morning-to-evening schedule, try going stairs instead of taking the elevator. Move smaller distances by bicycle or walking. If you crave sweets intensely, allow them. Change them for something that fits the need but is objectively better.
The sum of all minor adjustments can make a significant change without overhauling your complete lifestyle. Allow yourself to acknowledge these minor changes and see the significant impact they contribute to. Each small change implemented will have an effect; if you stick to it. The big picture then slowly changes bit by bit.
Your environment and your journey
Change is often something that is not only impacting yourself. You may have friends you go out with regularly. Your colleagues from work may want to share their lunchtime with you. Back home, there may be a family waiting for you.
Embracing change, therefore, can also affect your relationships. Especially if you want to change your dietary habits, you might run into resistance.
Does that mean you can no longer go out with us on the weekends? Will you now start cooking for yourself instead of joining the family dinner? Should we not invite you if we want to go to [Insert random junk food place]?
Where food comes with relations, a change can spark doubts and questions. To prevent resistance, I recommend sharing your plans and reasons for your journey. This gives people a base for understanding. It’s not about defending your standpoint but only sharing your thoughts. You don’t have to convince anybody; you are doing this for yourself.
It’s good if you have ideas for potentially affected situations. Yes, we still go out. We find places that fit both our tastes. Yes, we still cook and eat together. We cook a joint base and add the extra alongside. And yes! You can always ask me. And if it doesn’t fit: here’s an alternative offer.
And also, cheat days are okay. More to that later.
Don’t fall for control
This is how most of us learn it. To make a change, you must be strict, unforgiving, and stick to a plan. But this will lead to failure
Yes yes! It is possible to take every nutrient seriously, count it, calculate it, and then fill the gap with a fitting food or supplement. This will bring you top-notch results if only you can sustain this mode for a long.
This is different from what a healthy diet or lifestyle is about. It’s not about creating a plan and sticking to it strictly. This form of self-torture leads to not listening to what you need, stress, and failure.
Healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle are understanding and adapting to the principle. If your foundation is built right, there is room for sweets, fries, and more. But in moderation. It is more about getting the concept right than controlling everything perfectly.
In this course, I will introduce you to tools that you can use to track your changes, inspect nutrient profiles of foods, calculate protein contents, and many more. I ask you not to use them to control yourself all the time.
Instead you should use these tools to discover and learn. To check information for making intelligent decisions. Anything that helps. Use these tools in your interest, but not against yourself.
Let’s start walking - slowly and steadily
With all that in mind, we can set sail and start slowly. Do not pressure yourself about making everything perfect right from the start. If, let’s say, you’re entirely new to cooking; it might be overwhelming to produce fresh foods every day. Start doing so on the weekends or when you have time. Practice, learn, and improve.
Once you build a routine, things become easier and more fluent. You can then start cooking more frequently with ease and fill your weekly plan more and more. You can expect the same when working on nutrition and health. Take it easy and with patience, and you will improve steadily. Identify one area you can work on with ease, before moving onto the next one.
You got this!
1.2 Knowledge:
Nutrients we need
You need three types of nutrients to live: water, building material, and energy. In this chapter, you will learn about the main types of nutrients you will face throughout your day.
Why is this important?
Understanding what we need to live helps identify areas of improvement. Especially if you are trying to restrict your diet, you should be aware of essential nutrients to plan what’s needed adequately.
Essential vs. nonessential Nutrients
There are nutrients that you need to provide to your body through diet. Anything you need to get through food is called essential. Non-essential nutrients, on the other hand, can be synthesized through other means.
With enough building material, your body can construct these molecules on demand. Saturated fat, for example, can be synthesized from carbohydrates in our liver. There is no strict requirement to eat saturated fats.
Some nutrients are essential normally, but can be derived only from certain other nutrients or under certain conditions. These nutrients are semi-essential.
Take Vitamin D as an example - if you catch 20 minutes of direct sunlight (UV B light), you synthesize enough of your vitamin D and don’t need it in your food.
Vitamin A can be synthesized from the secondary plant substance beta-carotene. You can have vitamin A directly, but your vitamin A levels will be healthy as well if you have a good supply of beta-carotenes.
Water
Under normal conditions, your body comprises 50%(Women) to 60% (Men) water. Water serves many functions:
It’s an essential nutrient for all cellsIt regulates body temperatureIt’s a transport mediumIt protects sensitive tissueAnd much moreYou should drink at least 2-3 liters or 11-15 cups of water daily. To get a reasonable estimate, you can multiply your body weight (in kg) by 0.033. If you do sports and sweat, you should consider drinking extra.
If your water level drops by just 0,5% from the go-to level, it is enough to trigger thirst. Be kind to yourself and listen to the signal.
Macronutrients
Your macros are called like that because you need many of them. Of course, we are talking about carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Carbs, fat, and protein can all be used as energy, so in this use case, they are nonessential and interchangeable. However, if we look at protein and fat as building materials, we must get them on our plates since here they are essential.
Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates, or just carbs, are the primary energy source for your body and brain to function. Any carbohydrate combines many small sugar bits like glucose and fructose - monosaccharides. If you find anything ending in *ose, like dextrose, saccharose, or glucose,.. yes! They are all sugar.
The more complex a carb is, the harder it is for the body to break it down into desired sugars. Easily digestible sugars get absorbed super fast and raise blood sugar levels fast. Complex carbs, on the opposite slowly get absorbed into your blood, which keeps you full longer and can avoid unnecessary insulin release.
If carbohydrate is too complex to digest, it’s called fiber. Even though we won’t be able to absorb it as energy, it helps move food through the colon and serves your microbiome as healthy food so that you can maintain a healthy flora.
You find many complex carbs in whole grain foods, alongside a good amount of minerals. I recommend swapping the white flour product for a full-grain version of it whenever you can.
Fats
Fat is our favorite form to store long-term energy and serves as building blocks of membranes or hormones. Some fats are essential because the body needs them and cannot produce them from other materials.
When talking about fat, we often mean just fatty acids. There are more lipid components like isoprene, on which many hormones build up. They, however, require little to no attention in our diet. The big lever lies in the fatty acids.
You can distinguish between saturated, mono-unsaturated, poly-unsaturated, and finally, trans fatty acids. In short, you should focus on getting unsaturated fats while keeping saturated and trans fats low.
Protein
Proteins are our body's “structure“ material that gets encoded from our DNA. Your genetic code contains instructions on how to build proteins from individual amino acids. The endless combinations of 20 amino acids allow life to make enzymes, muscle, tissue, and more. Of 20, only 8 amino acids are considered essential (9 for infants and during pregnancy). Their presence on your plate defines the quality of the protein you eat and is described as the biological value.
Micronutrients
You might have guessed it. Micronutrients are called micronutrients because you need comparably smaller amounts of them. However, this does not mean they are unnecessary, as most are essential to survival. Vitamins and Minerals play vital roles in many of our internal processes. If we lack a vitamin or mineral, the corresponding processes won’t complete, which can lead to illness or even death.
Minerals
Minerals are just chemical elements, as we know them from the periodic system. We often find them in an ionized form, as many are metals. This, in consequence, has the effect that we cannot “use them up“ but only lose them through excrement, bleeding, or sweating.
While minerals themselves are not organic, they get built into organic compounds. Here they fulfill their purpose through their unique chemical characteristics. Iron, for example, easily binds oxygen and is the critical component of your red blood cells for transportation.
The most commonly known minerals are often also the typical bottlenecks of an unbalanced diet: Iron, Calcium, Zinc, Iodine, and Selenium.
Vitamins
Vitamins are more complex structures that fulfill vital roles in our bodies. Unlike minerals, they often get „used up“ when they meet their purpose. Some vitamins don’t need to be absorbed in their ”final form.“ Any substance that can be built into a vitamin is called a provitamin, beta-carotene, for example.
You can distinguish between water-soluble and fat-soluble vitamins. Water-soluble vitamins cannot be stored long-term in our bodies. This has two effects: you must get them in more frequently, as we cannot pile them up. Practically it’s very hard to overdose on any water-soluble vitamin, as your kidney filters them out if you have too many.
Conversely, fat-soluble vitamins must be eaten with something fatty to be absorbed. We also can store them in our tissues. Our store can provide a good supply over a longer time. However, „too much“ can be achieved more quickly, and you can intoxicate yourself with fat-soluble vitamins if you get too much over time.
Fat-soluble vitamins are A, D, E, and K. Take the word "DEKA“ as an easy-to-remember mnemonic. One exception is the water-soluble vitamin B12. Despite being water soluble, it can be stored in our liver.
Secondary plant substances
The group of secondary plant substances is a collective term for food components that you do not need directly to survive, which, however, can impact your health in many ways. Thus secondary plant substances are not essential but can support well-being.
You find many substances in this group that are said to be:
Anti cancerogenicAntioxidativeAntibacterialInflammation loweringBlood sugar regulatingCholesterol loweringWhile secondary plant substances are not essential and theoretically can be skipped, their properties can positively affect our health. These are the good parts you miss completely if you try to stay healthy through supplements or an animal product-heavy diet.
As indicated by their name, secondary plant substances can exclusively be found in plant foods. The most known and important substance is Fiber.
Fiber
Fiber is a collective word for indigestible carbohydrates and protein found in plant-based foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and nuts. Our digestive system does not digest fiber. Instead, fiber passes through the digestive tract largely intact, adding bulk to stool and promoting regular bowel movements.
There are two main groups of fiber: soluble fiber and insoluble fiber. Soluble fiber dissolves in water and forms a gel-like substance in the digestive tract, which can help to slow down the absorption of glucose and cholesterol. Insoluble fiber, on the other hand, does not dissolve in water and adds bulk to stool, promoting regular bowel movements.
Fiber is an important component of a healthy diet and has numerous health benefits, including:
Improving digestive health: Fiber helps keep your digestive system healthy by promoting regular bowel movements, preventing constipation, and reducing the risk of gastrointestinal diseases such as hemorrhoids, diverticulitis, and colon cancer.Weight management: High-fiber foods tend to be more filling, which can help you eat less and control your weight. Fiber also slows down the absorption of sugar, which can help regulate blood sugar levels and reduce cravings for sweets.Lower cholesterol levels: Soluble fiber can help lower cholesterol levels by binding to cholesterol in the gut and preventing it from being absorbed into the bloodstream.Lower risk of heart disease: A diet high in fiber has been linked to a lower risk of heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure.Improve immune function: Fiber-rich foods contain prebiotics, which promote the growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut. This can help improve immune function and reduce the risk of infections and diseases.Reduce inflammation: Fiber has anti-inflammatory properties, which can help reduce inflammation and lower the risk of chronic diseases such as arthritis, diabetes, and cancer.1.3 Habit:
Healthy body changes and weight loss
If we start changing our diet, we naturally start changing the composition of our nutrients. What can follow is a change in our bodies. Filling up all essential nutrients continuously can benefit your overall well-being. Providing your body with fewer calories and more fiber can support being lean.
Why is this important?
Dieting done right works!
This chapter will teach you the mechanisms that kick in when you are in a caloric deficit. Understanding your body’s reaction to dieting can help you steer in the right direction and avoid yoyo effects.
The right approach to dieting can help you avoid both hunger and deficits and the development of chronic disease. By understanding the importance of maintaining a healthy body weight, you can take steps to improve your overall health and well-being.
Benefits of maintaining a healthy body weight
Maintaining a healthy body weight is essential to overall health and wellness. Body weight can change over time, and being overweight or obese can increase the risk of chronic diseases and other health problems.
Being underweight, on the other hand, can lead to various deficiencies, and it's crucial to maintain a healthy body weight to support overall health and wellness.
Benefits for those who are overweight:
Reduced risk of chronic diseases: Maintaining a healthy body weight can significantly reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and certain cancers.Improved cardiovascular health: Being overweight can strain your heart and increase your risk of developing high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and other cardiovascular problems. Maintaining a healthy body weight can improve your heart health and reduce your risk of developing these conditions.Increased energy and stamina: Carrying extra weight can be physically exhausting, making it harder to perform everyday activities and exercise. Maintaining a healthy body weight can improve your energy levels and overall stamina.Improved mental health: Research has shown a strong link between obesity and depression. Maintaining a healthy body weight can improve your mental health and reduce your risk of developing depression and other mental health problems.Better sleep: Being overweight can increase the likelihood of sleep apnea, disrupting your sleep and leaving you tired and groggy during the day. By maintaining a healthy body weight, you can improve the quality of your sleep and wake up feeling refreshed.Benefits of maintaining a healthy body weight for those who are underweight:
Avoiding nutrient deficiencies: When someone is underweight, it often means they are not consuming enough calories or nutrients to support their body's needs. This can lead to nutrient deficiencies, introducing various health problems.A more robust immune system: Maintaining a healthy body weight can help strengthen the immune system, reducing the risk of infection and illness.Improved bone health: Being underweight can increase the risk of osteoporosis and bone fractures. Maintaining a healthy body weight can improve bone density and reduce the risk of these conditions.Better reproductive health: Being underweight can affect reproductive health in both men and women. Maintaining a healthy body weight can improve fertility and reduce the risk of reproductive problems.Improved mental health: Being underweight can increase the risk of depression and other mental health problems. Maintaining a healthy body weight can improve mental health and reduce the risk of developing these conditions.Increased energy and stamina: Being underweight can lead to fatigue and low energy levels. Maintaining a healthy body weight can improve your energy levels and overall life.We are what we eat
If you aim to change your health or body weight, you should be aware that the current state of your body is mainly the sum of your actions. When you carry more weight around, you automatically burn more calories. When burn rate and body weight meet, they become stable.
If, let's say, you would start eating 500 calories over your average need without changing anything else in your lifestyle, your body will naturally build up body fat. Carrying higher body weight, you require more energy to compensate for the extra.
Once you reach a certain weight, carrying the excess fat costs enough to compensate for the daily 500 kcal extra. In other words - at some point, you will even out on a sweet spot, where those 500 extra calories will be just right to carry around what you gained before. Now your body weight stabilizes.
The exact opposite happens when you cut your calories. Your body will start sacrificing fat and muscle so that your energy burn adapts to what you have available. Less body weight and less muscle mean less energy use during the day.
A diet program won’t help long term.
Considering that we always will land on our sweet spot between energy supply and consumption, a diet program for a few weeks will not keep you happy with the long-term results.
Your recently lost pounds might slowly return as soon as the old habits snap back in. Combine this with cravings after the diet, and you can even end up with more than before. This is known as the yoyo effect.
Dieting is strongly associated with restriction. Plenty of limitations will be in place when going for a strictly planned diet. This, indeed, is not a pleasure and will lead to cravings and may lead to mental health issues and eating disorders.
A high caloric deficit costs muscle
Blood sugar levels are one of your homeostasis's most finely regulated parameters. When your blood sugar levels run low, your body will respond to try to increase them. A steady supply of glucose is necessary for the nervous system and erythrocytes.
One process that gets amplified when in a significant caloric deficit is the so-called gluconeogenisis1. Here, new glucose gets synthesized from protein through various pathways in the liver.
If you diet too vigorously, you risk losing muscle through protein use. To counter muscle loss, the caloric deficit should not be too significant. The lower your blood sugar levels, the faster gluconeogenisis transforms protein into glucose, so stay on a moderate caloric deficit and use your muscles to stimulate growth.
If you are not exercising, you should not create a caloric deficit higher than 15%. If you do resistance training and provide enough growth signals to your muscles, you can safely open up the gap further. In fitness centers, people typically aim for a 25% caloric gap through excess energy burned with exercise.
Long-lasting improvements need permanent change.
If you want to benefit from a diet long-term, you should instead find changes you can onboard long-term. A diet that always leaves you hungry is nothing you would enjoy in the long run. Restricting yourself too much also bears the risk of undernutrition. It is not about sticking to a strict plan, but leaning what is good for you. The easiest way to go is not by restricting the amount of food you eat, but by replacing calorie-dense foods with better alternatives.
If you go whole, you get a bunch of goodies like fiber, which automatically makes you feel full faster. Besides, whole foods usually bring you much more vitamins and minerals than a product built entirely from sugars, starch, and fat.
Everybody is different.
How good a diet might work depends on the person, the body weight and metabolism, the nutritional habits and foods, and the duration and intensity of your physical activity. If you follow the same road, you cannot look at what one person is doing and expect the same thing to happen to you. Comparing numbers won’t do the trick here. Instead, try working on your own food choices and habits.How to get started right
You can start eating healthier and less caloric by introducing whole and fiber-rich foods into your diet. Through this, you submit vitamins and nutrients into your day-to-day. Fiber helps you feel full, and whole foods' lower calorie density enables you to consume less energy throughout the day.
Start with one thing in your pantry. Take one item you consider unhealthy, and change it. When you find a better alternative you like, you can easily stick to it. Then move on to the next item.
This approach does not imply that you must change everything for vegetables. Try to find better alternatives in their category. Do you fancy cookies? Find one with less sugar and whole grains inside. Do you like pasta? Try out a whole-grain or legume-based variant. Try picking bread with high whole grain contents and seeds.
Focus on whole foods
You benefit in many ways if you change a product for whole foods.
The amount of fiber supports your gut health and makes you feel full faster and longer through a slower absorption and movement of feces in your bowel.Where there is fiber, there are fewer calories to find. Fiber cannot be broken down and absorbed by us.Whole foods come with decent amounts of micronutrients which are essential for healthy body function.Many secondary plant substances can positively impact your blood sugar, cholesterol, and gut health.Whole foods are unprocessed and free of chemical additives.Persistence without pressure
When you start onboarding healthier foods and get used to them, you can easily persist in those changes. If you start feeling that keeping up is hard, you probably introduce changes too rapidly or make changes in the wrong areas.
Taking things slowly here is critical. Especially introducing high amounts of fiber to an untrained intestine can cause irritations. Work on changes gradually and allow your body to react to them to see how your feelings develop.
1.4 Skill:
Taste
When we say a dish is tasty, we usually look at a whole ensemble of taste, aroma, texture, spice, and presentation. If you know how to tickle all of these senses individually in a meal, you can create fascinating flavors in your cooking.
We can look at them individually to wrap our heads around them and create delightful dishes.
Taste: we can sense a total of 5 different tastes, which are sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. In this chapter, you will learn how to create dishes full of taste.Aroma: We sense aroma with our noses. Aromatics are chemical compounds that we perceive as usually pleasing, and it’s the stuff that makes food smell good. We will learn that in chapter 2.Texture: Giving a good thought on how the texture of your meal should be can create additional satisfaction factors. After all, we are super sensitive to texture and instantly feel if we have a sand grain or hair in our mouth. This will be part of chapter 4.Spice/Bite: Spice is not a taste, as it activates pain receptors in our mouth, often together with temperature. Spice will be our subject in chapter 3.Why is this important?
Food is fuel for our body to work and something enjoyable for all senses! Understanding the basic concepts of taste allows you to start creating dishes full of taste.
Taste is responsible for food to either be bland or fully satisfying. If you know how to create complete taste by matching your taste buds capabilities, you won’t miss out on any tasty experience, as you know how to apply the rules of good taste.
Food touches all senses
There are other factors as well that dictate how we perceive a meal. Imagine you go to a fancy restaurant and order your favorite dish, but then the waiter is rude to you. Despite the perfect dish, a small social interaction can cost you all the joy.
Other factors that define the overall experience of a meal can be:
Expectation: We have high expectations, especially when looking at a dish's texture. Something jiggly when expecting crunch, a hair in the soup, fishbone, or similar can rule out all joy.Environment & Atmosphere: It can make a huge difference where and under what circumstances you eat. A pizza as a takeaway can be less enjoyable than having it in a fancy restaurant. Temperature: Affects texture and intensity of aromas.Presentation: When appropriately plated, any food can be perceived as more flavorful.Say hello to taste
Usually, when talking about taste, people often mean the overall experience of a meal. When pointing at the entire experience, we talk about the flavor. If, for example, ice cream is strawberry flavored, we mean the combination of a sweet taste and the typical bright aromas of strawberries. When I talk about taste, I exclusively mean the senses your tastebuds on your tongue produce.
Taste is the foundation for every good meal. The more we tickle our taste buds, the more savory and satisfying a dish will be.
Taste perception is very individual and can be influenced by age, genes, and culture. If you are a smoker, your ability to taste might be limited. Your salt sensitivity can be lowered when you rely on processed foods.
To make a dish taste taste-complete, you should consider each of the five tastes in your dish. The five tastes that we can sense are
Sweet Sour Salty Bitter Umami
Designing a taste signature
When picking ingredients for your dish, consider their basic tastes. What dish is it going to be? Some savory main? Some light salad? A sweet cookie?
Depending on what you cook, highlight one or two tastes to make them stand out and give the taste a clear direction. Then try to add traces of the remaining tastes to the ensemble to round up the foundation.
I recommend visualizing the desired taste in a star matrix to get started. Decide how you want your dish to taste and color the area you wish to cover.
From here, you can find ingredients that support your taste profile easily.
Texture impacts taste
The more taste buds activate while food is in your mouth, the stronger the taste perception. Naturally, the more tasteful substance is present, the more taste buds fire their signals.
Solid food has a hard time activating all your taste buds. Often, due to its rigged structure, solid food cannot lay flat on your tongue and therefore misses many potential contact points.
If food is liquid, it can thoroughly coat your tongue and play together with as many taste buds as possible. Take a piece of chocolate, for example. Its taste becomes more intense if you allow it to melt in your mouth.
Everybody likes sauce for a reason.
The more rough the structure of a given food, the harder it is to apply taste. Something liquid, like sauce, is an excellent companion to add an intense taste to a dish, as it can easily reach all your tastebuds.
Instead of packing all taste onto something dry, blending everything into a sauce is way easier and more convenient. You can then spread the taste on almost anything from bread, vegetables, pasta, and more.
First, think of what the main components of your meal already bring to the plate. Then try to fill the gap of taste in the sauce. If the base of your dish is neutral in taste, like plain pasta, you can go all-in on creating taste in the sauce or marinade.
If your base already bears some tastes, like salty, then you can skip this part in the sauce. Anything bland in taste can be enriched by combining it with a tasteful liquid companion. Just think of what still is underrepresented in your meal, and add it to the sauce.
Rate the taste of the overall dish, not its components
Putting each of the five tastes in each component of your meal is unnecessary. When you make guacamole, you usually find sweet, sour, and bitter ingredients in the recipe. But how about salt? If you eat your guac with some salty tortilla chips, the taste will combine into the big picture as soon as you start munching on a chip with dip. Adding salt to guacamole in this case is not necessary. If however you choose vegetable sticks for dipping, adding a dash of salt into your guacamole does make sense.
