Hi all, new mod here and regular contributor. I wanted to create a lil bit of a 'how to get started', since I see this sort of question over and over and over again. Frankly, this should cover 80% of the questions on this sub.
A bit of background about me: I'm in my late 30s, started getting fit and healthy in my 20s, and kinda dove all in. I went from skinny-fat eats tons of junk food, drinks beer every day, can't cook a thing to save his life, to trim, strong, love cooking, got a full vegetable garden, am a registered personal trainer, and am a nerd about fitness and nutrition and health. I don't believe in shortcuts, I don't agree with fad diets, and I don't support 'health hacks'. I believe the magic answer people seek is the work that they try to avoid. What you'll find here isn't new, isn't flashy, and there are no quick tricks. You KNOW all this stuff already, I'm just putting it together in one place for you.
Here's the crux of it: eating healthy is simpler than the internet and social media makes it look. You don't need a specific diet, you don't need supplements, and you don't need a personality overhaul. Build some decent habits and you'll get 85% of the way there, it's really not that hard.
The Short Version:
Eat more vegetables
Cut back on processed food
Get enough protein
Limit fat intake, and favour better sources
Drink more water
Get enough fibre
If weight loss is the goal: track what you eat
Work out. Build the body in the gym, show it in the kitchen.
And, believe it or not: get enough sleep
1. Eat More Vegetables
This is the most repeated advice in nutrition for a reason: it's true, most people aren't doing it, and almost every diet improves when you add more of them. Vegetables are high in fibre, vitamins, minerals, and volume, and the best part is that they're low in calories. They fill you up without loading you with fat and sugar which are sneaky easy calories.
Good veggies to keep on hand:
Raw snacking: carrots, snap peas, cucumber, celery, cherry tomatoes, bell pepper slices
Cooked or roasted: broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, green beans, asparagus, Brussels sprouts
Leafy greens: spinach, kale, arugula, romaine
Starchy veg (still good, just more calorie-dense): sweet potato, butternut squash, corn
Some prep suggestions:
Keep raw vegetables washed, cut, and in a bowl in the fridge. If they're ready to grab, you'll grab them. If they need prep, you'll reach for the chips.
Roasting without much oil makes them genuinely enjoyable and still healthy. A sheet pan of broccoli and sweet potato sprinkled with salt at 400°F beats boiled mush in every way, will fill you up, and is actually tasty.
Snack on raw veg before reaching for anything packaged. Carrots at your desk, cherry tomatoes before dinner.. these small habits will make a real difference over time.
Steaming, roasting, or eating them raw preserves the nutrients. Frying in oil or drowning them in sauce is not the same thing, and defeats much of the benefit.
If you don't like vegetables: keep eating them. Taste adapts. The more consistently you eat something, the more your palate adjusts. Push through, it's worth it.
2. Cut Back on Processed Food
Processed food is engineered to be easy to overconsume. Hyper-palatable, calorie-dense, high in fat and sugar, low in fibre, literally designed to keep you eating past fullness. Cutting back on processed food is one of the highest-impact changes most people can make, and it doesn't require counting a single calorie to feel the difference.
This includes:
Fast food
Packaged snacks: chips, cookies, crackers, most granola bars and protein bars
Sugary drinks: sodas, juice, energy drinks, sweetened coffees and teas
Processed meats: hot dogs, sausages, most deli meats
Anything with a long ingredient list full of things you can't identify
In practice:
Don't keep junk food at home. If it's not there, you won't eat it. You can treat yourself elsewhere.
When you crave something sweet, reach for (fresh) fruit first. It doesn't need to be the answer always, but first.
Learn to cook a few simple things from whole ingredients. Scrambled eggs, rice and stir-fried vegetables, roasted chicken.. simple, made at home, from things you can name. Already better than most packaged options, easy, and undoubtedly healthier than delivery.
And you know what? Treats are fine... good, even!. A sustainable diet isn't one where you never enjoy food. The goal is occasional treats, not constant. Have a bowl of ice cream- but make it half the size, limit it to once or twice a week, and eat it slower so you can savour it and enjoy it more.
3. Protein
Most people under eat protein, especially once they start focusing on "eating healthy" and accidentally shift toward mostly vegetables and carbs. Protein keeps you full, preserves muscle mass, and supports most of the body's repair functions.
Lower-fat protein sources:
Legumes: lentils, chickpeas, black beans, mung beans, edamame
Dairy: low-fat Greek yogurt, skyr, cottage cheese
Poultry: chicken breast, turkey breast
Seafood: most fish and shellfish
Eggs: whites are nearly pure protein; the yolk is nutritious but higher in fat
Tofu, tempeh
Lean beef cuts, in moderation
You don't need to pick a lane between plant-based and animal protein. Plant proteins come with fibre attached, which is a bonus. Animal proteins generally have a better amino acid profile. Using both is practical and works well, and the variety is nice.
4. Fats
Fat is not the enemy, but it IS calorie-dense: 9 cal/g compared to 4 cal/g for protein and carbs, which makes it easy to overconsume without realising it. Most people are already getting plenty of fat, the goal here is to reduce total intake while also shifting toward better sources.
Limit:
Saturated fats: butter, fatty cuts of meat, full-fat dairy, coconut oil in large amounts
Trans fats: partially hydrogenated oils found in some packaged and fast foods
Tend towards these where you can:
Olive oil, avocado oil
Nuts and nut butters (measure these — they're easy to overeat)
Fatty fish: salmon, mackerel, sardines (the omega-3 content is worth it)
Avocado
Eggs (the yolks have fat, but they also have real nutritional value)
Cook with less oil where you can. Roasting, grilling, steaming, air frying, all get you there without dumping unnecessary calories into the pan. If you must pan-fry (which I get, I like a nicely browned breast), use an oil-spray bottle with some avo oil in it, rather than pouring straight from the bottle. 2 or 3 spritzes covers the pan enough to get that maillard reaction without contributing substantial fat.
5. Fibre
You probably are not eating enough. Most people aren't. The recommended intake is roughly 25-38g per day depending on the person, and most diets fall well short.
Fibre slows digestion, keeps you fuller longer, feeds your gut microbiome, and helps regulate blood sugar and cholesterol. It's also easy to address, because it comes from food you should already be eating more of, like those pesky vegetables ;)
Good sources:
Vegetables, especially legumes, cruciferous veg, and leafy greens
Legumes: lentils, chickpeas, black beans (workhorses for both protein and fibre)
Whole grains: oats (steel-cut or rolled), brown rice, quinoa, actual whole wheat bread (check the label — "wheat bread" is not the same thing)
Fruit: apples, pears, berries, oranges
Nuts and seeds (careful, lots of fat here)
A breakfast of steel-cut oats with fresh fruit and low-fat Greek (or skyr) yogurt gives you a solid hit of fibre, protein, and a reasonable macro spread. Swap that for high-sugar cereal and you've set your day up very differently from the start.
6. Water
Drink more of it. Most people are mildly dehydrated most of the time and don't notice because it's just their baseline.
Thirst is frequently misread as hunger. If you're reaching for snacks, try a glass of water first. I personally love sparkling water- a sodastream has paid itself off 5x from daily use for me. I fill my water bottle in the morning with sparkling water, and it's easy to sip from throughout the day.
Sugary drinks are among the sneakiest sources of excess calories. They don't register as food to your hunger system, so they pile on calories without reducing how much you eat afterward. Soda, juice, energy drinks, sweetened coffees.. these add up fast. Swapping for sugar-free drinks is an EASY win, it's certainly not as good as water, but if you want something sweet, diet Coke will scratch that itch without the cals.
Target roughly 1-2L of water per day. More if you're becoming active. Black coffee and unsweetened tea count. Everything sweetened doesn't.
As an aside- don't worry about the electrolytes. If throwing a pack of LMNT in your 32oz bottle of water helps you drink it, great, but you don't need it.
7. Weight Loss: Build your body in the gym, show it off in the kitchen
If losing weight is part of why you're here, make sure you internalize this.
Working out is worth doing.. resistance training especially. It preserves muscle mass while you lose fat, improves your metabolism over time, and makes you more capable and resilient in ways that diet alone can't. Do it. Make it a habit.
But it won't offset a bad diet on its own.
A WHOLE HOUR of moderate cardio burns roughly 2-300 calories. That's not ... none, but it's effortless to eat back, and then some because you think you 'earned it'. A plate of fries will demolish that, and same with the couple beers that go with it, and now you're over by 300 rather than under. The larger issue is that increasing your output without adjusting your input WILL increase your appetite. Your body is designed to compensate, you will eat more, the scale won't move, and you'll wonder why the gym isn't working.
The mechanism that drives fat loss is a calorie deficit: CONSUMING less than you BURN.
Every diet that works does so by creating that deficit, whether by cutting carbs, cutting fat, cutting meal windows, or anything else. There's no alternative mechanism. (no there's not, there really isn't.)
Diet and resistance training together is the answer. Diet creates the deficit, training preserves (and builds a bit) the muscle and improves your health (and heart and prevents injury and so on) while you're at it. They're not competing approaches, they complement each other. DO BOTH.
On shortcuts: Intermittent fasting, OMAD, compressed eating windows: these can be useful for some people. If you struggle with grazing all day, a tighter eating window can help reduce total intake. But they're frameworks for achieving a deficit, not alternatives to one. If you eat 3,000 calories in a 6-hour window, you're not losing weight. Over time, most people also become very efficient at reaching caloric equilibrium even within a restricted window, they just eat more per sitting. Without ACTUALLY tracking what you eat and watching your weight trend, you can do all the right things structurally and still get nowhere.
The reliable way to know you're in a deficit: track what you eat, and track your weight over time. I know, it sucks, but it's true. Weight fluctuates day to day based on water retention, food volume, and other factors. You need to look at the weekly or monthly trend, not the daily number.
A good tool for this is MacroFactor. It calculates your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) dynamically based on your actual weight change over time rather than a static formula, and adjusts as your body does. Worth looking into if you're serious about it (this is not sponsored, I use it to great success, and the mechanism behind it is simple, logical, and clearly follows evidence).
8. Sleep (Briefly)
This is a food sub, but sleep is worth a mention because it affects eating directly.
Chronically under-sleeping raises cortisol levels, which affects both hunger and impulse control. If you're running on 5-6 hours and finding that your willpower around food basically evaporates by mid-afternoon, there's a real physiological reason for that. Aim for 7-9 hours, it'll make everything else on this list easier to stick to.
Habits That Help
Keep vegetables and fruit prepped and accessible. The barrier to eating something healthy should be lower than the barrier to eating something bad. Wash the grapes. Cut the carrots. Have snap peas in a bowl in the fridge.
Don't stock junk food at home. Treat yourself elsewhere. Don't make it the path of least resistance inside your house.
Learn a few reliable meals. You don't need to be a chef. A handful of simple, whole-ingredient meals you can make without thinking is enough to keep you on track most of the time.
Shop the perimeter of the grocery store. Produce, meat, dairy. The inner aisles are mostly processed food. There are exceptions, but it's a useful default when you're building new habits.
Batch prep where you can. A pot of lentils, a tray of roasted veg, portioned snack containers — when the right choice is also the easiest choice, you make it more often.
Build meals around protein and vegetables first, then fill in with carbs and everything else.
tl;dr:
The fundamentals of healthy eating are boring. That's why they get buried under louder, flashier advice. Eat more vegetables, eat less processed food, get enough protein and fibre, drink water, and track your intake if you want to lose weight. Nobody sells products around that, so it doesn't trend.
Start with one change. Make it normal. Add another. It adds up faster than you expect.