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Your approach to eating should be stress-free, says registered dietician and cookbook author Kylie Sakaida.
To practice stress-free eating, your goal should be “to make meal planning and cooking easy,” Sakaida says. It should also involve lowering our stress around “whether or not we’re making ‘the right food choices’ or what we perceive to be the right food choices.”
Stress-free eating can be as simple as increasing the fiber and water in your diet, or using canned and frozen foods to avoid spending hours prepping in the kitchen, she says. And to truly practice it, you should remember that perfection isn’t the goal.
“Understand that one meal won’t make or break your progress, and that we don’t have to stress about eating perfect all the time,” Sakaida says. (And be sure to consult a medical professional with questions about your specific diet.)
Sakaida’s recently released cookbook “So Easy So Good,” offers up recipes for balanced eating. Here’s how she structures her own meals.
What a dietitian eats to practice stress-free eating
“My diet definitely varies. I try to include a mix of both animal and plant-based proteins. I, of course, try to aim for a balanced plate as much as I can,” Sakaida says.
Her idea of a balanced plate is: half a plate of produce, a fourth plate of protein and a fourth plate of starch.
“Of course, this isn’t always the case for all of my meals, just because I know that would be unrealistic for me,” she says. “I try to make sure that breakfast and lunch are as convenient as possible.”
Here’s what a typical breakfast, lunch and dinner looks like for Sakaida:
- Breakfast: Savory oatmeal or a smoothie, usually pre-made
- Lunch: Mason-jar noodles, salads or wraps
- Snacks: Fiber and healthy fats like popcorn and roasted chickpeas, carrots and cottage cheese dip or apples and peanut butter
- Dinner: Tofu, chicken, beef or fish with white rice or brown rice and vegetables
Sakaida plans her meals ahead of time to make her decisions around eating more seamless. She finds that many people get overwhelmed when they have to think about what to make on the spot.
“I tell people to gather recipes, and then write all the ingredients down as you would if you’re gonna go shopping,” she says.
“Also, swap out ingredients that are similar to each other. If you’re doing a recipe that has both spinach and kale, and another recipe just uses kale, you can definitely just buy the kale if you want to save money or try to use all your ingredients.”
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