Ep 14 - Eat Real Food!

The host of the Progress Pod discusses the importance of eating real, unprocessed food. He acknowledges that it's not realistic to completely avoid processed food but emphasizes that the majority of our diet should come from whole, unprocessed sources. He defines real food as loose fruits and vegetables, meat and fish from the counter, eggs, nuts, and dairy products with few ingredients. He explains that heavily processed foods lack nutrients and are filled with preservatives and additives. He suggests a balanced diet with 80% unprocessed foods and 20% flexible or processed foods. He warns against relying on heavily processed protein products and advises using them sparingly. He provides a sample day of a diet focused on unprocessed foods and encourages listeners to limit processed foods for better energy, mood, and overall health. He challenges listeners to try eating as little processed food as possible for a few weeks and notes that even on holiday, it's possible to choose healthier Hello and welcome to episode number 14 of the Progress Pod and after having a few different guests on the podcast over the last few episodes, I am going solo today and today I'm going to be discussing the topic of eating real food. So I recently did a post on this on social media around how we eat a lot of processed stuff and the way that advertisements are at the moment and the way marketing is in supermarkets and online, it's making us think that a lot of these processed goods are actually healthy. So this podcast I just wanted to dive into a wee bit more detail on why we should be limiting the processed side of things and really focusing on eating real, whole, unprocessed foods as much as we can. So before I go into it in more detail, I'm not somebody that completely avoids anything processed, I'm not against these things, but the main thing to take away from this is going to be that as long as we are eating the majority of our foods from unprocessed, whole sources, then we're going to be on to a winner. But at the moment, from what I can see from various different diets and speaking to people, that isn't always the case. It's nowhere near a sort of 80-20 split that I would say would be reasonable. So that's 80% of your food and calories coming from whole, unprocessed foods with the other 20% coming from some more flexible foods, as you would say, or the more processed side of things. So just before I go into it in further detail, what's real food? What's unprocessed, whole foods? So typically, the way I would look at it is anything that you are buying sort of loose, like fruit and vegetables that are loose, they're not, they've not been boxed up, they've not been packaged up, that's basically as unprocessed as you can get. As well, going into, say, a butcher, for instance, and getting meat straight from the counter, a fishmonger, like these are unprocessed foods. Eggs, for instance, and really anything that you can look at, and if it is packaged up, as long as there's not thousands of different ingredients in there. If you're looking and there's like two or three ingredients, all which you know what they are, and there's not different sort of chemicals and all these ingredients that you don't know the name of, haven't seen before, couldn't spell them, then that's a good indication that it's fairly unprocessed. So as I said, we're talking fruits, vegetables, meats, eggs, nuts, dairy produce, that's, again, you can get more heavily processed dairy produce, but ones produced without the fat removed and things like that are typically less processed. This is also unprocessed foods that are going to be much more nutrient-dense, as opposed to, as I said, anything that's been packaged up, loads of different preservatives in there, additives. Like if you look at the back of a product and there's 40 different ingredients in there, that's a very big indication that it's heavily processed. Why is it not great to opt for the heavily processed stuff? The main reason is a lot of nutrients that you find in the unprocessed version of foods actually get removed in the processing and replaced with things like preservatives and additives so that they last longer and things like that. So I'm not saying completely eradicate it. If you could, then excellent, but let's be realistic. It's not going to be possible to stick to 100% unprocessed foods and 100% whole food diet for the vast majority of people. Some people can definitely, you could do it, but let's be realistic. For busy people, if you're out and about and you socialise as well, it's not really realistic to say I'm never going to eat anything processed again. But what we can do is we can certainly limit it. What I'm seeing at the moment is I did a specific post around protein products like protein puddings, protein yoghurts, protein bars. The word protein seems to be the buzz word at the moment in shops. You get protein pancakes, protein everything. The way it's been marketed is that people who don't have the background knowledge around nutrition see that word protein and think it's healthy. So I've seen people in their diet saying that they're eating two protein yoghurts a day and two protein bars because they're trying to be healthy. This is not healthy at all. So whilst there is a time and a place for these things, use them sparingly. Use them as part of that 20% of your calories. As I said, maybe at night time, instead of going and having a big sponge pudding or a bar of galaxy, you've swapped it for a protein pudding or a small protein bar. You're still getting that sweet flavour, fighting off any cravings, but it is a bit of a better option than the chocolate bar or the sponge pudding. So see, there is a use for them, but do not be making processed goods the main source of your protein, for instance, or your calories. Because if we're doing that, we're really not getting all the nutrients that the body needs. We're not going to be feeling as energised as we would. We're not going to be feeling, basically we're not going to be performing as well as we could because we're not getting as much nutrients in as possible. So with regards to how I would say, if I'm looking at a diet in terms of a good balance, where we can still incorporate some processed goods, because as I said, they taste nice, let's not avoid it. Things like chocolate bars and even some of these protein bars and protein pudding, they do taste nice, so we don't need to completely eradicate everything. But I can guarantee if you switch to at least 80% to 20%, some people will promote a 9% to 10% sort of split towards the unprocessed whole foods. Basically the more unprocessed whole foods you can get in your diet, the better you're going to feel in so many instances. You're going to perform better, you're going to feel better, you're going to have more energy, better mood, better sleep, so many different things. But if I was going to be painting sort of a typical day of a diet with the sort of 80-20 split, I'd probably say some eggs in the morning with some oats, for instance, as you're sort of not mixed together, but just say a bowl of oats with a couple of boiled eggs next to that. Then going towards lunchtime, potentially some chicken breast with some seasoning on that, with an avocado and some rice, that would be the kind of lunch. Dinner time could be anything from maybe a beef mince and rice, or maybe a piece of fish with veg, something along those lines, veg and potatoes, something like that. And then in terms of the snacks, you're maybe looking at some Greek yogurt with some berries and honey. And then as I said, if you want to, at that point, in terms of the snacks, maybe add in a protein pudding or something like that at that point. Or if you still want to stay down the unprocessed route, then you're talking maybe some nuts and seeds as well in terms of the snacks. So that's a kind of typical day in terms of if you were really wanting to look towards the unprocessed route. As I said, if you have that as your kind of staple day, then you're going to have a lot of unprocessed whole foods in there. And then if you want to, if you think there's a lot of calories left in terms of where you're currently working towards and your targets, then you can really feel free to throw in a bit of chocolate or throw in a protein bar or a protein pudding and things like that. That, again, they're not the best, they're not the most nutritious for us, but we can still incorporate them into our diet. The main thing from this podcast to take away is not to make that the majority. As I said, if you compare that diet and that typical day that I've just explained to something that I would typically see would be no breakfast, morning snack, protein bar and protein pudding, lunchtime, a packaged sandwich or pot from a shop and then afternoon, another protein bar snack and then a typical sort of potentially even an oven dinner, something that's came right out of a box straight in the oven. And then who knows, later on in the evening, another chocolate bar or a protein bar or a protein pudding. Like that is a typical diet that I would see. And a lot of people would think that that was potentially healthy because they've got the protein in there, because we've got protein. But let's aim to get it from real whole food sources and feel free to add in these processed goods here and there. Do not make that the main focus. And trust me, even set yourself a challenge over the next week, two weeks to eat as little processed foods as humanly possible. And just let us know how it makes you feel in terms of energy levels, mood, productivity, sleep, absolutely everything, performance. Let us know, because I'm actually going to do it myself. I'm not somebody that eats completely unprocessed, as I said, I'm not against it. I like a good bit of balance in there. But over the next two, three weeks, I'm really going to dial it in. And even actually, I go on holiday in a few weeks' time. So up until then, I'm going to really dial it in and aim to eat absolutely minimum processed foods and just see the benefit of it. Even when I go on holiday, it's a buffet style meal. And to be honest, most of the time, I'll be looking and picking the unprocessed stuff. I'll still be enjoying myself. I'll probably be eating more processed stuff because I'm on holiday and the options will be there. And I'll have a wee bit of a relaxation time, but I'll still be picking a lot of good, healthy, nutritious foods along the way. But in terms of nutrition and stuff on holiday, that's a completely different topic. But yeah, give it a try over the next two, three, four weeks. Just let us know how it goes. And then as I said, from there, feel free to then start adding in sporadically the processed foods here and there. And trust me, you will feel so, so much better. So yeah, hopefully this all made sense and you took some value from this episode. I just felt it was an important topic to dive into because recently I have been speaking to a lot of people who are thinking that the processed foods are really healthy for us when it really isn't the case. So yeah, hopefully you enjoyed it. If you did, make sure to take a screenshot of it and share it to your stories. And I'll speak to you guys on the next one.