After years of failed diets, I just don't know what is healthy anymore

[LovelyPostItNotes]

Low fat?
Low carb?
Low calorie?
Wholegrains?
No grains?
Paleo?

I need to eat mindfully and make consistently good food decisions, but what are the healthy decisions?

Everything in moderation, right, but how do you know when it's OK to have a treat?

Well what do you call 'a treat'? And why would you need one?

I find that looking at traffic light labels on food helps. Ideally the more green lights the better, I try to avoid where possible things that have a lot of red lights or sugar as a red light but moderation is key. 'Dieting' doesn't work it has to become lifestyle changes that you can stick to in order to eventually maintain long term.

I went to a healthy eating talk at work yesterday and the basic message was to aim for 80% healthy diet, so if you're having 21 meals per week, then roughly 4 a week can be "unhealthy". Stick to protein, veg, fruit, good fats, good carbs, unprocessed food, eat foods that are simple, so for example butter better than margarine or low fat spread as it hasn't gone through lots of processes. Made a lot of sense to me.

I'd start with eating as much unprocessed food as possible, so lots of veg and less meat pies.

thanks for all your comments

so, after years of on/off low carb high fat, a treat to me is a plate of spaghetti bolognese, with actual pasta [drool]

and I have this kind of dialogue in my head everyday:

you shouldn't eat carbs they make you fat/ yes but it's only spag bol/ but you know it makes you fat/ but I'm not dieting/ it's not like it's a doughnut, doughnuts are really bad/but it's delicious/ it's not unreasonable to eat a plate of spag bol/ normal people eat spag bol/ you shouldn't eat carbs, carbs are bad/well I'll eat healthily the rest of the time/ OH FUCK IT I'M EATING SPAG BOL AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME! etc

Nothing wrong with spag Bol at all! Just make sure the pasta portion is reasonable ( no more than 2oz per person).
Actually the worst bit of a spag Bol is if you use a jar of sauce- might as well throw the sugar jar in there.
If you make it from scratch its just pasta, tomatoes, onions, beef, herbs (and maybe a bit of red wine but that spoils my point! ) what's wrong with that?!

Yep, it's all about moderation!
Doughnuts as less often as you can, just go low as possible on the obvious stuff, small portions of high energy carbs and moderate and often with the good stuff.
Make this a lifestyle as best you can, you can take it as far as you want if what you get at the end is worth it.

I've just been looking at the new Jamie Oliver book, Everyday Super Food and I'm constantly shocked by the carbs - bread! pasta! rice! noodles! (all wholemeal) I realise I actually feel quite nervous about eating bread...

But quite small portions of everything I notice - 2 chicken breasts to serve 4 people.

I'm pretty sure the research says that a low carb is no better or worse than a low fat diet. It just isn't sustainable to limit certain food groups. I think the two things I have learnt is that a healthy diet is about limiting processed foods and exercising portion control.
I can't recommend the 5:2 diet enough- it's really taught me about mindful eating and reeducated me about portion control. And I don't carry the guilt I normally do when trying to lose weight!

I agree that attitude "cards are evil" isn't good. Everything in moderation!

This has been really useful for me to think about, and I've also been trying to eat mindfully. So often I eat something just because I want something nice to happen, not because I'm hungry or because I even like it

I've taken it on board about processed foods and I'm reintroducing previously banned foods like wholemeal bread and fruit.

This morning I had a slice of seeded wholemeal bread toasted with butter (what a treat!) and a mashed banana. it was AMAZING.

So, do we think my fitness pal has the balance right for protein/carbs/fat etc?