On Nutrition: a Guide

• 4 min read

In 2018, after a few years of cleaning up my diet, I shared what I’d learned. My approach has been refined since, but the same principles remain. I’m not a doctor—these are simply the rules I live by, not medical advice.

My General Rules

  • Eat home-cooked meals most of the time: around 12 meals out of 14. You should know what you’re eating and avoid food that has been through a lot of industrial transformations.
  • Reduce the amount of sugar you eat drastically.
  • Aim for 20 different fruits, vegetables, grains, and fermented foods a week to get healthier microbiota.
  • Go for half a plate filled with veggies, a quarter with protein, and another quarter with carbs.
  • Aim for 4 to 6 g of sodium a day, which translates to 6 to 9 g of this salt. [More info]
  • Aim for 1.6–1.8 g of protein per kg per day.
  • There are good fats; they are not bad for you. They come from grains, fish, avocado, etc. Don’t hesitate to include them.
  • Caffeine can hinder iron absorption. If you’re drinking coffee or tea within ~2 hours of a meal, pair the meal (or the beverage) with vitamin C. My favorite combo is green tea with lime juice.

Main Offenders

Anything I ask you to drop is to be consumed in very moderate amounts: less than once a week.

  • Drop the orange juice; it’s not healthy. The same goes for soda and most other juices. Eat fruit instead, and drink water.
  • Drop non-dark chocolate and anything with more than 10% sugar. There’s no healthy sugar (personal opinion: honey, fruit, etc—it’s all sugar, even when it’s called “polyol”).
  • Prefer whole grains: drop white bread. Choose brown rice (“riz complet” in French), textured soy, lentils, quinoa, chickpeas, beans, etc.

Changing Your Diet

It’s going to suck at first, but it gets easier.

Right now, you are not connected to your body. Your body doesn’t know what it wants, and even if it did, you wouldn’t be able to listen to it. Before you’re tuned in, “hunger” can mean a lot of things: boredom, thirst, actual hunger, or a specific deficiency. The more awareness you build, the more specific those signals become. Over time, you’ll start associating certain conditions and feelings with missing something particular (vitamins, electrolytes, etc.).

Start with fundamentals: a generally healthy, balanced diet. Once that’s stable and doesn’t suck anymore, you can start listening to your needs and experimenting with different vegetables, grains, cheat meals, and supplements until you find the right balance of pleasure and nutrients.

Ideally, weigh yourself once a day using a consistent protocol (morning, after using the bathroom, etc.). Don’t obsess over day-to-day changes; look at the weekly trend. If it’s not moving the way you want, change one thing the next week. Iterate until you get a stable trend you like.

  1. Once a month, log everything you eat for a few days (this app was useful during my transition). If you really can’t measure something, drop it from your diet. You can also log all your activity to Google Fit or Apple Health to get an idea of your energy expenditure. This will give you a very precise snapshot of the contribution you get from everything you eat. You can use this picture to tweak your diet for the next few weeks while keeping an eye on the trend.
  2. Make changes and keep an eye on the trends: When you change something, your body adapts: it goes into a panic, it conserves energy, you get cranky, etc. You need to give it time to get out of panic mode and adjust to the new reality. That’s why you need to give it a few days to settle before judging the result—don’t overreact to daily fluctuations. When you are making your changes, start by tackling the Main Offenders. Once you think your diet is clean enough and you are following the General Rules, start controlling quantity: eat fewer or more carbs according to the trend you want to see.
  3. Once you’re in a good trend, keep going. Then optimize for enjoyment until the trend shifts.

The goal is to end up somewhere you enjoy your food, you’re full of energy, and you have a decent sense of what you need. At that point, eating becomes natural, and overeating—or eating badly—won’t feel good. Still, weigh yourself every few days and keep an eye on the trend. It’s part of your life now.

For Workouts

  • Eat a meal (or some bread) about 2 hours before a workout.
  • Have fruit (a banana, for example) about 30 minutes before a workout.
  • Always keep an energy bar with you in case you feel dizzy during a workout.