The deal as I’ve always understood is to basically eat what your great grandparents ate; stay out of the middle aisles of any supermarket and all processed foods as much as possible. Many people don’t do this and eat a diet of crap 90 percent of the time and we are what we eat in a sense. Pretty simple. And don’t eat after 9:00pm if you want to be thin- hard to do sometimes.
My great grandparents were farm hands and ate fried chicken, pork chops, biscuits and gravy, eggs, bacon and mashed potatoes swimming in gravy every day. They ate very little fresh fruit (maybe cherries and peaches in season, but that's about it) and fresh vegetables only in season (canned for the winter months).
They didn't gain weight because they were so physically active. I'd be a lard butt if I ate like that for even one month.
I do second the plan to shop primarily in the grocery store's perimeter. I usually only go in the middle for canned goods.
Until I started waitressing a year ago I never snacked after supper. I now work through supper and eat around 11:00 pm. I wonder if that will affect me, despite the fact that I’m moving quickly and constantly for hours on those nights. Last night I was quite hungry and ate two plates of Ceasar salad and a bowl of soup at 11:30. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but I probably shouldn’t have eaten that much. It might have been the glass of wine that tainted my judgment.
It's probably even better to grow your own as some here do but in the city, I don't have that option.
Even the seemingly healthy "yogurt" aisle is full of sugared concoctions that are little better than ice cream with hot fudge. I prefer the plain whole-milk skyr or other strained yogurts which I can sweeten up naturally by mixing in blueberries or blackberries.
Restaurant eating is dicey. You never know what they put in your food and how they "cut" their olive oil and other shortcuts. I always put on pounds quickly when I eat in restaurants because I think they use way too much inferior ingredients to keep their margins up.
A good friend of mine returned from a Japan trip recently. She finds it hard to eat anything over here because the food in Japan is of such high quality compared to here in U.S.
I don't see how that can be. They aren't the same shape or taste at all. Tilapia is flat while catfish is plump. Or maybe it's because I live on a river so know what a real catfish is.
That's true about the middle of the grocery store. I just did the monthly shopping and most everything was from the outside. Mostly produce, dairy (yeah, full of chemicals) and meats for the freezer.