Nutrition, Diet and Health Course

The core value of "Nutrition, Diet and Health Course" is never to provide a unified standard answer to diet and force you to quit all "unhealthy" favorite foods, but to help you build a set of dietary decision-making logic that adapts to your own physique and lifestyle habits, and ultimately achieve the goal of maintaining long-term health without counting calories or abstaining from food.

I myself have given six rounds of on-the-job lectures on this course in communities and Internet companies in the past two years. I have seen too many people come with the purpose of "finding a list of taboos", and when they finally left, they could even drink milk tea that they had not dared to touch before - of course there is a method. The one who impressed me the most was Aunt Zhang from the first period. When she first entered the classroom and sat down, the first thing she said was, "Teacher, just tell me what you can't eat, and I'll write it down." She had just been diagnosed with high blood lipids at that time, and her children gave her a page full of taboos. She even crossed out her favorite Dongpo Pork. After half a year of eating the clear soup and water, she was not energetic, and her blood lipids did not drop much. I told her at that time that you have to dance square dance for two hours every morning and evening, which consumes much more than an ordinary sedentary old man. It is perfectly fine to eat a two-finger-wide piece of Dongpo pork once a week, as long as you don’t eat a big bowl of white rice with it, but eat more stir-fried spinach and broccoli. She went back and tried it for two months. The last time she saw me, she said that her blood lipid levels were stable. She even cooked Dongpo pork for her grandson on weekends, and she dared to pick up two chopsticks.

In fact, not only the elders, but also many young people now have similar misunderstandings about nutritious diets. They always feel that they have to eat bland and abstain from this and that to be healthy. They even suffer from dietary anxiety in order to meet the so-called "health standards". What’s interesting is that every time we talk about different dietary schools, there will always be quarrels in the class. Some people say that they lost 30 pounds in 3 months by relying on ketosis, and some say that their aunt ran away and lost her hair by following the trend of ketosis. In class, we never directly take sides and say which one is better and which one is worse. We only lay out the applicable scenarios and evidence-based basis of different options: For example, for people with a BMI over 28 and already developing insulin resistance, adopting a low-carb diet for 3 to 6 months to control their weight is indeed effective in the clinical follow-up of the endocrinology department. However, for young girls with a BMI lower than 18.5 and low menstrual flow, long-term low-carb will aggravate hormonal disorders. At this time, it is safer to ensure a punch of whole grain staple food every day. As for the vegan diet that many people now recommend, we will also make it clear: if you are an elderly person with a heavy cardiovascular burden, a good B12 supplement, enough soy products and dark green vegetables can indeed reduce the burden of blood lipids. However, if you are a student preparing for exams or a fitness group who needs to gain muscle, blindly eating a vegetarian diet will most likely lead to insufficient protein intake and decreased concentration. There is no need to follow the trend.

After all, this course is not for professional nutrition practitioners. We will not do those complicated calculation formulas. Ordinary people cannot remember or bother to calculate the daily intake of 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. We are more willing to teach you the "palm estimation method": the protein of a meal is about the size of the palm of your hand (a piece of chicken breast, a piece of fish, a piece of tofu are all counted), the staple food is the amount of a fist, the vegetables are two fists, and the oil used for cooking is about the size of a thumb. You can roughly count it at a glance before eating, without taking out a food scale.

Oh, yes, we also set aside a special class to talk about "Dietary Tolerance Mechanism". Many people were confused when they heard it for the first time. They said this is also taught in nutrition class? Yes, many people’s current health anxiety is not at all about eating something wrong. It’s because they feel overwhelmed with guilt after taking one bite of “junk food”, which instead leads to overeating and emotional eating problems. I have stepped into this pit before. A few years ago, I followed the fat-reducing diet online for half a month. I couldn't help but eat a meal of fried chicken. I squatted on the sofa and cried with guilt. Later, after talking with the nutritionist I worked with, I learned that the impact of a meal high in oil and sugar on the body is far less than a week of emotional anxiety. Therefore, we will tell students in class that if you really want to drink milk tea today, just go and drink it. Just choose three-point sugar without pearls. Add more vegetables and protein in the next two meals. It will have no effect at all. Don’t compete with yourself.

In the Internet company class that just finished last month, a young man who works in development reported to me that he used to eat takeout that was heavy in oil and salt, and he couldn't walk when he got gout. Now he doesn't have to give up hot pot completely. He drinks half a cup of sugar-free yogurt as a cushion before eating, and eats half a catty of leafy vegetables with half a soda cracker. The uric acid has not fluctuated much in the past two months. Occasionally, he can eat hot pot with his colleagues to satisfy his cravings. You see, this is what we want to do most in this course: We don’t need you to become an expert who can memorize all the nutritional information tables. As long as you can make choices that suit you for each meal, and eat happily and healthily, that is enough.