Is Athletic Greens Worth It? A Buyer’s Guide

On September 21, 2021September 18, 2021 By Audrey BertinIn Food/Diet, General Advice, Is __ Worth It?, Product ReviewsLeave a comment

What Is Athletic Greens?

Athletic greens is a nutritional supplement that aims to help people make sure they are getting enough vitamins and minerals in their diet every day.

It is designed to be consumed daily–in drink form–and contains 75 different ingredients. According to the official site, the ingredients come from whole foods (and therefore are not artificial) and are accompanied by probiotics and digestive enzymes to help your body process them.

What Are The Potential (Advertised) Benefits?

The combination of ingredients in the drink is designed to have four primary benefits:

Boosting energy
Supporting recovery from intense workouts
Improving immune system function
Promoting better digestion

Each ingredient in the mix helps to promote at least one of these goals and a few promote multiple.

The full list of ingredients and their proposed benefits can be found here and should be reviewed before you purchase so that you know exactly what you’re getting.

How Much Does It Cost?

There are six different products for sale:

One Time Purchases

Although Athletic Greens is primarily a subscription service, you can buy a single pack of the drink mix. There are two different options:

A pouch containing 30 servings of 12 grams each, which are not individually portioned –> $97 ($3.23/serving)
A box containing 30 travel packs, which are individually packaged servings –> $107 ($3.57/serving)

If you don’t want just one pouch and would prefer to buy Athletic Greens on a recurring schedule via subscription, there are two options. A single subscription, where you get one set of 30 servings per month, and a double subscription where you get two sets of 30 servings (60 total).

Single Subscriptions

Like the single purchase, there are two options for single subscription:

A monthly pouch containing 30 servings of 12 grams each, which are not individually portioned –> $77/month ($2.57/serving)
A monthly travel pack box of 30 individually-packaged servings –> $87/month ($2.90/serving)

In addition, both of the subscriptions come with a bonus. Option 1 comes with a welcome kit with your first delivery, including a ceramic jar to hold powder and a shaker bottle to mix your drinks. Option 2 also has a welcome kit, but it only includes the shaker bottle.

Double Subscriptions

The double subscriptions are identical to the single ones except that they come with twice as many servings. Both come with the same bonus welcome kits as before. For the double subscriptions, it would cost:

Two monthly bulk pouches with 60 servings of 12 grams total –> $147/month ($2.12/serving)
Two monthly travel boxes with 60 servings total between them –> $167/month ($2.78/serving)

The Good

Listing Ingredients

If you are a customer in the United States, there is no regulation or oversight of quality for products sold in the country that are under the classification of health supplement. This means that anyone wanting to make a quick buck in the US market can make a product out of a bunch of random ingredients, claim it has a bunch of health benefits, and sell their product to many unsuspecting customers–without anyone checking if it actually does what’s advertised, or even if the ingredients are safe for human consumption. If buying in the US, you never want to trust a supplement that does not list exactly what it contains, because that is a likely indicator that whoever created it is probably not all that invested in the science.

(Supplements aren’t regulated in the US, so transparency about ingredients is really important!)

Anyone who really cares about science will actively promote that fact and be transparent about it, because that attracts loyal customers. This is especially important in the US, but applies to customers around the world as well. Clearly visible scientific content and transparency on a product website is great to see.

Athletic Greens does appear to be one of those brands invested in the science side of things. They list every single ingredient on their site, give a short description, and categorize them all by which benefits they give.

However, the one area where they fall short from top quality in this respect is that their ingredients page does not link out to scientific articles backing their claims. Although some of the ingredients are widely known to be scientifically-backed, not all of them are, and linking back to direct evidence would make their claims a lot more trustworthy.

Additional Safety / Nutrition Checks

Athletic Greens has also gone through an additional process to ensure that they are working with quality ingredients: getting NSF certified. NSF–The National Sanitation Foundation–is a global organization that conducts independent reviews of products to ensure that their ingredients and products meet certain standards for health, safety, and quality.

The NSF review process is pretty extensive and involves annual checks of manufacturing plants to ensure that they continue to operate at the same high standard over time. They ensure that no illegal substances are included in the final product and check that unsafe contaminants–such as heavy metals–do not get mixed in during production.

If a company goes through NSF review–as Athletic Greens has done–this is a great sign that they care about producing a quality product and that they are not cutting corners in their manufacturing process.

Digestion Improvements

Many reviews online indicate a positive impact on digestion, with Athletic Greens promoting more regular movement and reducing issues such as constipation.

Other Potential Benefits

Improved hydration
Energy boosting, particularly if you drink it early in the morning to get fluids going
Tits well into a lot of restrictive diets including vegan and paleo
Gluten free
Sugar free
Helps fit in vitamins at times when you can’t fully control your diet (such as on vacation/travel or during times where you don’t have enough time to cook for yourself at every meal)
Does not include any of the most common allergens

The Not So Good

Imbalanced Ingredients

The ingredients the mix are not balanced evenly. For some ingredients, the quantity in one serving of Athletic Greens is 100% or more of the daily recommended value (DV), while for others it’s as low as only a couple percent. That’s almost as useless as just leaving the ingredient out altogether and does feel like a little bit of false advertising.

Some of the vitamins and minerals that tend to be favored in the mix are Vitamin C (700% DV), Vitamin B12 (467% DV), Vitamin E (334% DV), Thiamin (200% DV), Vitamin B6 (150% DV), Riboflavin (118% DV), Biotin (110% DV), Niacin, Folate, and Zinc (All 100% DV).

Others are advertised to be included, but have such low amounts that they’re not really useful. These include Calcium (12% DV), Copper (10% DV), Potassium (9% DV), Magnesium (7% DV), and Phosphorous (6% DV). And some things that are necessary for optimal health (such as iodine, choline, and molybdenum) are left out completely.

(The supplement facts table–like a nutritional facts label, but with no oversight or verification–for Athletic Greens)

Proprietary Formula

There is no official breakdown of how many of each of the ingredients in the 75 item list actually goes into a daily serving (we just get an estimate of different vitamin and mineral percentages). This is because Athletic Greens uses a proprietary blend that is kept secret.

Usually the argument behind proprietary blends is to keep market share and prevent others from copying your recipe–and therefore not buying your brand–but the sheer number of ingredients and lack of availability via easy channels means that pretty much no average consumer could ever copy the recipe. There is not really too much of a valid reason for keeping the blend proprietary–besides potentially preventing other companies from trying to copy the recipe and take customers away from Athletic Greens–and it comes at a big cost of transparency.

Not All Ingredients Are Scientifically Backed

While some ingredients in the Athletic Greens formula have been scientifically shown to be beneficial (see dandelion root, ginger, green tea) others have not. For example, licorice root has not yet been shown to have any real health benefits and in some cases can actually lead to dangerous side effects.

Bad Taste

Many customers of Athletic Greens online have commented on the unpleasant taste of the mix. The best way to build sustainable habits is to set them up in a way that is enjoyable. If a daily activity is unpleasant, it is going to be very difficult to stick with long term. The only way to really keep up with a healthy habit long term–and actually go far enough to receive the benefits from that activity–is to make it enjoyable. If you hate the taste, Athletic Greens is probably not going to work for you in the long term.

Price $$$

Perhaps the most significant downside is the price. Athletic Greens costs nearly $3/day, which can start to add up really quickly. A single monthly subscription of the bulk pouch for an entire year would run nearly $1000 (and even more if you got the travel packs). You could buy a year long membership to a nice gym with that, which––for the average person––would probably be a much more useful way to spend that much money.

Athletic Greens is one of the most expensive greens powders out there, so it’s not hard to find something comparable that costs you less. You could also try the alternative option of just buying a multivitamin and fiber supplement and you’d get the same benefit without all the extra potentially non-useful ingredients.

Who Is It Right For?

If you meet all of the following conditions, then Athletic Greens might be a good option for you:

You have a lot of disposable income and can afford to drop $80 or more per month on supplements.
You do not dislike the taste of the mix (I’d recommend doing a trial period to test this out–they have a 60 day money back guarantee).
You do not already get your daily quantity of vitamins and minerals from your diet. If you do, it would be a waste of money to consume more, because your body won’t be able to absorb much else.
You travel a lot or have some other barrier that prevents you from being able to prep your own food regularly, limiting your ability to get all your vitamins and minerals from your normal diet. Note that if you don’t have this limitation, it’s probably a better option in the long run to learn how to just cook healthy and nutritionally dense meals for yourself, rather than relying on a powder that is not 100% scientifically backed.
You prioritize convenience over all else. Another way to get the same benefits as athletic greens would be through a combination of multivitamins and fiber supplements. That would likely be less expensive, but would take more steps.

(Daily supplements can be a great option for those always on the move.)

Who Is It Wrong For?

If you meet any of the following conditions, Athletic Greens probably isn’t right for you:

You don’t have a lot of disposable income.
- What should you do, then?: try to purchase inexpensive, healthy fruits, vegetables and grains at the store to help promote a balanced and nutritious diet on a low budget (See the r/eatcheapandhealthy discussion board on Reddit for some great tips).
You already eat a balanced diet.
- What should you do, then? Nothing. You probably don’t need a supplement. Just focus on getting good exercise in and you should be fine!
You don’t like the taste.
- What should you do, then? Options include: 1. Find another greens powder you like better. 2. Take a multivitamin or pill combo that would not have as much of a taste. 3. Attempt to get your vitamins and minerals through your normal food, which tends to taste a lot more pleasant if you take the time to learn how to make enjoyable recipes.
You have the time and flexibility to learn how to plan and cook a healthy, balanced diet for yourself (or at least the time to pick out some multivitamins that might work better for you) and don’t need an instant solution to your lack of vitamins/minerals.
- What should you do, then? Do some research into healthy eating. A good place to get some inspiration is r/healthyfood on Reddit, but there are thousands of resources easily accessible via search engine.

(If cooking is an option for you, that can be a healthier, cheaper, and more sustainable long term strategy.)

Takeaways

Athletic Greens is a decent greens powder–and can help meet daily vitamin and mineral needs–but it’s not likely to be the best option for most customers. The high price point and lack of balanced ingredients mean it is only best for those with a lot of money and not a lot of time. Anyone not in that category could likely do better with an alternative strategy for nutritional balance–whether that be another, less expensive, product or an entirely different health strategy altogether.

My Favorite Cheap, Easy, and Healthy Lunch and Dinner Meals Under $3

On August 17, 2021August 21, 2022 By Audrey BertinIn Food/Diet, RecipesLeave a comment

Cooking at home is one of my favorite ways to stay healthy, but it can be a little overwhelming sometimes. Lots of recipes take hours to make or require expensive ingredients you’ll probably never use again. And those that are quick often tend to be somewhat unhealthy (e.g. mac and cheese or a hot dog). It can really feel like there’s no winning.

To help fight off this feeling, I’m starting a recipe series where I’ll share some of my favorite meals that don’t fall prey to those same issues and occasionally a few that fall closer to the less healthy category. The goal of diversity in recipe suggestion is to promote balanced eating, something I strive for daily and talk about more in depth in my diet philosophy introduction here. I recommend checking that out for background on my views on food.

For this installation, I’m sharing a few of my favorite non-breakfast foods that can be made for cheap and that consist of relatively healthy ingredients.

1. Tofu Spring Rolls

Spring rolls are a classic Vietnamese staple. They’re simple, delicious, packed with vegetables, and infinitely customizable, which makes them almost a perfect food.

The main things you’ll need for tofu spring rolls are:

Rolls

1 container (about 16 oz) of firm or extra firm tofu
2 cups cooked vermicelli noodles (I like to use brown rice-based ones if I can find them, but if you can’t, white is okay too)
Around 12 rice paper wraps
Fillings of choice (recommended options include cabbage, shredded carrots, mint, and cilantro but you can pick and choose based on whatever you have on hand that sounds good).

Peanut Sauce

1/4 cup peanut butter (try to find the kind with no added sugar and just peanuts/salt if you can)
2-3 tablespoons soy sauce, based on salt desires
1-2 tablespoons of chili garlic sauce (this stuff) depending on spice desires
Approx 1 teaspoon of rice wine vinegar
Juice of a small lime (or half a large one)
Some water for thinning

The recipe is super simple:

Drain and press your tofu about 30 minutes before you’re ready to get started.
Once your tofu is drained, you’re ready to go! Take everything that goes into the peanut sauce and mix it all together in a small bowl. Play with the proportions of ingredients until you find something you like. The amounts I provided are guidelines but peanut sauce is often up to personal taste. The sauce is usually pretty chunky before you add water, so once you’ve mixed everything else together, add water until it gets smooth and relatively fluid.
Chop up your tofu into small chunks (I usually go for rectangular chunks rather than squares because they fit better into the wrappers) and toss into a hot pan over canola oil. Cook until these look brown and no longer wet.
Cook your vermicelli noodles. While those are going, you can prep whatever veggies you’re putting in (shred your carrots/cabbage, etc).
When the noodles are done, you’re ready to fill. Get a bowl of warm to hot water and get your rice paper. Make each roll by taking a sheet of paper, dunking it in the water until it’s soft, pulling it out, and filling with tofu, veggies, and vermicelli. When done, wrap the roll up however you please. I typically go for a burrito style where I roll up the ends first, then go lengthwise.
Repeat until you run out of fillings.
To eat, dip the rolls in peanut sauce.

To make this even better, I also recommend adding a step of marinating your tofu (for about 30 minutes) after you press it. I left it out to keep within the time constraints, but it does add a lot of flavor. I typically use soy sauce, chili garlic sauce and sesame oil as my main marinade ingredients but this is up to you.

2. Lentil Tacos

Lentils are one of my recent food discoveries and a new favorite. They’re hearty and packed with all kinds of nutrients. And as someone who doesn’t love the texture of many other vegetable protein sources–such as beans-these are a lot more palatable.

You can swap out ground beef in a taco recipe with red lentils to boost the healthiness of the meal. Although it doesn’t taste exactly the same, I think it’s a pretty good substitute and has a lot of great flavor in its own right.

Here’s what you need to make lentil tacos:

3/4 cup dry red lentils
A little under 2 cups of broth (chicken or vegetable, up to you)
A little under 1 cup of your favorite salsa
Some sort of oil. I like using olive oil but it does have a strong taste, so something more neutral could work better for you.
1 small yellow or white onion, diced
1 clove minced garlic or about heaping teaspoon of the jarred kind
Spices! Salt, cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, paprika, and oregano. They also make packets of pre-made taco seasoning at the store but it’s a lot less customizable to your preferences.
Tortillas (either flour or corn)
Whatever taco toppings you typically enjoy (chopped tomato, lettuce, cheese, sour cream, etc)

When you’ve got everything together, follow these steps:

Rinse your lentils in water.
Chop up your onions and garlic.
Get your seasoning ready. Here, I can’t recommend exact amounts to you because it’s all up to preference. I tend to put the most cumin, though, followed by chili powder and garlic powder, with a little less paprika and oregano and the least salt. Note that you might not even need salt if you’re using a high sodium broth. This is up to you. It’s usually a couple teaspoons total that I end up with across all the spices.
Heat up some oil on medium heat (a tablespoon or so) and cook the onion and garlic until it starts to brown and get soft. Note that you’ll want a pretty big pan for this since everything will be getting added together.
Add your lentils and your seasoning mix and stir for about 30-60 seconds to get it all mixed together.
Add your broth and heat it up to boiling. After the mixture has boiled, drop the heat to low and cover. The lentils should finish cooking in close to 30 minutes or a little sooner.
When the lentils are tender, stir in your salsa and you’re ready to go! Serve the lentil mixture in tortillas of your choice, with whatever toppings you like!

3. Asian Chickpea Power Bowls

Chickpeas are another new staple in my diet. Super healthy and really tasty when prepared a lot of different ways. One of my favorite ways to use them recently has been to make power bowls: healthy and hearty whole foods mixed together and topped with a sauce.

My favorite right now is an asian style bowl that I made up. It actually shares a common ingredient with the first recipe on today’s list: the peanut sauce.

These bowls are really quick, tasty, and a great way to boost your energy. Here’s what you need to assemble the bowl:

2 medium sweet potatoes
1 can of chickpeas (16 oz)
Olive oil
Salt, pepper, garlic powder to taste
About 5-6 handfuls of kale, chopped
1 teaspoon minced garlic or a heaping teaspoon of the kind from a jar
About 1/2 to 1 tsp of soy sauce, based on salt desires
Dash of sesame oil (optional)
Powdered or grated fresh ginger (optional)

Plus, the ingredients for peanut sauce:

1/4 cup peanut butter (try to find the kind with no added sugar and just peanuts/salt if you can)
2-3 tablespoons soy sauce, based on salt desires
1-2 tablespoons of chili garlic sauce (this stuff) depending on spice desires
Approx 1 teaspoon of rice wine vinegar
Juice of a small lime (or half a large one)
Some water for thinning

And here are the steps for assembly:

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.
Open and drain the chickpeas, then give them a quick rinse.
Chop up the sweet potatoes into small chunks (about 1/2 x 1/2 inch or so, but this can be flexible).
Rinse and chop your kale.
Get out a baking sheet and put a piece of aluminum foil on it. Take the chickpeas and sweet potato chunks and put them on the sheet. Try to keep them from mixing with each other.
Pour a little olive oil over the chickpeas and sweet potato and toss to cover. Then add salt, pepper, and garlic powder based on how much potency you want. Honestly, I have never measured this myself and just eyeball it until it looks good. Just be careful not to put a ton of salt. Mix again.
Pop the baking dish into the oven. It should take about 20-30 minutes to be ready, based on how small your sweet potato chunks were.
Mix up your peanut sauce. Combine everything except the water. You can play with the proportions until you get a taste you’re happy with. Then, add water to thin the sauce until it is relatively fluid.
Put a dash of olive oil in a skillet on medium heat. When warm, add your chopped kale and cook down until it’s wilted. Add your soy sauce and stir, then add your garlic. If you have some ginger and sesame oil on hand, I recommend adding a dash of both to the mixture as well. Let it all cook for a minute or two and you’re ready to go.
When the oven stuff is done, pull it out and start plating. I usually keep each ingredient separate in my bowl. 1/3 for chickpeas, 1/3 for sweet potato, 1/3 for kale, then put peanut sauce on top. But if you’re feeling like it, you can just mix it all together, too!

And that’s it! Those are three of my top recipes right now for quick, cheap, and simple meals that ensure you’re getting a balanced diet, but not in exchange for flavor.

If you try any of them, let me know your thoughts and tag me (@audreysathleticadventures) on Instagram with any pictures you share!

How Do I Start Eating Healthy? Prioritize Balance, Not Extremes

On August 10, 2021August 20, 2021 By Audrey BertinIn Food/Diet, General Advice, Personal JourneyLeave a comment

One of the things I find so frustrating about a lot of lifestyle and health influencers–and health culture in general–is the focus on extreme diets or non-science-backed cleanses.

Consider the Keto diet–a high fat, low carb diet plan that attempts to put the body into a fat-burning state. It’s everywhere. The ice cream section at your local grocery store probably has a subsection of Keto. There are hundreds of books explaining the diet and providing recipes. And if you google “I tried keto”, you’ll get seemingly endless results of people trying the diet and promoting their results. But it can actually be really unhealthy to the average person if done long term.

Keto tends to be heavy in animal products, like steak, which aren’t great if consumed in large quantities.

Keto can lead to kidney stones. Eating too many animal products (often necessary for high fat/high protein/low carb) can produce acid and lead to increased calcium output, which increases kidney stone risk.
It can be really difficult to get enough fiber, since fibrous foods often tend to be higher carb (think whole grains and fruits). Fiber is really important for proper bowel health, and not having enough of it can lead to blockages and other unpleasant problems.
Keto may lead to decreased bone mineral density, which means weaker and more brittle bones.
Animal products tend to be unhealthy in large quantities due to their high amount of saturated fat. Higher carb, vegetable-forward diets, rather than animal-focused ones, are much better for long term health.

Keto can be a good option for people with certain health conditions, but it’s not really that good of an option for the average person.

It’s easy to see all these flashy diets and think they’re the answer to all of your weight loss problems, but in many cases, they’re not. In some cases that’s because they’re genuinely unhealthy, but often, it’s because they’re unsustainable.

The best diet for you is one that you can stick with!

The problem with a lot of restrictive diets that are promoted today is that they’re nearly impossible to actually stick with if you’ve come from a totally different background.

If you’re a big animal product consumer and you suddenly decide that being vegan is the way to finally lose those extra pounds, if you cut out all the meat and dairy cold turkey, it’s not going to go well at all.

The human body does not do well with extreme and sudden change. You’d probably experience really unpleasant gut problems, have a serious difficulty finding enough recipes you like to suddenly replace all your old meals, and find yourself unsatisfied with the new tastes. After enough frustration, you’d just abandon ship.

That’s not healthy at all! It’s the same with extremely calorie restrictive diets. If your body needs 1800 Calories per day, but the internet tells you to go for only 1200 so that you can burn a bunch of fat, you’re going to be starving. You’ll be constantly hungry, feel weak and tired, and probably will cave and eat a snack, meaning the diet got you nowhere. Plus, you’re more likely to be stressed trying to meet your calorie goals.

This is not a meal! But it can sometimes feel like all you’ve got if you’re restricting calories.

If you’ve been frustrated by challenges like this, you’re not alone! I’ve experimented with calorie restriction and sudden diet changes, and it’s never worked out well. I was left with all of the problems I just described and felt miserable. But over time, and with a lot of experimentation, I have finally started to find a solution that works: balance.

There is no universal best diet. The best diet for you is whichever one that you can stick with–so long as it promotes some balance and stays away from extreme and unhealthy habits.

How does this balance look in your day to day life? No two individuals will have identical plans, but my diet strategy looks as follows.

I try to incorporate both healthy behaviors and less healthy behaviors, but weigh them in favor of the former. The occasional unhealthy activity helps me feel satisfied and fulfilled, without being so often as to negatively impact my health in any non-miniscule way.

On the healthy side of things, I try to use the following guidelines in my week:

Cook my own food most of the time, so that I can control what’s going into it, rather than rely on guessing how healthy something is.
When cooking, I try to make plant-forward meals and limit my consumption of animal products, except the occasional item low in saturated fat (such as turkey breast or low fat greek yogurt) or a small dash of cream in my coffee. I don’t commit to full on veganism or any other restrictive diet, but just try to make informed choices to ensure that I get enough vitamins and minerals, enough protein, and enough fiber, without consuming too many unhealthy fats.
I try to minimize added sugar in both the food I prepare and the food I purchase. If I make banana chocolate chip muffins, for example, I’ll rely only on the sugar from the chocolate chips and bananas, and skip any additional sugar the recipe calls for. And if I get a sweetened drink from a shop, I’ll go for a less sugary option (such as 25% sugar at a bubble tea place).
I try to buy in-season products from the local farmers’ market, which tend to be more nutritious than out-of-season supermarket items and also lower in dangerous pesticides.

However, I also allow some flexibility in my week and don’t only eat health foods 24/7. This has a few benefits for me:

It helps me ensure I can fit in social activities where food is involved without being stressed about what I’m consuming.
It reduces the overall amount of brainpower and emotional energy I spend on food because I get an opportunity to eat unrestricted and don’t need to feel bad about my choices.
I get to enjoy a delicious treat every once in a while, which brings me joy!

A little more specifically, I try to allow the following:

A dessert or fun sweetened drink a couple of times in a week (typically limit this to about two, but it can be flexible). I try to choose healthier options, like frozen yogurt over ice cream, but if I’m feeling like ice cream no one’s stopping me!
I will go out to a restaurant 1-2 times per week, but typically just at dinner (this could be lunch, too, if you prefer that–I just like using dinner as a social time). When I’m there, I can get whatever I want! Sometimes I’ll eat a burger and fries, sometimes a healthier dish. It depends on how I’m feeling, but whatever I’m feeling is fair game.
If I’m going on vacation for a few days, I drop any self-imposed restrictions on eating. One of the most amazing parts of travel for me is being able to taste new and delicious foods, and limiting myself to only plant-based foods means I miss out on a lot of options–plus it can be a lot more stressful trying to find really healthy restaurants, especially if traveling with friends and family who don’t share the same health focus in their dining. On vacation, I’ll still eat healthy sometimes, but I also allow myself to try whatever looks good.
I don’t work off of a calorie restriction. Calorie counting is very popular in the weight loss community, but I’ve personally found it to be way too time consuming and also detrimental to my mental health by forcing me to spend all my free time thinking about food. Rather than restricting myself to a set amount of food per day, I work on eating primarily healthy and nutritious foods (which, it turns out, tend to be lower in calories) and stop when I start to feel full. If I eat a ton one day, that’s okay. Rather than stress about failing a daily goal, I can think about the fact that I enjoyed my food and maybe later in the week I’ll try to make healthier choices to balance that out.

I probably eat something like this bad boy once per week! It tastes great, but in moderation is not all that bad for my health!

Getting yourself to a healthy diet is not easy. A lot of the steps I’ve achieved by now are the result of years of hard work, and it took a lot of frustration and mistakes to get here. If you’re struggling, the most important thing is to not beat yourself up. Physical health is incredibly important, but so is your mental health. It’s not worth throwing one down the drain to get the other.

If you take one thing away from this article, have it be the following: don’t obsess over perfection in your diet. That’s a recipe for stress, depression, and poor results. If you want to be healthy, work on finding a diet you can stick with, one you enjoy, and one that prioritizes balance and flexibility. It will take a while to get there, but you can do it if you take it slow, plan carefully, and forgive yourself when you struggle.

You can do it!

How Do I Start Eating Healthy? – Prioritize Balance, Not Extremes

On August 10, 2021August 9, 2021 By Audrey BertinIn Food/Diet, General Advice, Personal JourneyLeave a comment

Keto can lead to kidney stones. Eating too many animal products (often necessary for high fat/high protein/low carb) can produce acid and lead to increased calcium output, which increases kidney stone risk.
It can be really difficult to get enough fiber, since fibrous foods often tend to be higher carb (think whole grains and fruits). Fiber is really important for proper bowel health, and not having enough of it can lead to blockages and other unpleasant problems.
Keto may lead to decreased bone mineral density, which means weaker and more brittle bones.
Animal products tend to be unhealthy in large quantities due to their high amount of saturated fat. Higher carb, vegetable-forward diets, rather than animal-focused ones, are much better for long term health.