What your main meals look like (WHAT you eat)
The 10 most common food “mistakes”
“I eat a lot of (hidden) sugar………”
“I drink far too little water…….”
“I thought I ate healthily and that my diet suited me…..”
I used to hear these comments regularly from clients in my doctor’s office, even though they were convinced that they were eating healthily before counselling. However, they often found that this was not the case at all.
Eat & Live Diary
Elsewhere on this website you can read how we easily maintain a healthy diet. There you will discover that one of our tricks is keeping an eat & live diary. This has also been a standard part of my guidance to clients for years. I did this not only because I wanted to gain insight into what they ate, but also to increase their awareness and motivation, to actually and permanently change their eating habits.
The 10 most common nutrition “mistakes”
I often came across the same nutritional “mistakes” in the eating diaries. These errors can eventually lead to:
- energy loss
- all kinds of (vague) complaints
- problems with your digestion and gastrointestinal tract
- being overweight (or inability to gain weight)
The reason for this is that your body becomes unbalanced as a result of nutritional deficiencies.
Below you can read the 10 most common nutritional “errors” I encountered in my practice.
1. Too much hidden sugar
Refined sugars
I often heard from my clients that they did not eat sugar. By this they meant that they do not put sugar in their coffee, tea, yoghurt etc.. However, it is often forgotten that sugar is found in many products. Not only in the pre-packaged foods, such as gingerbread, biscuits, sports bars, desserts, soft drinks, fruit yoghurt, etc., but really in everything, including the smoked salmon and meat products you might put in your sandwich.
Natural sugars
Natural products, such as fruit and honey, also contain a lot of sugar. Although fruit has healthy properties, it is also full of sugar.
Starch
Starch is converted into sugar in your body. Foods that contain starch are cereals, such as wheat, corn, rice, spelt, etc. So bread, pasta, rice, etc. are also a source of (hidden) sugar.
Now, you should include some sugar in your diet, your brain can’t do without it, but it’s often about the extent to which products containing sugar are consumed. Too much sugar leads to, among other things, an unstable blood sugar level, hormonal imbalance and obesity.
2. Too few vegetables
The majority of my clients ate, and still eat, far too few vegetables. They fall far short of the minimum recommended amount of 250 grams per day. Besides the fact that vegetables contain a lot of vitamins and minerals, they are made up of good fibres. These are a healthy source of nutrition for your good intestinal bacteria.
3. Fear of fat
I regularly saw light products (or low-fat products) appear in the food diaries, such as Optimel, low-fat dairy products, light soft drinks, margarine / halvarine, etc. “This is healthy, isn’t it?” I heard. No, it is not healthy. The advertising is still telling you this and so is the Nutrition Centre! Realise that light products do NOT occur in nature. They are processed foods from the factory. I call it artificial food. Your body doesn’t know what to do with these unnatural products, it doesn’t recognise them. This can lead to all kinds of undesirable effects. Moreover, these artificial foods contain a lot of sugar, unhealthy fats and other artificial substances to give them an attractive smell, colour and taste. With these products you are only filling your body, not feeding it.
You need healthy fats, including cholesterol! Did you know that 70% of your brain consists of cholesterol? You need fats to build your body cells and for certain hormones. They also play a role in all kinds of body processes and are healthy for your microbiome.
4. Eating too little
At least half of my clients, even if it was not their first priority, wanted to lose some weight. What I saw in their eating diary is a “notorious” mistake; not eating enough, because “every pound goes in through the mouth”? No! If so, wouldn’t everyone be slim? Eating too little slows down your thyroid gland. This is the furnace of your body which keeps your body processes going, including your digestion. When you eat too little, your thyroid slows down and you end up in a fat storage state. Attempts to lose weight in this state will never succeed. Many of my clients were very happy with the message that they could eat more. And then they gradually lost the desired kilos.
5. Drinking too little water
Many of my clients did not reach the minimum amount of 2 litres of water per day. They were usually unaware of this because they included tea in this quantity. This is not correct. In addition to all other drinks, your body needs at least 2 litres of water a day to function properly.
6. Rinsing your food away
Hardly anyone is aware of the fact that you can wash your food away with drink. When you drink during or immediately after the meal, the nutrients have too little time to be sufficiently broken down in the stomach. As a result, large chunks of food end up in your small intestine where they cannot be absorbed properly. This often leads to problems with digestion, the stomach, intestines and immune system. This results in reduced absorption of nutrients, food shortages and ultimately a high risk of food intolerances. This can lead to complaints such as a bloated abdomen, flatulence, constipation/diarrhoea, fatigue, etc.
7. Not chewing enough
Drinking while eating is often accompanied by reduced chewing. Insufficient chewing prevents your digestion from really kicking in, because not enough gastric acid, bile salts or digestive enzymes are released. In addition, if you don’t chew enough, large chunks of food can enter your stomach and intestines. All in all, this leads to digestive problems and an imbalance in your microbiome (intestinal flora), immune system, hormones and many other body processes.
8. Eating too repetitively
I regularly saw eating patterns that were far too repetitive. Every day the same breakfast, the same type of fruit in between, the same dinner two days in a row (warming up for the second day), and so on. Frequently heard reasons for too little variation in the eating pattern were, and often are:
- Being too “busy”
- Convenience
- Need/desire to prepare a meal quickly
- Have nothing else in the house
In the average, hectic day, the most important fuel for your body, namely healthy food, becomes a neglected child. Often you are not aware of this and that is a pity. Because with too little variation in food you run the risk of building up nutrient deficiencies on the one hand and eventually developing food intolerances on the other, resulting in all sorts of unpleasantness.
9. Too little or no breakfast at all
Many of my clients paid too little attention to breakfast, which is the most important meal of the day. This makes them hungry during the course of the day, causing them to become sluggish later in the afternoon and in the course of the evening.
10. Not eating what’s right for you
Last but not least (!); the majority of people do not eat according to their constitution. This determines, among other things, the rate of your digestion. Not only WHAT, HOW and HOW MUCH you should eat, but also the extent to which you get fat.
When you don’t eat according to your constitution type, your body gets out of balance. This can lead to all kinds of complaints such as fatigue, gastrointestinal complaints, obesity, etc. This is one of the reasons why diets are not effective in the long term. Because what is good for one person may not be healthy for you. Eating according to your constitution type is therefore essential.
Conclusion
Often you may think that you eat healthily. I thought the same thing four years ago. However, a healthy diet means more than “just paying attention to sugar and sweet snacks”. Important factors include:
Constitution test
You may now be wondering how you can discover what to eat, how to eat and how much to eat? What does and doesn’t suit me?
Take the free constitution test and find out what your constitution type is.
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