Optimising your diet for optimal health

[Tragedy]

There is something I think it's really important to consider about diet and yet very rarely people talk about it: the personal situation and the goal.

As a general rule we all agree that the more evolutionistically natural, the better.

But one needs to consider the person. For example keto is not natural and is complicated, as @Zug said. Nonetheless, for people with psychological issues or illnesses could be potentially great.

Lotta veggies is also a great rule in general, but not for everyone. For me, the less vegetables I eat, the better I feel, as long as I eat some here and there.

Regarding only taking supplements if you have blood deficiencies as pointed out by @kratjeuh, I agree but partially. In the sense that those numbers are meant to keep you alive, not to make you thrive.

Plus, today's food is not nearly nutritional as 100 ys ago, let alone as 50.000 years ago. Sadly we are not eating wild mammoth, we are eating some ill cow who lived in a cage and eat soy and antibiotics. We are also not eating a fruit directly from a tree we passing by, instead we get them in a shop. A fruit you buy in the shop loose vitamins every day in between the collection from the tree and the time you eat it.

In 2020s world there is no way to eat enough Omega-3, vitamin C, etc without supplements, unless you go to live in an African tribe and hunt your own food.

My point is that there are general rules but one needs to tailor them to the actual situation i.e., geography, era we live in, the individual needs...

[Vamos]

A topic that is never out of fashion and on which there are hundreds of different viewpoints. The best diet is still the one that you can maintain permanently and is halfway healthy. Nobody will stick to any very strict diet that prescribes and excludes a lot of food in the long term, forget that.

The topic of nutrition is a cash cow that never gets tired and is constantly being reinvented. I was yesterday in a bookstore and there were several (!) books about simple oatmeal "The oat cure" "Healthy oatmeal" and so on, crazy.

The basics of healthy eating are actually simple:

- find your calorie needs
- 70-80% healthy unprocessed foods, the rest as you want
- from this you can now deduce that sugar and salt should be kept to an appropriate level
- drink enough
- make sure to have sufficient fiber not too much not too little (extremely important for me personally)
- have vegetables and fruits in your diet every day, feel free to alternate
- eat healthy fats, but also cholesterol, it's best to eat fatty fish regularly for Omega 3, but honestly, who does that, so supplement it

If you want pizza, ice cream, chips, alcohol, sweets, whatever, eat/drink it, but stick roughly to the guidelines above.
No one will be healthier, mentally firmer or fitter just because they forbid themselves to eat junk food every now and then.

In addition, I am still a fan of some supplements. A good multivitamin, 1-2g of vitamin C, beta carotene, D3K2 during the cold season, glucosamine if you have joint problems. These are the basics, everything else would go into detail.

[Thebastard]

Thanks for the detailed posts guys. Top calibre content as always in this community.

So on my shopping list shall be:

- Grass fed collagen powder
- EAAs in pill form. Gonna see if I can find that animal nitro again
- I will look into tallow instead of butter/oil to cook in – any tips with regards to this?

I’m already taking 1.5g Vitamin C in tablet form each day.

I like the idea of bone broth – for this I think I’d need a slow cooker unless I am mistaken?

I am going to be saving unhealthy stuff of any kind for special occasions e.g. birthdays, Christmas sort of thing. Probably more often than that.

Thanks for the breakdown @Paid Renegade

I won’t be eating that many times/day – more like 2 on average but I have to say this resembles the kind of plan I had in my late teens/early 20s when I was training for powerlifting. Not quite as healthy and precise as yours though because yours is more focused on lean bulking/cutting.