Eat whole natural foods. Shy away from man made creations, even if they appear to be healthy. A good rule of thumb is to keep the amount of ingredients you eat in a day as few as possible. This might seem simple upon first glance because most people don’t realize how easy it is to eat a hundred or more different things in a day. Here’s a sample day of eating breakfast at home, making your lunch, with a couple snacks and eating dinner at a restaurant. Not that every day would be like this for most people, but you can see how many ingredients someone can easily consume in one day.

Breakfast
Kashi Go-Lean… 20 ingredients
1% Milk… 2 ingredients
English Muffin… 27 ingredients
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter… 15 ingredients
Orange Juice… 2 ingedients

Breakfast total… 66 ingredients

Snack
Nutri-Grain Bar… 51 ingredients

Lunch
Turkey Sandwich (bread, lunch meat, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise)…
Whole Wheat Bread… 40 ingredients
Lunch Meat… 9 ingredients
Lettuce… 1 ingredient
Tomato… 1 ingredient
Mayonnaise… 17 ingredients
Flavored Iced Tea… 7 ingredients

Lunch Total Ingredients… 75 ingredients

Snack
Trail Mix… 20 ingredients

Dinner
French Bread… 8 ingredients
Oil & Vinegar Dip… 2 ingredients
Dinner salad with Ranch… 22 ingredients
Fish… 1 ingredient
Pasta… 4 ingredients
Cream Sauce… 9 ingredients
Sauteed Vegetables… 7 ingredients
Wine… 1 ingredient

Dessert
Creme brûlée… 6 ingredients

Dinner Total Ingredients… 60 ingredients

Total Daily Ingredients…272 ingredients.

Granted, there are several foods and spices that got counted more than once (sugar, salt, flour, vitamins, etc.) but you can see how easy it is to eat several dozen or hundreds of things in a day. So the follow up question: can we simplify our daily ingredients list? Absolutely. Let’s take a look at a very simple day of ingredients…

Breakfast (8 ingredients)
Eggs
Peppers
Mushrooms
Onions
Coconut Oil
Coffee
Cream
Sugar

Snack (2 ingredients)
Macadamia Nuts
Apple

Lunch (7 ingredients)
Spinach
Lettuce
Tomato
Chicken
Avocado
Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar

Snack (3 ingredients)
Celery
Almond Butter

Dinner (13 ingredients)
Steak
Salt
Black Pepper
Asparagus
Broccoli
Garlic
Onion
Butter
Wine
(Dessert)
Raspberries
Strawberries
Blueberries

Total Daily Ingredients… 33

Maybe that’s too simple for every day to look like but you get the idea.

And if you chose to put in a few more spices or vegetables that would add only a few more ingredients and you’re still coming in under 50 for the day. What do you think is better for you… 50 or 200? And what do you think offers more nutrients for fewer calories? Not tough questions. You can have different ingredients each day just keep them simple on a daily basis.

Want a challenge? Try to keep it under 10!

Now go out there and keep it simple…