Here’s the secret to eating healthy and looking and feeling good. What you put in your mouth matters, not just for weight management and performance, but sleep, stress, the appearance of your skin, muscle and hair, and finally, the mental function needed to carry out activities. Food fuels human activity.

Here are some fundamentals to consider:

1. Understand and address the reasons why you eat the way you do.

2. Don’t skip portion control. Half your dinner plate should be fruits and vegetables, a quarter should be some sort of protein source (plant- or animal-based), and the final quarter should be some sort of whole grain.

3. Eat more fruits and vegetables.

4. Prioritize plant-based proteins, white meat and fish over red meat.

5. Avoid processed food, trans fats and high levels of salt.

6. Avoid excess sugar.

7. Include beans, nuts and seeds as well as healthy oils like olive oil.

8. Choose whole grains (brown rice, whole-grain cereal, oatmeal) instead of refined grains (white bread, white rice, sweetened cereals. If grains are avoided, then get 15-35g of fiber daily from other sources.

9. If dairy is avoided, then calcium, vitamin D and potassium must come from other sources.

10. Educate yourself. There is a lot of misinformation out there.

Trendy diets that come and go often stress the human body so that maintaining adequate nutrition and even achieving weight loss — their advertised benefit — become harder over time. Tying beauty to a thin body type has led to a culture obsessed with quick-fix diets for weight loss and a distorted sense of self-worth.

People manipulate food for reasons other than fuelling their bodies. Establishing control, stress management, weight loss, distorted body images, trauma as a child or adult — all can drive people towards unhealthy eating patterns. You cannot sustain a healthy lifestyle without addressing these underlying issues.

Over-eating and under-eating both have health consequences including heart disease and stroke, arrhythmias causing sudden death, diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, muscle wasting, cognitive impairment and premature death.

Make one significant change every 2-3 days. A healthy diet takes time but is well worth the effort.