Healthy Eating and Anti-Aging Tips

Give priority to controlling the intake of refined sugar, eat enough basic nutrients from natural foods, and try to avoid high-frequency pro-inflammatory foods. If you persist for more than half a year, the effect will be much more real than if you eat thousands of anti-aging products.

I have been through a lot of traps in the past two years. I bought three boxes of imported grape seed capsules and two bottles of resveratrol liquid during Double Eleven. After three months of eating, there was no change except for a flat wallet. It wasn’t until I had a meal and chatted with a friend in the nutrition department that I realized that we ordinary people really don’t need to do those fancy things to fight aging.

Let’s talk about the core sugar control. Many people think that sugar control means not eating cakes and milk tea. In fact, the eight-treasure porridge with honey added to it in the morning, the fresh rock sugar that is often used in home cooking, and even the fast-absorbing carbohydrates in the white steamed buns and white rice that are often eaten are the main force in the production of glycation end products (AGEs) - the kind of things that make skin collagen brittle, wrinkles, and the complexion becomes dull. They are more stable than the chronic aging power of ultraviolet rays. Of course, there are now many people who advocate the ketogenic diet and advocate a complete carbon cut-off. A friend of mine has tried it, and her skin has indeed become brighter in two months, but my aunt simply postponed it for half a month. Later, she checked relevant research and found that long-term extremely low-carbohydrate intake may indeed affect female hormone levels. There is really no need for ordinary people to go to such an extreme. I now replace white rice with 1/3 brown rice and oatmeal. I always choose sugar-free milk tea with fresh milk. If I want something sweet, I grab 10 strawberries and nibble on them. In half a year, my glycosylated hemoglobin has dropped by 0.8, and even the yellow gas that I usually get during the change of seasons has been reduced a lot.

After talking about the pitfalls that should be avoided, many people will definitely ask: Then there is no harm in adding some extra anti-aging ingredients from internet celebrities, right? Not necessarily. The "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" has long conducted a large-sample study. As long as healthy people eat a balanced diet, supplementing with high-dose antioxidant supplements will not only not help anti-aging, but excessive amounts may even disrupt the body's own redox balance and promote aging. In fact, you should eat 1 pound of dark green leafy vegetables and about half a pound of fresh fruits every day, especially dark-colored foods such as purple cabbage, blueberries, and mulberries. The content of anthocyanins, flavonoids, and vitamin C in them is sufficient for the body. Moreover, the nutrients in natural foods are compounded and are much easier to absorb than single purified supplements. I later saved money on supplements and bought a box of blueberries every day. After two months of eating, most of the dullness around my eyes disappeared, and even the eye fatigue from staring at the computer for so long was much better.

In addition to what you eat, what you don't eat is actually more important. Many people ignore that chronic inflammation is the invisible driver of accelerated aging. For example, processed meat products such as fried chicken that you often order over and over again on weekends, bacon and sausages that you love to have for breakfast, and snacks with “non-dairy fat, shortening, and hydrogenated vegetable oil” in the ingredient list. Eating too much of these things will put the body in a low-level inflammation state for a long time. In the short term, you may have swollen face and acne after eating. In the long term, it will not only accelerate skin aging, but also increase the risk of chronic diseases. Of course, there is no need to put these things on the blacklist. I even ate a fried chicken steak last week. As long as you don’t eat it three or four times a week, and occasionally eat it as a reward, your body can completely metabolize it. You don’t have to live a hard life just to resist aging. On the contrary, you will age more easily if you are stressed.

Many people ask me for the "perfect anti-aging recipe", but is there any standard answer that suits everyone? Some people get acne after drinking milk, so switch to sugar-free yogurt ； Some people with weak stomachs cannot eat too much miscellaneous beans, so they can slowly increase the amount, from 1/5 to 1/3. Anti-aging is a long-term thing. You don’t need to pursue 100% compliance every day. As long as you eat comfortably and healthily most of the time, no harsh secret will work.