Readtime: 3 Minutes 

Today, I want to share three of the best pieces of advice I can give for improving your nutrition.

But first, what exactly is “good nutrition?”

That depends entirely on you.

“Good nutrition” is a collection of eating skills and food choices that help you live life in a manner that you find deeply meaningful and fulfilling. This means “good nutrition” will look different for you than it does for me, because we both have different goals, dreams and ambitions that constitute a life well lived.

However, there are some “timeless” nutritional principles that help everyone live as happier, healthier humans, regardless of their unique goals and desired lifestyle. These principles can be practiced regardless of food preferences, intolerances or dietary restrictions.

Even just small improvements to your nutrition can create big shifts in energy levels, mental clarity, physical fitness, and emotional wellness.

Here are my top 3 tips for nutritional success in 2024.

#1 Focus Less On Avoiding “Bad Foods” And Focus More On “Adding In” Nutritious Foods.

Many people think that “good nutrition” is about avoiding “bad foods.”

While this can work, this approach can quickly put you at a major psychological disadvantage.

This is because you naturally head toward where your attention is and what you think about.

The more you think about “bad foods” (even if you are thinking about how to avoid or eat less of them) the more likely you are to end up eating them! For example, if you spend 12 hours thinking about how you’re NOT going to eat chocolate chip cookies today… aren’t you more likely to end up craving them and eating compared to if they never once crossed your mind today?

You will often get what you regularly think about and focus on, even if it’s NOT what you want. 

But you can harness this human psychology to your advantage. 

Instead of thinking about what you DON’T want to eat, focus on what you DO want to eat. 

Set your focus on planning out ways you can add more nutritious foods into your day. This may look like:

• Packing apple slices and almond butter for a work snack (so you don’t hit up the vending machines).
• Finding a veggie stir fry recipe that sounds good and planning which night you’ll make it for dinner.
• Setting out a bowl of fresh fruit on the kitchen counter.

Spend more time focusing on how to get what you DO want (the health, fitness, physique, experiences, lifestyle, etc) rather than how to avoid what you DON’T want, because your mind (and body) will eventually follow where you place your attention and focus.

#2 Sleep More, Or Sleep Better.

The better you sleep, the better your nutrition will be.

Poor or inadequate sleep increases the levels of your hunger hormone ghrelin. Your appetite, hunger and food cravings directly match ghrelin levels: as ghrelin levels rise you feel hungrier; as ghrelin levels fall your hunger decreases. When you don’t sleep enough (or if your sleep quality is poor) your appetite will be higher than usual.

This can cause you to eat more calories during the day, as well as make less healthy food choices due to stronger cravings. 

One of the best ways to eat better is to sleep better.

An internet search for “sleep hygiene tips” will help you find curated lists of actions to take for getting more or better sleep. 

Sleep hygiene practices that have most helped me are: (1) keeping my bedroom dark with blackout curtains (2) white noise to reduce background sounds (I use a box fan for white noise) and (3) charging my phone outside my room at night.

#3 Focus On One Change At A Time

Disrupting old habits or behavior patterns and replacing them with new ones is extremely challenging. 

Habits and behavior patterns create real physical circuits (like electrical wires) of nervous system cells inside your brain and body. The only way to “rewire” new circuits of behaviors is by frequently repeating a new behavior until your nervous system remaps this new habit into your neural system.

This is why the greatest (and most common) mistake preventing people from achieving their goals is trying to do too much too soon. When you make many changes all at once (like joining a new gym while committing to running each morning while also trying to completely overhaul your diet) you spread your limited time, focus and energy across too many new behaviors. When you do this, you are less likely to consistently repeat each new behavior enough to really make it stick.

On the flip side, you will GREATLY increase your chances of successfully changing your behavior (thereby greatly increasing your chances of getting results) if you only make one change at a time.

When you focus all your available time, energy and effort onto only one thing, you are HIGHLY more likely to repeat that new behavior enough times to successfully form a new habit or behavior pattern.

Play The Long Game

While it may feel painfully, painfully slow to only work on one change at a time, the compounding results from each additional behavior will begin to stack up. 

What begins as a tiny, trickling stream grows into an unstoppable, raging river of momentum and results that is difficult to sabotage.

Be patient. Embrace the process. And play the long game. 

That’s how you win with nutrition (and that’s how you win in life, so I’m told).

See you next week.