How to Practice Dietary Minimalism
I don’t buy the excuse that eating healthy costs too much.
I’m here to challenge that assertion and demonstrate the contrary. I advocate for the radical approach of dietary minimalism.
In this article, I will refer to “Dietary Minimalism” as I define it. Dietary minimalism is the art of simplifying your diet in a way that is optimal for your health, finances and time management.
I encourage you to take this advice as a framework for creating a minimalist diet that works for you.
Disclaimer: No two individuals will have the exact same health and diet needs. This article is is not to be substituted for medical advice. Consult your doctor if you have any questions or concerns about making significant dietary changes.
How to Create a Minimalist Diet
In these following steps, I will use my own Whole Food Plant-Based Diet to demonstrate my minimalist approach to the vegan diet.
Step 1: Decide on Your Macros
What are your staples? Start off with where you are going to get the bulk of your calories from. When you go about deciding this, it is important to have a grasp on what type of diet you’re eating and which foods make you feel good, satisfied, and nutritionally fulfilled.
Assuming you aren’t doing keto or another low-carb diet, for most people, the first staple to consider is your primary carbohydrate source. Getting 50% of your calories from carbs, 30% of your calories from fat, and 20% of your calories from protein is considered a balanced, moderate macro level.
For weight loss, I generally suggest flipping your calories from fat and calories from protein—so 50% carbs, 20% fat, and 30% protein. As always, everyone’s activity level and health needs are different, so this is just a general guideline that works for a lot of my clients.
For my personal minimalist meal plan, I am going to use a Macro Ratio of 60% carbs, 20% fat and 20% protein. This will be a starch based vegan meal plan with plenty of grains, starchy tubers, fruits, vegetables, legumes and some nuts and seeds.
For tips on gaining muscle without gaining fat, check out The Plant Based Clean Bulk.
Step 2: Decide Which Foods You’re Going to Eat
Now it’s time to decide which foods are best going to suit your macronutrient needs. Based on my 60% carbs, 20% fat, and 20% protein ratio, I’m going to need a cheap, healthy carb source. Luckily, these are the cheapest foods around. With a starch based diet, I can afford the organic stuff. Grass fed meats, organic dairy, free-range eggs and wild caught seafood arguably have a place in a healthy diet for some people, but they will be very expensive. If cost is important to you, this is something to consider. Because my minimalist approach places high value on cost efficiency, as well as health, I will be doing a starch based minimalist diet.
Create a list that green lights the foods that you want to eat regularly. These should be foods that you could stand to eat a lot of. With dietary minimalism, you don’t want to waste a single calorie. Make sure these are foods that are going to serve your nutritional needs and keep you happy and satisfied.
My Staple Foods
Starches: Potatoes, Brown Rice, White Rice, Quinoa, Oats, Ezekiel Bead, Grape Nuts
Fruits: Bananas, Apples, Frozen Berries, Watermelon, Papaya
Legumes: Garbanzo Beans, Pinto Beans, Black Beans, Lupini beans—Dry or canned
Vegetables: Spring Mix, Dandelion Greens, Onions, Frozen Broccoli
Fungi: Fresh Mushrooms, Mushroom powder supplements
Condiments: Apple Cider Vinegar, Mustard, Bragg’s Liquid Aminos, Lemon Juice, Organic Ketchup, Nutritional Yeast, Himalayan Salt, Black Pepper, Assorted Dry Spices, Salsa
Protein Powders: Hemp Protein, Spriulina/Chlorella.
Meat and Dairy Alternatives: Unsweetened Almond Milk, Tofu, Seitan
Nuts/Seeds: Organic Natural Peanut Butter (excess oil removed), Pistachios, Raw almonds, Walnuts, Chia Seeds, Tahini
Coffee/Tea: Unsmoked Yerba Mate (Purchased in bulk, by the Kilo)
These are all of the foods that make me feel my best. You should feel joy when you come up with this list. If these foods don’t fill you with peace, joy and contentment, then you need to reevaluate your list and prioritize your food list based on your personal values and priorities. If ice cream is a priority in your life, then so be it. Sugar, oil and other rich foods don’t make me feel my best, so I’m choosing “healthy and budget friendly” as my driving values for this minimalist diet experiment.
The point of this exercise is to identify your values and own it—if you really value it, then make it a part of your life.
Step 3: Decide WHEN You’re Going to Eat
I use time-restricted eating, or intermittent fasting, as an integral part of my dietary minimalism. Generally, I follow a 16:8 eating schedule. I fast for 16 hours (this includes time spent sleeping) and I eat within an 8-hour window. Sometimes I get even more strict with my eating window, particularly when I’m not training for a race.
I will be choosing 12:00 pm-8:00 pm as my eating window. That’s more than enough time for me to get all of calories and nutrients I need (2,200 calories, 326g carbohydrates, 110g Protein, 48g Fat).
On days with heavy training or long runs, I will go over on this number by about 500-800 calories. On heavy training days like these, I prioritize protein and will try to get up to 150 grams while staying around 3,000 calories total)
It is of upmost importance to consider your exercise schedule when establishing your eating window. Generally, unless you’re doing very low heart rate cardio, such as going for a walk, then you need to eat after your workout. You have an anabolic window of up to 2 hours after strength training or high intensity cardio like running or HIIT— that post workout timeframe is your optimal time to refuel. You want to prioritize carbohydrates and protein after your workouts.
If you need to break a fast before your workout, that’s totally OK too, but you need to consider your post workout feeding window when you’re establishing your eating time frames.
For more information about intermittent fasting, check out Intermittent Fasting for Beginners.
Step 4: Plan Your Meals
This is the hardest part, but it’s everything. Planning is pointless without execution. So now that we have our ingredients picked out (and already acquired), we get started!
There are bountiful possibilities with the ingredients list that I chose, but here’s one example of a meal plan that fits within my macro budget. I broke it down meal by meal, using screen shots from the app My Fitness Pal.
Here’s a sample meal plan that fits within my Macro budget. It also fits within my grocery budget. Breaking it down by the amount of each ingredient used, I estimated about $6 worth of food. Most of the ingredients used are USDA organic, even if they weren’t logged as such. Yes, you can eat organic for about $6-$8 a day, per person, if you really put your mind to it and prepare your own food.
That’s about the same as just one meal from McDonald’s, Taco Bell, or any other cheap fast food or take out. Comparing this meal plan to sit down restaurants, the savings are even more substantial. The point is, if you eat at home and bring your prepared lunch to work/school, then you can eat organic for a fraction of the cost of buying non-organic prepared foods.
As you can see, I hit my macros almost spot on with this simple meal plan. I even had a little bit of margin of error left on the fat macros. I’m very active, so the slightly higher protein content is ideal on my running days.
This is proof that you can get more than enough protein easily on a whole food plant based diet, WITHOUT mock meat substitutes.
You can come up with a non-vegan minimalist meal plan if you so choose, but if you’re trying to balance cost and health, then a plant-based diet (or mostly plant-based diet) is arguably the best way to go.
If you need help creating your own meal plans, then feel free to contact me! It’s what I do.
Step 5: Eliminate Expensive and Unnecessary Vices
Now for the part that nobody wants to hear. Alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine can get expensive. Not only are these potentially deleterious to our health, they can cause us to spend a fortune.
On caffeine: It is possible to continue using caffeine in an affordable and minimalistic way, and moderate caffeine consumption can be healthful. All caffeine consumption comes with a cost, however, and I wouldn’t recommend starting it if you aren’t already an addict. If you choose to use caffeine, like I still do, there are ways to include it in your diet healthfully and inexpensively.
On alcohol: I hate to burst your bubble, but it’s completely unnecessary. Despite all of the classy and socially acceptable options we have to consume alcohol, the alcohol itself is still a poison. It’s an unnecessary tax on our body’s natural toxin filter—the liver. Our livers already have a tough enough job keeping us safe from environmental toxins. If we are in our right minds, we needn’t do anything to make its job more difficult. If we value our health, that would be insanity—yet that’s precisely what so many of us do. I challenge you to estimate how much money per week you spend on alcohol between restaurants, liquor stores, grocery stores and gas stations. Now multiply that number by 52 and see how much you could be saving per year. It would be nice to give yourself a raise, wouldn’t it? Drop the booze. Save your health and save your budget.
On nicotine: If you don’t smoke, vape, use oral tobacco products, or nicotine replacement therapy, then you can skip this part. Getting your nicotine fix can be incredibly expensive. Nicotine users can spend upwards of $100-$200 a month on tobacco or nicotine replacement products. The only reason nicotine gives you relief is because you started it in the first place. Nicotine does have some potential promise as a nootropic, however, the subtle, fleeting cognitive benefit that you get from it doesn’t make it worth the risks—and it’s expensive. Nicotine isn’t compatible with a minimalist lifestyle, especially when it’s addictive qualities tend to dictate how we go about our day to day lives once we’re hooked.
A note on nicotine addiction: Quitting nicotine is far easier than we have been led to believe. A substantial part of Big Tobacco’s marketing strategy was to embrace the idea that nicotine is addictive and hard to quit. This discourages smokers from attempting to quit, because they think it’s going to be a painful and miserable experience. Big tobacco actually wants you to think that its hard to quit smoking! They also want you to understand that it’s addictive. This adds to the allure of nicotine products. If nicotine is so addictive, then it must be really good, right? Well, that’s actually what the nicotine peddlers want you to believe. Spoiler alert! Quitting tobacco is ridiculously easy and the physical withdrawal symptoms are over within a week. Try it out and see for yourself if you don’t believe me. It’s all part of a massive con. It was never that hard to quit. It was never that addictive. We’ve all just been brainwashed into thinking we actually get a substantial crutch from it. The same can be said for alcohol.
On Marijuana: This is another thing that can add up. I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but if you’re on a budget, just be aware that these expenses add up. As far as pot goes, you might be suprised how little you need it. If you have a serious medical condition and rely on it for relief, it may be worth it to you. If you take it recreationally (you know who you are), then you might want to consider taking a break from it. You’ll save money and reset your cannabinoid system. When you use marijuana frequently, you build up a tolerance to it and need to use more to get the same effect. Taking intermittent breaks throughout the year can help you save money.
The Cost of Variety
Dietary Minimalism is a valuable practice for anyone who wants to lose/maintain weight, save money, and simply reduce the amount of time you spend worrying about food. You don’t have to call yourself a minimalist to incorporate some of these practices into your routine. When it comes to your diet, planning your meals ahead of time will set you up for success.
They say that variety is the spice of life, but for many of us, variety can be problematic. Variety can cause us to overeat, dilly-dally over deciding what to eat, and spend way too much money on food. It’s great that we have so much to choose from in our supermarkets, but it’s important to sift through all of the excess and focus on the foods that make us feel our best and fill our nutrition and fitness goals.
