Read time: 4 minutes

Every single day, hundreds of thousands of people begin a new diet or a new healthy eating plan.

But sadly, many of these people will never get the results they were hoping to get.

I’ve come to believe that faaaaaar more people would successfully get (and keep!) life-changing results if they only knew to build their diet around three core “principles” of healthy eating.

And what’s wild is that these three principles have nothing to do with carbs, macros, sugar, seed oils, exercise or any of that stuff you see people yelling about on social media.

If you’ve ever been caught in the “on-again, off-again” diet cycle or have struggled to ever stick to a nutrition plan or challenge, these principles will help you pick, shape and implement healthy eating habits that will get you more healthy and fit for the long term.

Principle #1 – Simple

If your new diet is difficult to successfully follow… you won’t follow it for long.

The most successful diet is the most simple one, because you’ll be able to do it day-in and day out. The biggest mistake most of us make when starting something new, is that we create a plan that we can successfully do on our best day. But, life rarely gives us our best day. 

A good way to keep things simple enough is to only start things that you are confident you can successfully do most days, even the bad ones. This way, you will be able to be sooooooo much more consistent with your new healthy behavior (and remember, frequent / consistent / routine action is the only thing that drives results). 

Health and fitness is a long term game. 

Keep things simple enough that you are confident that you can do them most days.

Principle #2 – Lasting

One of the biggest reasons why most of the popular “named” diets you see in news articles or on social media rarely seem to help is that they are too difficult to adhere to for longer than a few weeks or months.

As soon as you stop following the diet (whatever it was), any results that were occurring from that diet stops as well. I mean, who wants to live the rest of their life never eating carbs ever again? Or never enjoying a sugary treat? 

For most people, that’s not worth it, hence the diet isn’t followed for long and hence the diet never creates sustainable results.

So instead, focus on acquiring healthy eating skills, habits and tools that will last for the rest of your life.

Here are some examples:

Healthy eating skills:

• Learning how to choose food portions using your hands as a guide (one of my favs!)
• Cultivating awareness of why you’re eating (helps you avoid boredom and stress eating)
• Setting up your kitchen and pantry to guide you toward healthier food choices

Healthy eating habits:

• Planning most meals around a good source of protein
• A regular grocery shopping schedule
• Scheduling time to prep some healthier food options or meals for the week

Healthy eating tools:

• Slow cooker / crock pot (the ultimate, timeless nutrition hack)
• Rice cooker
• Air fryer
• A good set of frying pans

Here’s the KEY: once acquired, healthy eating skills, habits and tools will last for life (or in the case of the tools, at least for a very long time).

No matter what you eat, where you travel, or how crazy your day gets; healthy eating skills, habits and tools will help you do the things you need to do in order to live more healthy, lean and fit.

Avoid the temporary fad diets and fully invest your time and money into stuff that lasts for life and drives results for the long term.

Principle #3 – Enjoyable

This last one is actually the most important of all of them: you MUST build your diet around foods you actually enjoy.

You won’t be able to choke down foods you hate for very long… or completely cut out foods you love for very long.

It’s just not sustainable.

While it may take some time and effort to discover foods and develop meals that you both like and that support your health and fitness goals, this can be one of the most valuable investments of time and effort that you’ll ever make.

Here are two ways to go about doing this:

#1: Experiment! Try new foods and new meals. Write down the ones you like so you can purchase / make them again.

#2: Sit down with a pen and paper and write out at least three foods that you know you like from each of these categories: protein sources, carb sources, fat sources and vegetables.

Here's an example:

Then, mix and match these foods to create meal and snack ideas that you’ll like.

And don’t stress if some of these foods on your list aren’t “super healthy.” You can always work on adding in more nutritious foods later on… or not cause you enjoy them!

Just get started, that’s what is most important.

TLDR

Any long term success in health and fitness is built upon a foundation of three, timeless principles:

1. Keep it simple
2. Acquire long term skills, habits and tools
3. Do things you enjoy

Filter everything you do through these three principles and you’ll be amazed at what changes.

Keep crushing.

Onward!