The key to maintaining a healthy diet is to consume the right number of calories to keep you active and feeling productive throughout the day, as well as eat balanced foods so as to not have any deficiency or disease in your body. It’s recommended that men have around 2,500 calories a day while women should have around 2,000 calories a day. 

If you eat more calories than you require, you’ll end up gaining weight and welcoming several obesity-related health risks into your life. This post discusses some important tips to incorporate a healthy diet into your life.

1. Have high fiber carbohydrates as your base

Try to include at least one starchy food with every meal. Choose higher fiber or wholegrain varieties of carbohydrates. This can include wholewheat pasta, brown rice, or potatoes without removing their skins.

2. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables

You should aim to eat at least 5 portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables each day. It’s best to have fresh fruits and vegetables, but they can also be frozen, canned, dried, or juiced. Scientists often advise to juice your vegetables and chew your fruits.

3. Eat more fish

Fish is a great source of protein and omega-3 fatty acids which prevent heart disease. Keep an aim to eat at least two portions of fish every week. You can have fresh fish as well as canned varieties. But some dishes like smoked fish have a lot of salt, so keep that in mind before incorporating it into your diet.

4. Cut down on sugar

Sugar has no nutrients. It only makes you gain weight and those extra inches, and also weakens your immune system. It’s important that you stop having sweet, sugary foods immediately. Here’s how you can do it:7 Simple Strategies to Cut Sugar Out of Your Life — HabitHacks
Sugar has been proved to have several negative effects on health. You can gain excess fat, feel full without adding any…blog.lift.do

5. Eat less salt

Too much salt can increase your blood pressure and make you more vulnerable to heart disease or stroke. Even if you add less salt to your meals, processed food like bread, cookies, cereal, etc. have a lot of salt in them. Be mindful while consuming processed food and only take them in limited quantities.

6. Get active and maintain a healthy weight

It’s important to incorporate exercise into your daily routine so you can have a healthy metabolism and make it easier for your body to digest your food. Here are some tips how you can do it.8 Simple Tips to Make Exercise A Part of Your Daily Routine – HabitHacks
1. Find a workout you enjoy Not all exercises are for all body types. Some people enjoy Yoga and Pilates, while some…blog.lift.do

7. Try intermittent fasting

Intermittent fasting can be a great way to consume the required number of calories while only having healthy food. Here’s how you can adopt this habit in your life:A Step-by-Step Guide to Start Intermittent Fasting – HabitHacks
Intermittent Fasting is one of the most popular trends to emerge in the diet and health industry. It has powerful…blog.lift.do

8. Drink more water

Water is the most natural and healthiest way to detoxify your body and help it fight all the disease-causing miscreants. Here are some tips on how you can drink more water every day.8 Ways To Drink More Water – HabitHacks
1. Add more spice to your meals While a spicy meal is always delightful, an unexpected benefit is that it makes you…blog.lift.do

9. Avoid fast food

Junk food or fast food has very less nutrients. They are made from processed food that already has a high amount of salt. They are fattening, have no health benefits, and can cause indigestion, stomach ulcers, and various other diseases. Here are some ways you can cut junk food out of your life.7 Tips to Stop Having Fast Food – HabitHacks
Junk food is addictive. The delicious flavors and the savory texture make it almost impossible to stop munching on the…blog.lift.do

10. Get an accountability partner

Get help from people who have experience dealing with your problem of eating too much fast food. You can hire an accountability coach who will share helpful tips and tricks and also hold you accountable for your promise of eating less junk food.

You can also get a habit tracker and mark each day on the calendar where you successfully refrained from eating fast food. Gamifying your habits can be a helpful way to get the most of this challenge and adopting a healthier lifestyle.

Coach.me provides everything you need to improve performance in diet, fitness, productivity, and life. If you’re feeling inspired by what you’ve read, try adding these habits to your dashboard:

• Meditate: Try one or more of our guided meditation plans.
• Stand More, Sit Less @ Work: Lessen the health risks that come with a sedentary lifestyle by standing at your desk
• The Whole Foods Diet: Eat only recognizable foods and avoid processed ones.

Rader provides that knowledge and support by offering coaching services, her blog, and in the Coach.me community. Rader is a popular coach and author of the 25 in 25 December Fitness Challenge and 10 by 10 challenge. She shared her daily routine with us along with some of her best tips for habit change that works.

How do you start your own day? Do you have any daily rituals or routines?

I wake up and check my heart rate variability for three minutes, drink at least 8 ounces of water and then straight to exercise. Even if I have plans to exercise in the afternoon or evening, I still do something in the morning. Exercise is like brushing my teeth. I don’t feel like I can get on with my day without it. I feel more productive and energized. After, I meditate using calm.com or a mindfulness meditation for 2-20 minutes. Sometimes I’ll eat breakfast right away or I may wait until my husband wakes up, in which case I start on my most thought-intensive task for work. As many mornings as I can, I sit with my husband and have our bulletproof coffee before we go on with our day. It’s an important ritual that I miss when I can’t do it.

What are your eating habits like? Do you follow any specific program of eating?

I was a vegetarian for about 20 years. In January of 2014 I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Disease, adrenal fatigue, leaky gut and hypothalamic amenorrhea. It was a gut-puncher but really changed the way I eat and view my health. Being a gluten-free, soy-free, almost bean-free vegetarian was more difficult than I wanted it to be, so I started eating some meat again. I eat maybe one serving of grass-fed beef, organic chicken, turkey or wild fish a day, but my diet is largely plant-based. I eat 1-2 servings a day of a grain, typically rice, quinoa, corn or buckwheat—but most of my carbs are from vegetables. I don’t eat a lot of dairy—mainly Greek yogurt and kefir. I eat a 40-50% fat diet with about 20% protein and 30% carbs. This is VERY different than what I used to eat, but works well for me with my Hashimoto’s disease and the amount of activity I do. What we (including me!) used to think about fat isn’t true! I even had my cholesterol checked recently and my already stellar levels were even better after 10 months of eating this way.

There’s so much research being done and advice being published, how do you tell what’s real and what’s fake? How do you decide what’s relevant and what isn’t?

Being diagnosed with these conditions led me to research so much more, from a scientific journal perspective and not just what was popular. It has really opened my eyes how much misinformation is out there and won’t seem to go away. I enrolled in the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and will be an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach by June 2015. By the time this article is published I will also have my National Academy of Sports Medicine Fitness Nutrition Specialist Certification as well. I now look at the research that is being cited, how large the sample is and what the flaws or bias is in the study. Having been a vegetarian, I know that I was biased towards that diet so it was easy for me to find only the positives. I think that it happens in research as well. Looking at the whole picture is important. Vegans will always reference the China Study but there were flaws in that study. Paleos will advocate their studies but there are flaws there too. You can be a horrible Vegan eating a bunch of processed soy products and you can be a horrible Paleo eating a bunch of hormone-filled bacon. You can also be great at either with careful and conscious planning. Bioindividuality is what’s important. One person’s potion is another person’s poison. What works for me may not work for you. In the end, there is always going to be a commonality between any healthy nutrition plan that works: no or little refined white flour, no or little sugar and lots of vegetables. If you move toward that, you will succeed!

Is there any current thinking about diet and fitness that needs to be challenged?

That there is one sure-fire way of eating that works best for everyone. That to train for endurance or ultra-endurance events, you have to do an insane amount of hours (which is what I used to do).

Is there anything new you’ve started doing recently, or anything you’ve quit?

I started drinking a tapered-down version of bulletproof coffee with only half the oil and butter. This is new for my husband and I. It is delicious and satiating. I rarely drink coffee in cafes anymore because I prefer our version at home. I quit eating gluten this year due to Hashimoto’s Disease. It was hard for about three weeks, but now it’s fine except at restaurants and when visiting my family. That takes more planning. I can’t go without doing research first or just taking my own food.

How do you make adjustments to your workout? It’a hard to know what to do when you’re tired or having a bad workout.

I’ve had to make a LOT of adjustments to my training this year. I used to compete in ultra-endurance events up to 30 hours. This year was a wash while figuring out my thyroid but I plan to be back in business in 2015 now that things are steady. I don’t know if I’ll ever compete at that level again but I’ll still compete. My biggest realization is that I can stay fit with a lot less hours. I’m taking a more ancestral approach to training which gives me much more time to work on growing my business. I’m also a lot more flexible with my workout schedule and change it up based on my heart rate variability. This was a game changer for me. I bought a heart rate monitor and check my HRV every morning using the Sweetbeat App. Heart rate variability is different than heart rate. It is a measurement of your autonomic nervous system. If my HRV is low, I need to do a lower intensity workout. If it’s high, I can get to movin’!

Can you share some of the specific things you notice your top clients doing differently than the average client?

Consistency is key. People will make excuses for everything. Finding a trigger is important. That trigger can be waking up (like mine) or anything that you do before you move or exercise. I coach my clients to think of exercise as opportunities instead of workouts. The word workout insinuates putting on specific clothes, going to a gym or some other kind of setting, and getting sweaty. I have a hairdresser for a client who I gave five minute opportunities—exercises she can do in a skirt without getting sweaty. After two months of just 1-2 opportunities a day she sent me a text telling me her butt was a little higher, just from opportunities! Now that’s the kind of text I love to get

[Tweet “”Think of exercise as opportunities instead of workouts.” ~@marceyrader, How I Train”]

Coach.me provides everything you need to improve performance in diet, fitness, productivity, and life. Improve yoru fitness habits by adding these plans to your dashboard:

• 25 in 25 Holiday Exercise Challenge: Rader’s challenge for staying fit through the holidays, December 1-25. You can read about last year’s challenge: 25 in 25 Challenge
• 10 By 10 Exercise Challenge: getting just ten minutes of exercise before 10am can have a huge impact on your health and productivity. Beginner to advanced plan. It doesn’t matter what you do. Just do it!

When we surveyed 1,500 of you in December, we learned that your hopes for 2013 revolve around wealth, health and love. We’ve shared the results of the survey as well as some of the top habits on Lift that you can adopt to meet your resolutions.

Fun fact: 36% of the most active people on Lift were still going strong on their 2012 resolutions in December. 

For an extra boost in 2013, check out the new features on Lift, including reminders and the ability to follow friends. 

84% of people who stuck to the program lost weight and the average weight loss was 8.6 pounds. These numbers are very strong.

The diet is based on developing a few key habits: Slow-carb diet (no processed carbs or dairy), taking cold showers, eating 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up, exercising, and measuring your weight, body fat and total inches.

Below are the results and insights we found around what 4-Hour Body Diet habits led to success. We’re planning to do a lot more diet research and have included a section below about future directions. Even so, this initial trial was very informative.

The data we used comes from a large pool of Lift usage data (3,500 participants) and responses from a follow-up survey to Lift users in which 200 people participated.

Summary: 4-Hour Body Works

Not only did 84% of people who stuck to the diet for four weeks lose weight, 14% of people lost more than 15 pounds. That’s a lot of success for such a short amount of time.

Two habits correlated strongly with weight loss: eating a lot of eggs and eating veggies.

Two habits correlated with failure: heavy alcohol consumption and giving up on cold showers.

Defining Success: Lost Weight vs. Stasis

Across all our data, 16% of people didn’t lose weight. Let’s call this the baseline stasis rate. The margin of error on this survey is 5%.  We can use this to claim a correlation between sub-behaviors on this diet and success.

Eat eggs and veggies.

People who reported either eating two dozen eggs per week or “too many!” eggs had a stasis rate of 10% and 11%. That correlates with greater success on the diet (i.e. the data suggests you should be aggressively eating eggs for the purposes of this diet).

We saw a much bigger signal from people who weren’t including veggies in their daily meals. Their stasis rate was 25%. Your mom was right: eat your veggies.

Be consistent.

We asked a couple of questions that touched upon how consistently people stuck to their diet habits.

28% of people scrambled to find acceptable meals each day (presumably meaning that many meals weren’t strictly appropriate for the diet).

21% of Lifters maintained their regular, social drinking habits on the diet.  Tim recommends limiting alcohol and sticking to wine.

29% tried, but gave up on, cold showers.

You probably aren’t surprised that heavy drinking (25% stasis rate) didn’t help with weight loss. Haphazard eating also leaned that way (19% stasis). But what’s up with the cold showers?

Not taking cold showers and taking cold showers showed up evenly. It didn’t matter which one you chose as long as you stayed consistent.

But people who tried the cold showers and then gave up? They had a 29% stasis rate. This was the highest correlation of anything in the survey. Maybe it’s an indicator of weak wills or failure in other aspects of the diet. I’m one of them, although I managed to lose weight. I tried cold showers four times and then decided I didn’t have the heart to keep going.

Enjoy Cheat Day

I have good news: cheat day eating habits didn’t have any effect on success rate. It didn’t matter what you craved (61% of you crave sweets) or if you ate in excess (combining beer, cheese, frieds, and sugars).  So keep eating whatever you’d like on your day off.

However, I saw enough people who anecdotally reported massive weight gains on cheat day, that I’d recommend you to measure this for yourself.

Future Research

This was our first in-depth investigation into a goal and it’s associated habits.  There are a lot of ways we can strengthen our research, but I’m unapologetically excited to share these early results with you. As far as I can tell, this is already the most in-depth research into the Four Hour Body diet. Our plan is to do a lot more of this but better:

#1. How much weight will these people have kept off in a year or two years? We’re going to try to find out, although some of the best anecdotal stories were from people who’d been on the diet for several years.

#2. How does the 4-Hour Body compare to other diets? There’s definitely a bias in the Lift community toward high achievement. We can help control for that by running this sort of research across multiple diets.

#3. How does this diet affect other health markers like blood pressure and cholesterol levels? Muscle gain?

Thanks for reading and participating in the challenge. Even though the challenge is over, you can still sign up for Lift and search for 4HB.

Tony & the Lift Team

To that end, we’re extremely pleased to announce that Lift has closed a Series A round of funding led by Bijan Sabet at Spark Capital. Bijan joins Evan Williams, Jon and me on our board.

Several experts in building startups and habits also joined this round. These investors are SV Angel and Adam Ludwin from RRE along with personal achievement expert, Tony Robbins, author of Getting Things Done, David Allen, and Emmy winning director, Greg Yaitanes.

Also, earlier this year we extended our seed investment from Obvious to include three angels. We never officially announced them. They are Tim Ferriss, best selling author of 4-Hour Chef/Body/Work-Week, Narendra Rocherolle of Smile/Webshots, and Jeremy LaTrasse of MessageBus.

Obvious continues their partnership with us and invested in this round.

Runway

Since our launch two months ago, Lift has helped people toward 500,000 habits that span diet, fitness, happiness, career, relationships, and hobbies.

That’s a good start, but there’s so much more we want to do. We’ve had most of the summer to get to know Bijan and our new investors. What impressed us most was how committed they are to the mission and the belief that this sort of tool can have a major impact on the world. (Here’s Bijan’s thinking on the investment.)

The established support systems have uneven availability and validation. In the future, you shouldn’t be required to choose between fifty sets of advice, attend in-person meetings, pay $50 per coaching session, or rely on products whose merit is merely aggressive marketing.

The characteristics we’re looking for in Lift are to be universally available, to be proven and self-improving, and to work as well for hard goals like diet as we do for easy goals like drinking more water.

This investment gives us the runway to get there.

You and Your Goals

Having read this far, I’d encourage you to do two things:

#1. Browse our popular habits and if you see something related to one of your goals, download Lift for your iPhone.

#2. Follow @liftapp on Twitter. We’re increasingly putting out tips and research from the data that Lift users generate.

Have a wonderful day and an even better tomorrow,

Tony, Jon & the Lift Team